Super Bowl week in Detroit leads to a full schedule

	Between working the grill at a tailgate party and radio interviews, Barry Sanders has kept busy in Detroit this week. AP

The Super Bowl may be in Detroit, but after my first half-day in town I keep having the urge to say, Hello, Cleveland.

The layout of Detroit's downtown Renaissance Center, where much of the NFL's media operation is based, may make sense when seen from a birds-eye view or charted out on a wall, but I had at least three moments where I was walking from one location to another and realized I was passing a landmark I had passed just a few moments ago. That's enough to prompt any person of a certain age who has seen This is Spinal Tap the requisite half-dozen times to say "Hello, Cleveland."

That said, it's fun being here. You see so many inadvertent sights as you walk about. Donovan McNabb being interviewed on SportsCenter. Barry Sanders sitting down with Mike and the Mad Dog. A lone Hawaiian Tropic model, in little clothing and even less context, standing in a corner and posing for pictures with passers by, getting out that message about suntan lotion one drooling novelty photo at a time.

People are handing out stuff, too. The folks from the Arizona 2008 Super Bowl committee have a booth. They've already got the gig, obviously, but they've come to brag about Glendale's new retractable-roof stadium, which will have a natural grass field that will spend all week outdoors and then be rolled inside on tracks the morning of the game. It looks really cool. And they were giving out chocolate bars from a Glendale candy company. And little laptop lamps. I'm sure it's all related somehow.

The folks who will be running next year's Super Bowl in Miami were in town to promote themselves as well. They had a reception Wednesday. To drum up more attendance, they sent a pneumatically constructed, tube-topped young woman into the media lounge to personally invite reporters to drop by. This strategy worked alarmingly well. Pavlov would have embarrassed for those of us who followed. Said another media member, whose anonymity I'll preserve for the sake of his marriage: "I think she could have asked me to dive in a pile of garbage and I would have said yes."

At the reception the Miami folks gave us complimentary cigars, which I remember being cool in the late '90s, suggesting they had lost respect for us too.

Near the party entrance I saw Tom Arnold for maybe the fourth time that afternoon. I never quite got a direct look at him, but he and his glasses and sideburns always seemed to be crossing or lurking in the background, like the cowboy in Mulholland Drive.

After the Miami event I dropped in on a tonier affair sponsored by Cadillac, emceed nimbly by SI's own Peter King, and featuring former Super Bowl MVPs Bart Starr, Roger Staubach, Terry Bradshaw, Jim Plunkett, and Steve Young.

It may sound like a lot for a half-day, but the week promises much more. Whether I will make it to all of this remains to be seen, but I will to try to attend events given by EA Sports, Maxim magazine, and Jenna Jameson. If you look at those elements -- video games, soft and hard core pornography, all brought together by the underlying draw of an open bar and presented as lead-up to the big football game -- it becomes clear that Detroit has been transformed into the belly of a very manly beast.

I'm telling myself this week may lead to some profound observation about the nature of something, like the essence of how men are entertained or marketed to in the early 21st century. But I'm not counting on it. In the end I'm just hoping for a really good game on Sunday, which I think we have an excellent chance of getting. That is, after all, why we are here. Anyone want my cigar?

This week I like:

• Pittsburgh -4

• The under 47. I see Pittsburgh's offense scoring between 17-31 points on Seattle's defense, and Seattle's offense scoring 7-24 points on Pittsburgh's defense. Who knows about the special teams. Most likely result, I'm guessing: Pittsburgh wins, with the final being something like 27-17.

• The efficiency with which Detroit is running its Super Bowl operation. Visitors can complain they're not in shirtsleeves or near the beach, but they can't complain about how the Detroit organizers are executing their job.

• Os Mutantes' performance of Antonio Carlos Jobim's Baby, playing on the iTunes right now.

This week I don't like:

• That I haven't seen a single Best Picture nominee.

• That I can't be two places at once. I'll be missing my friend A.J.'s annual Super Bowl party on Sunday.