'The Half-Time Flush' and Other Super Bowl Myths Debunked

In an interview with the LA Times a few years back, renowned folklorist Alan Dundes ventured to explain why Super Bowl Sunday has become the focus of so many larger-than-life "urban beliefs" in the United States — for example the claim that every year during half-time the water systems of major cities verge on collapsing because so many people flush their toilets simultaneously.

Wrote Dundes: "Every culture's legends express that culture's values. Super Bowl legends usually involve numbers and a sense of enormity. The idea of big numbers, of being bigger than other people, is very American."

Or maybe we're just prone to exaggerate. Who isn't? Read more...