Talk about your fish out of water.
Take a veteran alt-weekly journalist and thrust him into Super Bowl Media Day. Loaded down with a video camera, a digital audio recorder and a digital still camera (oh, and a notebook, made of paper), the one-man-media-gang that was me joined a sea of others for more than two hours today at Raymond James Stadium.
A zoo. There had to be more than 2,000 media types herding around one side of the stadium, documenting the finer points of Larry Fitzgerald's hair, Hines Ward's diet, Troy Polamalu's spirituality (and hair), Mike Tomlin's hunger for winning, Ben Roethlisberger's admiration for Kurt Warner (and vice versa), and more X's-and-O's 101 than one could stand.
The journalists on hand ranged from ESPN star Chris Berman — tall, rotund and sweaty in the pushing-90 heat — who had his pick of any interview he wanted, for as long as he wanted, to Eastern Europeans with marginal command of English and smiling Japanese who actually thought the players were delighted by their questions; from pseudo-celebrity chick models posing for cameras, thrusting their hips toward players and asking fashion questions, to my favorite: a raging queen in a No. 13 Cardinals jersey who carried a pink football and actually had Pittsburgh placekicker Jeff Reed drop to a knee and hold the ball so he could (try to) kick it.
Speaking of Reed — he gets mad kudos for grabbing attention. He had his dyed-blond hair spiked up as if there were flames coming out of his head. This alone, apparently, was enough to draw a throng of cameras, recorders and notebooks around him. Otherwise, who would've really cared — he's a FUCKIN' KICKER. Seriously, though, I do give Reed props for playing along with the queenie boy.
To get into Super Bowl Media Day on a Day Pass (as opposed to being fully credentialed for the Super Bowl), you have to make a request and get someone in the NFL office to grant it, fill out a complicated series of online forms, show up at the Media Accreditation Office on the grounds of International Mall, wait DMV-style while they process your pass, drive to the stadium, flash your pass and park. Then you go through an exhaustive series of security checks that makes getting to an airside seem like picking up a six pack at 7-Eleven. (To their credit, the dozens and dozens of security folks were extremely polite and friendly.)
This article appears in Jan 21-27, 2009.