The week leading up to the Super Bowl is a long, arduous journey full of peril, ridiculousness and mostly, a lack of real intrigue. It’s “Media Week,” they say, but permit me to make a really bad pun and call it “Media Weak.” I’ll wait for your peals of raucous laughter to subside before continuing…
…all better? Good. Then let’s carry on.
During Media Week, reporters, writers and journalists of varying caliber all descend upon the host city—in this case, rusty old Indianapolis—and attempt to mine gold from what is more often than not, a freshly blown nose. They try to find angles that others haven’t covered—BREAKING NEWS: Tom Brady’s Pee Wee Coach’s Sister-in-law Grew Up Two Miles From Lucas Oil Stadium!—or they mercilessly beat to death stories that everyone else is writing about—Can Eli Step Out of His Brother’s Shadow… in His Brother’s Own City?!—dun-dun-DUN!
Others, those “lower-tiered” scribes with perhaps a bit less access (I’m talking about the Kansas City Star’s own Sam Mellinger), try to make steak out of shit, by any means necessary. And this is in NO way meant to be demeaning to Sam; frankly, I find him to be a gifted (though sometimes fluffy) writer. But you’ve gotta question the necessity of sending him to the Super Bowl so he can produce the pieces that he has over the past week. Example headlines?
“Indianapolis provides a super lesson for KC”
(In this episode, Sam rides the bus and finds out that Super Bowls are important to smaller cities.)
“Goal of playing football again helped Giants’ Herzlich beat cancer”
(NY Giants’ LB Mark Herzlich had cancer… but he kicked its ass! And just look at him now!)
“Tom Brady’s definition of adversity might be different than yours"
(Tom Brady just can’t relate to the common man… OR CAN HE???!!! Must. Read. On.)
Point being, Sam’s digging deep. But without a treasure map, it’s as futile as teaching a meerkat to pole-dance. He’s STILL doing better than Yahoo! Sports, though, as we’ll see in a moment.
Aside from the obvious storylines—Eli in Indy, the Rematch of a spoiled 2008 perfect-Pats campaign, Brady’s quest to join Montana and Bradshaw as 4-timers—there’s not many compelling things to say about this game. It’s not the Harbaugh Brothers Bowl, 2.0 (though I’m kind of starting to think that might have been a really great game), and the rift between the two teams—again, aside from the Giants beating the Pats in XLII—is minimal. Oh sure, it’s a Boston/New York thing, which *ahem* NEVER gets old, but the luster, like sex after marriage, just isn’t there.
It’s just not that interesting. You know, unless you pretend that it is.
From Yahoo! (and I SWEAR I’m not making these up):
“Wes Welker is a big fan of Tom Brady’s toilet”
This story is seriously out on Yahoo! right now. Go look. I’ll wait.
Are you back? Cool. Did you read the piece—categorized under their special Super Bowl XLVI heading—about Tom Brady’s toilet? And how it’s really nice and Wes Welker likes to shit in it? Are you more intrigued by the game now? Lord knows I am! But wait, there’s more.
“Giants safety Antrel Rolle enjoys Indy nightlife in advance of Super Bowl”
Oh shit… GOOD. I was worried about whether or not he was having a good time, IN SPITE of coach Tom Coughlin’s 9pm curfew. Rolle told Yahoo! Sports: “I like to party and boogie down.” If this doesn’t garner writer Martin Rogers a Pulitzer, I’ve lost my faith in humanity.
“Brandon Jacobs preps for second career in boxing”
The gist: Giants’ running back Brandon Jacobs was a hot-headed asshole growing up, became an amateur boxer, and he now hopes that someday, when he retires, he can be a fight promoter. Words cannot BEGIN to describe how much richer my life is after reading this.
“With help from a police escort, Giants get their hometown pizza in Indianapolis”
Umberto’s, a NY pizza joint, flew some pizzas to Indianapolis to feed the Giants, just as they have every week for the past four years. The tradition was started by now-retired defensive great Michael Strahan, and if there’s one thing that guy knows, it’s pizza… messy, public divorces filled with claims of homosexuality, and pizza.
Seriously, someone check with Vegas. Did this affect the line in any way? It HAD to, right?
And there are a million more stories just like this out there on the internet. You’d drive yourself mad reading all of the inane popcorn-pieces about Ahmad Bradshaw’s lucky jockstrap or Justin Tuck’s Beanie Baby collection.Maybe they just need to scale it all back… you know, talk about the GAME, provide some analysis. It’s like that old adage—“if you don’t have something reasonably important to say about the Super Bowl, then don’t say anything at all.” Or something like that.
Please, I beg of you… just wake me up when the game is on.
Lefty–no way the Pats win 3 outta 4
Your too young to remember Elway’s early Super Bowls.
He carried the team, there was average talent, other than Elway. Horseface is the best QB to ever take a snap. I hate the guy.
The Pats are replicas of those Denver teams. One great player and some really good ones.
The Giants win 4 outta 5 if they are in the AFC East with the Pats, and you could establish an ongoing rivalry for a couple of years with the same players.
Back to work grasshopper. I would suggest a “Sabermetric” approach to your fotball studies today, you are way off base.
🙂
Thats weird
I posted this up above, it went away, and, here it is…
3D?