Super Bowl Chronicles

This work by a Detroit News sportswriter is no romanticized look at pro football's biggest event. At the outset Green stresses that the contest is ``seldom a very good football game'' and labels it ``an annual slopfest in the dungeon of excess.'' But the author's interest is less in the game, the strategies of offense and defense, and the memorable plays (few though they may have been) than in the people involved. They include players like Joe Namath, who thumbed his nose at spectators by retiring to his hotel room with two women, and managers like Chuck Noll, shown responding copiously to questions from brainless sports reporters. Green also makes some observations on the price-gouging that every host city of the Super Bowl considers its prerogative. The book is so richly anecdotal that even non-fans will enjoy it. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)