Posted on February 2nd, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
The buildup to Super Bowl XLVI — like every Super Bowl in the modern era — has been excruciating, a two-week lead-in that feels twice as long before the NFL season finale. Was it really just a couple of Sundays ago when we came oh-so-close to Baltimore and San Francisco meeting in this game?
If the Ravens’ Lee Evans didn’t drop that pass in the end zone and the 49ers’ Kyle Williams didn’t botch those two punt returns, we might not have this exquisite matchup between old-school coaches and elite quarterbacks. We might be stuck with the Harbaughs in headsets and their suspect signal-callers.
Of course, we would’ve made do with that matchup or any other pairing. That’s the beauty of the Super Bowl. Whether it’s Giants–Patriots, Ravens-49ers or even an uninspiring Buccaneers-Jaguars, it gets the same treatment. And we lap it up, planning and preparing our Sunday itineraries and counting the days.
But if we could choose the teams for SB46 (fans of Baltimore and San Francisco notwithstanding), this is just about perfect. Tom “Captain America” Brady and the New England Patriots, a team folks love to hate, in a rematch against Eli “The Other” Manning and the New York Giants, from the city folks love to hate.
The teams respect one another, but they don’t like one another. Brady and coach Bill Belichick would be 4-0 in Super Bowls if not for the Giants. Manning and coach Tom Coughlin will be 2-0 if they can repeat their performance from four years ago. The legacies of Brady and Belichick are entrenched, regardless of Sunday’s outcome. Manning and Coughlin are on the brink of joining the upper echelon with a win.
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Posted on February 1st, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
As a player who starred on his own VH1 reality show, founded his own news network, performed on Dancing With the Stars and became one of the NFL’s most flamboyant personalities, Chad Ochocinco always seemed tailor-made for Super Bowl Media Day.
Except this year, the first season he reached the big game and his first season with the New England Patriots.
During his first 10 NFL seasons — all with the Cincinnati Bengals and most before changing his last name from Johnson to his uniform number (85) in Spanish — Ochocinco was among the game’s top receivers. He was third in receiving yards and seventh in receptions, touchdown receptions and yards per game. And Ochocinco was notorious for his end zone celebrations, among them a Riverdance rendition, a marriage proposal and a request that the league stay out of his wallet.
But he’s been virtually invisible with the Patriots. He was inactive in the AFC Championship game against Baltimore and has only 15 catches for 276 yards and one touchdown all season. He didn’t have a seat at a podium Tuesday during Media Day, relegated to standing on the field with the other bit players.
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Posted on February 1st, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
The NFL has been derided as the “No Fun League” since at least 1985, when Billy “White Shoes” Johnson was penalized twice for his signature touchdown dance. But in another sense, 1985 is when NFL fun reached a new level that’s still growing, sparked by the Chicago Bears, William “Refrigerator” Perry and the Super Bowl Shuffle.
Whether you credit them or blame them, “Da Bears” helped make Super Bowl Media Day the spectacle it has become.
They were crossover stars in sports’ biggest crossover event, making Mike Ditka, Walter Payton, Jim McMahon and Perry icons in pop culture as well as NFL circles. Ditka starred on “Saturday Night Live,”Payton appeared on the cover of Time and Perry graced the cover of Rolling Stone. Meanwhile, McMahon was showing his behind — mooning a media helicopter at practice — and defying the rules on headbands.
It was only a matter of time before ESPN decided Media Day would make for great programming (or least kill some time). MTV, Entertainment Tonight, Nickelodeon and a bunch of other networks followed suit, all trying to get their own piece of America’s undeclared national holiday.
The NFL, always willing to tighten its stranglehold as the country’s No. 1 passion, has welcomed all comers. Two thousand credentials were issued for Tuesday’s Media Day at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium. The bigger surprise — since the league never saw a dollar it didn’t crave — is that tickets were sold for the first time. More than 7,000 fans thought it was a worthwhile expenditure of time and money (one hour each for the New England Patriots and New York Giants, separated by a one-hour intermission, for $25).
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By DERON SNYDER
