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The hype is here
A week filled with who-knows-what awaits
Posted: Tuesday January 23, 2001 11:37 AM
Updated: Tuesday January 23, 2001 1:54 PM
By John Donovan, CNNSI.com
TAMPA, Fla. -- We used to know what to expect out of the Super Bowl every year. It used to be the Dallas Cowboys, or the San Francisco 49ers, or the Green Bay Packers. Before that, the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Buffalo Bills, maybe, or the Minnesota Vikings.
Of course, those Super Bowls also used to be boring affairs, by and large. Blowouts. Snoozers by halftime.
Now we get something new, the Super Bowl of 2001, where the Baltimore Ravens, never before here either as the Ravens or the Cleveland Browns, and the New York Giants, absent for a decade, will play Sunday. It will be a game full of redemption and defense, no-names and defense, bravado and defense. It could be, if last year's game between two Super Bowl strangers was any indication, a corker.
But before that, before the game Sunday night, we have something that hasn't changed. Something that has stayed virtually the same.
The run-up. The hype. The temptations. Before the game, we have good ol' Super Bowl week.
Super Bowl week is a few days filled with obligations and expectations that can get so burdensome and so out of hand that if the players and coaches don't keep the game in mind, things can quickly get out of hand.
"I have talked to the team about the things that could go on here," Giants coach Jim Fassel said upon his arrival in Tampa. "I have a curfew for the team every night. I told the team, 'If you guys want to go out and have a great time at the Super Bowl, go when we're not playing.'"
And so it begins. Different teams, for sure. But the same old start.
On to the Super Bowl Day at a Glance, which will appear every day through Sunday. To open things up, we ask this question: If you're a player, do you party 'cause you never know if you'll get here again, or play it straight and think nothing but football?
The answer: Boys -- at least a lot of them, anyway -- will be boys.
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The Hype
It's too much already! Make them stop! Help! The game is still days away and my ears are bleeding! Ohhhh, the humanity! ... What's that, you say? It's barely started? All the players aren't even opening their mouths until today, that gang tackle called Media Day? Man, can Sunday get here soon enough?
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Ray Lewis
No one in Tampa, with the possible exception of some dancers hanging around Dale Mabry, maybe, will be more watched this week than Lewis, the Baltimore Ravens' linebacker. The word is that he'll talk about his past -- you know, that murder charge thing last Super Bowl -- Tuesday and only Tuesday. We say you can't escape it, Ray. So don't try.
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Kerry Collins
Ditto with Collins, the New York Giants' quarterback. He's not talking after his emotion-packed spiel on Monday night, he says, about his past. The past being that drinking, quitting, N-word-spewing thing. Our advice: Don't even bother running, Kerry. Just face up to it and keep your mind on the game. If you can.
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Flag --
Brian Billick:
This whole Lewis thing is inevitable. But for the Ravens' head coach to get in a fight with the press on the first day of a long week won't help anything at all.
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Flattery --
Tampa:
It's not going to be Miami-like, or Honolulu-like. But it's not going to be the icebox of last year's Atlanta Super Bowl, either.
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Flag --
Detroit:
How did the Motor City get a Super Bowl? Sure, it's still a few years away. But, dang it, who wants to go where it's freezing?
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Flattery --
The NFL:
Yes, it's an exercise in excess. It's embarrassing in so many ways. But no sports league puts on a party for its crown jewel like the NFL does at the Super Bowl.
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Balance, schmalance. The Ravens have shown you can be one-dimensional and win big.
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How would you feel if they held a party in your back yard and you couldn't make it? Sorry, Bucs.
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Trent Dilfer could win the Super Bowl and play his last game for the Ravens, all Sunday. That just ain't right.
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"We didn't have a curfew during the regular season, so we're not going to have one now. You don't put undue pressure on a team, so we're not going to do that."
-- Ravens safety Rod Woodson, on Billick's decision not to set a curfew
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With everything that goes on the week before the Super Bowl -- and, we might point out, everything goes on the week before the Super Bowl -- it's sometimes easy to lose track of the game. By all accounts, this one should be close and physical, if not exactly high-scoring. Will it equal the wildness of Super Bowl week? Well, let's see how wild it gets. |
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