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ANYONE about to spout hyperbole should think of Bill Belichick. The coach of the New England Patriots is the personification of understatement and could serve as the standard for sanity in a culture of mushrooming superlatives.

The coach speaks quietly of good football and has not joined the screamers proclaiming a New England dynasty. A third Super Bowl win in four years is a fine thing -- a terrific thing, if one wants to pump up the adjective. But it is not a coronation.

Belichick and his disciplined players did not get to this year's title by focusing on a possible reign, or even by concentrating on the whole grueling breadth and depth of a season and postseason. They went play by play, game by game and knew that what they were about was the business of football.

But the law of language inflation that often rules the media, marketing, and everyday speech insists on making just about any event a whole lot bigger than it actually is. A movie isn't simply a comedy -- it's "the funniest film of the year!"

A book is a "blockbuster bestseller!" A two-bedroom condo becomes "a miracle," or the place where "your life has just begun." And a mortgage refinancing deal is trumpeted as "the biggest no-brainer in the history of earth!"

P.T. Barnum comes to mind.

The manufactured excitement is so pervasive that some advertisers must figure they can cash in on it simply by putting exclamation points in their copy -- which may, or may not, explain an office supply ad shouting, "Leather Chairs!"

In politics, a hot campaign or grass-roots movement has been described as a "tsunami," but that exaggeration may blessedly vanish given that the world has seen the devastation caused by a real one.

The constant verbal frenzy can work its way into the brain, coloring expectations and diminishing the power of words. Saying something or someone is "great," for instance, has evolved into a rather lukewarm endorsement in many quarters. A listener might well nod off if a vacation is not "the experience of a lifetime," the restaurant not "four star," the potential date not a person who "has it all," or the new kitchen appliances nowhere near "ultra."

The television show "American Idol" would have been called plain old "Amateur Night" when the tube was young and society had a more Belichick-like grounding in reality. Today, people who win a talent contest assume that they have achieved megastardom, never mind how briefly.

Bill Belichick could tell them that winning is best assimilated from a healthy perspective and that a championship should speak for itself.