Decisions, decisions.What will I do at halftime of Super Bowl XL next Sunday? Do I watch the Rolling Stones live from the 50-yard line or switch over to the Pay Per View channels and watch Lingerie Bowl III, a full-contact football game played by scantily clad models? Speaking of which, who do I root for in the Bud Bowl? The Super Bowl has given me some serious stuff to think about.

The Fourth of July is America’s Birthday Party, but Super Bowl Sunday has become America’s biggest party. The Super Bowl has eclipsed New Year’s Eve in the party department and is up there with Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas when it comes to food consumption. It’s an annual windfall for supermarkets, department stores, bars, snack food makers, breweries, and restaurants.

According to the Beer Institute, a lobbying organization formed in 1986 to “represent the [beer] industry before Congress, state legislatures, and public forums across the country,”roughly 3.5% of annual beer sales are generated around Super Bowl Sunday. The Snack Food Association states that Americans will consume around 30.4 million pounds of snacks on the big day. Domino’s Pizza is expected to deliver 300,000 pizzas per quarter, a increase in pizza sales by 42% over a typical Sunday.

It’s also a big money maker for bigscreen TV manufacturers, who enjoy their busiest week leading up to the Big Game.And we all know that companies use the Super Bowl to launch new advertising campaigns, but you know it’s reached the absurd when cable TV news programs are broadcast specifically to report on the most effective or memorable Super Bowl spots.

In fact, it really doesn’t matter who plays in the game. Ask people who played in the 2004 Super Bowl in Houston and you probably get a blank stare. Remind them that Janet Jackson suffered a “wardrobe malfunction” and exposed a breast during the halftime show, and they might remember that New England edged Carolina 32-29.

Jackson’s halftime shenanigans made it all the way to the Halls of Congress and forced changes not only in the Super Bowl halftime show, but in how networks handle live events. Of course, the NFL proceeded to hire Paul McCartney in 2005 and the Rolling Stones this year as “safe” acts for the Super Bowl halftime show despite the fact that McCartney spent nine days in a Japanese prison for carrying drugs in 1980 and the Rolling Stones’ history with narcotics – not to mention other areas of the penal code – is well documented. But compared to Janet Jackson, they’re tame.

Just how did the Super Bowl become the Super Bowl? It was more by luck than design. In October 1966, the NFL and the American Football League got Congressional approval to merge their leagues and hastily put together the World Championship Game, AFL vs. NFL.The first game was staged on January 15, 1967 in the 94,000-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.The most expensive ticket you could buy that day went for $12, and roughly 33,000 seats went unsold. Incredibly, both CBS and NBC televised the game, each using the same TV feed with different announcers and different advertisers. The ratings were not spectacular.

Even the name “Super Bowl” was a virtual accident. After the first two games were simply the World Championship Game, Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt – who founded the AFL because he couldn’t get an NFL team in Dallas – thought up the name while he was watching his kids play with a multicolored ball.

“They each had a Super Ball that my wife had given to them and they were always talking about them, and I just used the expression Super Bowl,” he said. “It was an accidental thing.” NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle didn’t like the name, nor did NFL owners. But no one had suggested anything else.

Four decades later, the Super Bowl is no longer NFL vs. AFL, NFL advertisers (Ford) vs. AFL advertisers (Chrysler), or CBS vs. NBC. The event has become so successful that cities have to bid for the game and the tens of thousands of tourists it brings with it.

The 2006 Super Bowl will generate millions of dollars for the airline industry, hotels and motels, rent-a-car agencies, and the food industry in Detroit, suburban Detroit,and even Windsor,Ontario, which is a tunnel ride from downtown Detroit.

Economists argue about the $300 million figure that a Super Bowl allegedly brings into a community, but Detroit does stand to rake in huge tourist dollars it would normally never see in February. The Detroit Regional Chamber estimates that as many as 120,000 people could visit Detroit because of the event, with the majority of them arriving on the Friday prior to the game and departing the day after.

Super Bowl tourists tend to be richer than average tourists and can pay inflated hotel room prices and afford costlier airline tickets, helping both industries.

Super Bowl proponents never know exactly how much money the Big Game brings to their town, but they do know this: The Super Bowl brings something else, a platform for the city to show off its wares, though that may be a bit harder to do in Detroit, where the auto industry is in a decline.

“Hosting a Super Bowl is so much more than a game. It’s about global visibility, economic impact, competition for conventions, and more visitors,” said Larry Alexander, President of the Detroit Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau and member of the Host Committee.

In 1967, the Super Bowl was just a game, the Super Bowl now is a megaevent watched over by the U.S. Office of Homeland Security.

A year from now, will people remember that Pittsburgh and Seattle were Super Bowl participants? The answer is probably not – after all, the game is just a backdrop to a party. Meanwhile, there are big decisions to be made. Lingerie Bowl versus Mick and Keith at halftime, the Bud Bowl, Dominos vs. Pizza Hut. Luckily, we have another week to prepare.