The nation’s sports typists and TV lecturers have decided this will be a boring Super Bowl, an observation they usually don’t make until after the game.

One reason for their disdain is, of course, the fact the Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots are noted for their defenses. Another reason is that the media don’t know grits about the Panthers, and they couldn’t name three Patriots if you spotted them Paul Revere.

If Super Bowls are as boring as they’ve been painted over the years, how come 139 million viewers watched Tampa Bay beat Oakland last year? Nothing in the history of television — not the moon walk, not even “The Osbournes” — equaled that number.

Granted, there are no dynasties anymore, no great teams. It’s not like Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys facing Chuck Noll’s Pittsburgh Steelers. It’s not John Elway against Brett Favre.

You become great, you become famous by playing in this game two, three, four times, but teams so rarely repeat nowadays, you don’t have a chance to become the Steel Curtain or the Doomsday Defense or the Fearsome Foursome. People don’t hear nicknames like “The Mad Stork” or “The Assassin” or “The Destroyer” and immediately relate to them.

But it’s still the Super Bowl. It’s still America’s biggest party. Sometimes the games get lopsided or there’s not enough scoring. Sometimes, in the fourth quarter, you might want to flip over to an old movie. But by then, you’ve experienced the Super Bowl, all the days leading up to it, the anticipation. Everything, every play seems important. That’s the Super Bowl.

Bored? It’s not going to happen around here, not this Sunday. There will be plenty to fill the cynics’ notepads and sound bytes. There always is.

It started with the first Super Bowl when Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, a Kansas City defensive back, boasted he would use the Hammer, an elbow to the head, to discourage any Green Bay Packers who dared to venture into his territory. This was back in the days when taunting was rare, especially taunting Vince Lombardi’s Packers. Late in the game, Green Bay ran a sweep and when the play was over, the Hammer had to be carried off the field on a stretcher. Green Bay won, 35-10.

Super Bowl IX in New Orleans presented one writer with a classic line for his column. A well-endowed topless dancer strolled onto the field before the game. Four policemen took after her and hauled her off toward jail. Dayton sports writer Si Burick wrote, “And they took her away two abreast.”

Need a column? Just wander around the mass news conferences and listen. One writer sat down at a table with a Denver Broncos tackle, placed a tape recorder in front of the player and said, “I need your life story. Start at the beginning, don’t leave anything out and make it funny.”

Another asked a player, “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?”

One asked the Redskins’ Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, “How long have you been a black quarterback?”

It’s a good week for nonsense.

Sunday, it gets serious. The Panthers and Patriots will play on the stage where Bart Starr and Ray Nitschke and L.C. Greenwood and Joe Montana and Joe Jacoby and Cornelius Bennett and Jack Youngblood and Mike Singletary and Roger Staubach and Jim Langer and Paul Warfield and Chris Hanburger and all those others have played, a place where glory or regret awaits.

Boring? Nah.