CLICK & DOUBLE CLICK: BRING YOUR CHIPS AND READ SUPER BOWL HYPE ON INTERNET (COLUMN 21)

Cybertip: The Southeast Missourian is planning its online product, which we hope to launch in March or April. Next week, we'll talk about some of our ideas for www.semissourian.com, and we'll be asking for your ideas as well.

OK, face it: 800 million viewers in 160 countries could be watching the Super Bowl on Sunday. Even the football widows will probably be there with a bowl of chips. If nothing else, the commercials are usually fun.

Super Bowl XXXI pits the Green Bay Packers against the New England Patriots in New Orleans.

If you want to find out what's ahead for the big game, you don't have to wait for your favorite sports show. The Super Bowl hype is open 24-hours a day on the Internet.

The obvious place to start is

http://www.superbowl.com

Joni: The NFL has teamed with Fox Sports and Starwave to produce Superbowl.com. There's lots of unique pre-game hype on the site, and it all culminates with a live cybercast on game day.

Peggy: During this week, you have lots of chances to interact with players through live chat. In the chat room, you select your favorite team, and that helmet shows up next to your name and comments.

Joni: Lots of good facts and figures can be found. This is the 8th Super Bowl to be held in New Orleans. You can find out information about future Super Bowls, tickets, times, halftime show, concerts and parking. Oh no! The pre-game show will open with The Macarena. I wonder if Al Gore will be there.

Peggy: Maybe the halftime show will be better. The "Blues Brothers Bash" features Dan Aykroyd and James Belushi, along with James Brown and ZZ Top.

Joni: Tickets are no longer available. Surprise, surprise. But if they were, the official price (scalpers excluded) was $275 each.

Peggy: The other 27 teams -- yes the losers -- each get 1.1 percent of ticket sales. And the Saints get 10 percent of the ticket sales for hosting the game.

Joni: There's lots of other information about how each team got to the Super Bowl. You can experience a recap of each playoff game.

Peggy: There's lots of memories on the page too, including recollections of 30 sports writers who have attended all 31 Super Bowl games. Wait, did someone say shopping?

Joni: Yes, they have a Super Bowl store online. You can buy stuff like clothing, official game programs, postgame programs, coins, pins and official footballs. You can't actually order off the page. You can call a toll-free number.

Peggy: For more Super Bowl coverage, take a look at

http://www.foxsports.com

This actually takes you to http://www.tvguide.com/sports/; Fox Sports is televising the Super Bowl.

Joni: Fans speak out about game predictions. You can also find greatest Super Bowl moments, both a photo gallery and a poll, video clips and even a Super Bowl quiz. Let's test our knowledge.

Peggy: Well, it wasn't pretty. We fumbled the snap and it got worse from there. OK, we didn't get a single question right.

Joni: We like the Chex mix better than the game. Let's look at Sports Illustrated for Kids

http://pathfinder.com/SIFK/superbowl97/central.html

Peggy: Maybe we can learn a little something before the big game. We can learn about the players in Super Morphs. NFL greats have wandered into the laboratory of Dr. Nicknamenstein. His fiendish experiment makes the players look more like their nicknames.

Joni: Witness Flipper Anderson morphing into Flipper the dolphin. If you have QuickTime you can see the actual morphing.

Peggy: You can fill in the blanks in the Gumbotron Recipe maker or try your hand at the Brett Favre Cheesehead puzzle.

Joni: Each of the Super Bowl teams has a page dedicated to their players, records and bragging rights. The New England Patriots are at

http://www.patriots.com

Peggy: You can recap the Patriots entire season, with game highlights, photographs and a scoring summary of every game. They give you a game preview, including the weather forecast in New Orleans for Sunday.

Joni: The Green Bay Packers' page is part of the NFL online package. You can find the Pack at

http://www.packers.com

This automatically takes you to http://www.nfl.com/packers/index.html

Peggy: If we read enough about the players and season highlights presented on these pages, we could sound like football experts by Sunday.

Joni: Fat chance. You can find even more information on the NFL home page at

http://www.nfl.com

As you might expect, it's full of information about the upcoming game. Fans can sign up for NFL E-mail to get official updates straight from the league office. You can also jump from this page to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Peggy: NFL.com also has a place just for kids, including the NFL Touchdown magazine for kids and promotions of events like Punt, Pass and Kick. The Carolina Panther's Kevin Hardy, a rookie this year, kept a journal every week. You can follow his first year at this site.

Joni: One of the highlights of the Super Bowl is the annual Bud Bowl '97 called Battle in the Bayou.

http://www.budweiser.com/budbowl

Peggy: There have been eight previous Bud Bowls in the NBL (National Bottle League) World Championship. The series stands knotted at 4-4.

Joni: You can vote for nominees to the Hall of Fame. They include Budweiser players Basher, Grabs and Cans. On the Bud Light team, vote for Bud Dry, Illuminator or Ralph. Ralph?

Peggy: The page has lots of frames and graphics. (Translated: It's slow as halftime commentary.)

Joni: There are even QuickTime movies of each player's moments of greatness. But unless you have a superfast machine and modem, the movies take a long time.

Peggy: You can look at the Hall of Fame with past favorites like Freezer, Budski and Budway Joe.

Joni: You can also play the official Bud Bowl Pick the Score game and win a key chain or a real refrigerator. I say it's the Super Bowl commercials that make people watch the game.

Peggy: What do you like best about the Super Bowl online? E-mail us at movnldd.net.

See you in cyberspace.

~Joni Adams is managing editor and Peggy Scott is graphics editor at the Southeast Missourian.