Palladino: Scandal! Drama! Busy Super Bowl Week Offers Plenty For Everybody
By Ernie Palladino
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This should be fun.
As the entire football world descends on Phoenix and Glendale for Super Bowl XLIX, it will be worth tuning in for the week's coverage. In recent years, the press really hasn't had anything juicy to sink their linguistic teeth into, and the result has seemed little more than a verbal tonnage of X-and-O hogwash, rehashes of the participants' upbringings going back to moment of conception, and favorite hobbies.
No detail is ever too small during Super Bowl week. But between Roger Goodell and the New England Patriots, this Super Bowl week will be blessed with a gift of tomfoolery; not just Deflate-gate, but the league's societal missteps through the season.
There's just so much to talk about, and so much the throng of reporters will want to know. And Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and a Seattle Seahawks team that apparently has done nothing wrong will be forced to squirm under the horde's questioning. They'll all have to show up. And they'll have to offer at least a Marshawn Lynch-like, "Yeah," "no," or "no comment," because the league regards absenting oneself from Super Bowl week press access with the same levity as a midnight cop call.
The drumbeats have started already. Saturday Night Live set it up for us with its opening skit about Deflate-gate, surprisingly eschewing the easy sophomoric ball jokes for a more nuanced take with the Tom Cruise-Jack Nicholson confrontation from "A Few Good Men."
OK, well, it was still silly and dumb, because that's what SNL does. But still, if they're coming up with that stuff, imagine what the omnipresent crazies who will foul the US Airways Center air at Media Day have up their sleeves. Can't wait to hear what that woman who works the podiums in a wedding dress has to say. You want some stupid with your football? You want ridiculous? Keep your eye on YouTube Tuesday night.
Belichick said in Saturday's surprise convocation that he won't address the two missing pounds-per-square-inch again. But he'll certainly be asked about them. Every day.
Mona Lisa Vito indeed. He might do well to put on his best Vinny Gambini for this one, since his theory of internal atmospheric change left high school science teachers nationwide with crossed eyes and gaping mouths.
Expect PSI to become a standard part of the Super Bowl lexicon, at least for this week. But the issues only start there. Expect to see a lot -- emphasize a lot -- on the league's view toward domestic violence. Between Ray Rice knocking out his future wife in an elevator, Adrian Peterson administering some old Texas-style tree discipline to his little boy, and the numerous other incidents that came to light during the season, that looming subject is ripe for rehashing. How do these Super Bowl players see themselves as anti-DV advocates? Is the league going far enough in its awareness?
No jokes there, unless one wishes to write off the commissioner's press conference Friday, an hour-long chat where Goodell undoubtedly will extol his league's concern for wives and girlfriends as the biggest.
First question: "So, Roger, good year, huh?"
We'll get some football, too. There's a nice little confrontation brewing between Tom Brady and Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman stemming from the taunting Sherman gave him after their 2012 meeting. Last week, Sherman came out and said Brady's good-guy image isn't quite so squeaky clean.
There's the pocket quarterback vs. Read-Option angle, the Legion of Boom against the Gronk, and Super Bowl Repeat vs. Search for the Fourth Ring.
Plenty for everybody.