Monday, Jan. 26
Greetings from Thank-Goodness-This-Isn’t-New-York, Arizona.
As you might remember, last year’s freak-out over playing the Super Bowl in a cold weather city turned out to be much ado about nothing. Well, until everyone tried to go home the day after the game at least. But with a big storm hitting the east coast Monday, everybody in Phoenix is thankful that Mother Nature waited a year to slam New York with a late January storm.
Then again, it did rain a bit in Phoenix Monday, so maybe we should complain about that … nah.
As expected, my Alaska Airlines flight was packed with Seahawks fans. I learned that people wearing Russell Wilson jerseys are apparently more important than me when it comes to boarding a plane. Before landing, flight attendants handed out rubber wrist bands to celebrate Wilson, their “Chief Football Officer” — surely you’ve seen the commercials a few (hundred) times. The bands had different slogans, including “the separation is in the preparation,” leading me to dub them clichecelets. And no, I’m not proud of that joke. OK, I sort of am.
After arriving in Phoenix midday, checking into the hotel and getting my credential, it was off to the Seahawks’ team hotel for Pete Carroll and player availability. It was mercifully free, or almost free, of deflated-football questions (have I mentioned yet that I’m really glad to not be covering the Patriots this week?)
Of course getting from the media center involved a bus ride. And as I learned last year, bus rides at the Super Bowl mean ridiculously excessive police escorts — we had at least 12 police motorcycles leading our convoy. And by the way, it’s still funny the second time around to see people look at our bus and wave, assuming it must be a team or something to demand such a large police presence. They’d be so disappointed if they knew who was really inside.
Tuesday is media day, which should be, well, a disaster, but hopefully a fun disaster. Media day is the least productive day for those of us who are here to actually write about football. OK, gotta wrap this up; it’s time to find a very late dinner. Hopefully if I’m out too late I can find 20 cops to walk me home.
Staff writer John Boyle will be writing a postcard from Arizona each day leading up to Super Bowl XLIX.
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