NFL Super Bowl Report No. 4, Tuesday Jan. 26, 2009
TAMPA — It was Media Day today, the annual Tuesday of Super Bowl week where allegedly serious journalists get all tangled up with the circus freaks from MTV and Nickleodeon.
Fact is, Tuesday of Super Bowl Week is usually a circus and it’s usually great fun.
At least, in most other years, it’s been a circus. Today, however, it was eerily subdued. There was one freak from Telemundo who had a five-o’clock shadow and yet dressed like a blonde hooker — wig, cocktail dress, too much makeup, the whole Hallowe’en costume. OK, so he was more like a fat, old hooker and it was truly disgusting, but he was so quiet and he was around so little that he was hardly noticeable.
This year, at the Recession Bowl, most of the talk among the media members has had more to do with when their respective newspapers would fold, not whether Larry Fitzgerald would catch nine more passes for 150 more yards and three more touchdowns on Sunday.
In fact, sitting on the bus in front of a couple of New York writers, it sounded as if the end was near for the heavily-indebted New York Times.
“I just don’t understand the new business model,” said one 50-ish writer. “You take the product that you used to charge people for, put it on the web and give it away. The people who run this business have absolutely no clue how a business works and now they sit around and wonder what happened.
“The Tucson Citizen, the Rocky Mountain News, the Seattle P-I, and more are threatening to go. These papers still make money, but the owners have so much debt service, they can’t make it work.”
“It’s just so silly,” said the other 45-ish journo. “The web is a voracious beast. You just feed it and feed it and it’s still hungry. Everyday, we feed it more and more copy and yet it can’t make any money, but we now work harder on the web than we do on the paper. Meanwhile, the core business can’t keep up with its debt financing.
“It’s true, editors and publishers are editors and publishers. The concept of business completely eludes them.”
So on Tuesday at Media Day at Super Bowl XLIII, there were plenty of so-called serious journalists, but very few women dressed up like strippers, girls dressed up like trees or vegetables and men dressed up like hookers. There were very few questions like this: “If you were a pizza, what kind of pizza would you be?”
“The freaks aren’t here, because very few of us are here,” said Dave Perkins of the Toronto Star. “Every year, there are fewer and fewer of us. They say the business is changing. It’s changing faster than we think.”
So on a very interesting Media Day, here are a few interesting responses…
1) A little more than a month ago, Mitch Berger was in B.C. kicking a football all by himself. This week, he’s preparing for Super Bowl XLIII. He can’t believe it.
“I really thought I’d go when I was in Minnesota in 1998,” Berger said, surrounded by a handful of Canadian media types.
“That was a great season. We were 15-1 and Randy Moss was rookie of the year,” Berger said. “I thought that was my one and only chance. Then we got another chance in 2001, but we went into New York and got spanked by the Giants in the NFC Championship.
“And that was it. I thought I was done. I was home in B.C., kicking by myself, and nobody called. Not even a CFL team called. I think Winnipeg still has my rights and I thought they might call, they had kicking problems all year, but they didn’t call, so I thought I might have to wait until training camp next year.
“Then my agent got a call from the Steelers and now here I am. I’m enjoying Super Bowl Week, my family gets in tomorrow, it’s going to be a great, great time.”
Berger owns four restaurants and a bar in Vancouver and Victoria and he’ll never be broke. But to get one more shot at the Super Bowl is just about as good as it gets.
2) Larry Fitzgerald Jr. said yesterday that his dad, sportswriter Larry Sr., will be all over him this week.
“But in a good way.”
“He’ll tell me to get plenty of rest, to eat right, to stay out of trouble,” said the Cards gifted wideout, a young man on the verge of setting every playoff receiving record in NFL history.
“Having my dad around is great. He’s done so much for me because he allowed me to be a big part of his life. I got to hang around with some of the greatest athletes in history. He’s the reason I’m able to do what I love to do today. When you’re a youth and you see what you want you want to do for the rest of your life and you eventually get to do it, then that’s really living the dream.
“Right now, I’m living the dream.”
Fitzgerald said that with his dad staying with him in the team hotel, he’s able to take the distractions out of his game.
“I look at this game this way: It’s the same game I’ve been playing since I was seven years old at Martin Luther King Park in Minneapolis. Sure it’s the Super Bowl, sure it’s the biggest stage on earth. But it’s the same game I’ve always played. I just need to run my routes, catch the ball and run with it. That’s all it is. It’s just football.”
3) Arizona coach Ken Whisenhunt, was asked how he turned around a team that played mediocre football down the stretch and finished the regular season at 9-7.
Let’s be honest here: The Cards were dreadful in December, but have been unbeatable in January.
In fact, as the question was being asked, former Detroit Lions head coach Steve Mariucci — a guy who had a lot of trouble winning football games — wondered aloud whether Whisenhunt had changed the system or delivered a different message.
“None of the above,” Whisenhunt said with a smile. “There was nothing tangible that happened. We just got hot at the right time. Nobody gave us a chance in the playoffs so it’s been the us-against-the-world mentality and the guys have bought into it. We’ve done nothing more than get hot at the right time.”
Funny, it’s actually starting to feel a little cooler here in Tampa.
Oh, by the way, last night before the Montreal-Tampa NHL game, the duo of Les Sabler (on guitar) and Marshall Gillon (vocals) provided both the Canadian and U.S. national anthems.
I have never heard O Canada or the Star Spangled Banner performed better. Outstanding doesn’t even begin to describe how spectacular it was.
Another by the way, no matter what the P.A. announcer told the crowd, the attendance at last night’s game in Tampa, was a lie.
The St. Pete Times Forum was not half full for the Habs and Bolts.