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The View From the Couch - We've got it covered

The big question following the frenzy that is Super Bowl media day is always: What did the 3000 credentialed reporters reveal about the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks that we didn’t already know?

You would think with that kind of a suber uber in-depth it would have to be a lot.

For the past six months, the NFL has been covered on a daily basis for us news-hungry football fans. But in their dubious wisdom, the NFL maintains this very strange policy of giving the team’s a week off to get ready to play one another in the Super Bowl

Not only does this almost ensure a boring football game; give NFL coaches two weeks to prepare and they’ll be able minimize most advantages the other team has over them. It also gives the football media machine time off to do nothing, except think up questions to ask players at the game’s media day.

Two teams, 110 guys or so plus a couple of handful of coaches all assaulted at one place, at one time, by 30 times as many ink stained wretches and talking heads all looking for the “big story.”

Unfortunately with these two teams, who are about as bland as football teams could possible get, there really wasn’t any “Big Story.” Well, besides the fact they were both about to play in the biggest sporting event of the year. But that story line didn’t distract the media from trying to find a bigger one.

Charlie Batch was in heavy demand because he used to be the QB for the usual Ford Field home team, the Detroit Lions, but they dumped him – and now he’s the backup with the Steelers. When asked why one team is a winner and the other a perennial loser he said, "There's a world of difference, because one organization is used to winning."

Gripping.

What was one of the hottest interviews to get on Tuesday? Seattle’s J.P. Darche. Not only is he the long snapper, he’s also a Canadian! How freaky is that?

However the main story they’ve latched on to is Jerome Bettis, who is returning to his home town for his final football game. I’m pretty sure you’ve come across a mention of this a time or two, as in a time or two a second!

Bettis is from Motown. WE GET IT ALRIGHT!

This event has become a self-parody with the reporting being as much on the actual players, as covering the obscenity of the coverage itself.

Just how obscene? Any place that has Tom Arnold, Moe Rocca and Gilbert Gottfried all in the same place should get a special designation on the Department of Homeland Security’s Threat Advisory chart - “Extreme Danger: Potential Brain Implosion Zone.”

Online the coverage is just as ubiquitous with websites, who are already waist deep in XL minutia themselves, almost invariably asking the same pithy poll “Is there too much hype around the Super Bowl?”

What’s most shocking about that is, there’s always more than one option to vote on.

Then there is the tube, the machine that drives all of this Super Duper Frenzy. Tuesday night I was flipping around the channels and came across a Detroit station broadcasting its Super Bowl Pre-game show. They went to air on a Tuesday? What could they possibly be talking about for six-days?

Then there is the Game day pre-game show itself. Between ABC and ESPN, their coverage gets underway way before most of us will even be up and at ‘em. Dare to take all that in perched on your couch; afterwards your butt would feel like it played a large part in Brokeback Mountain.

This Super Bowl XL is well named as it is the ultimate in access. Hopefully the result will be a great football game… but that’s never a sure bet.

However I am betting on the Seahawks – to win outright – 24 - 17

Cheers - Gavin McDougald – AKA Couch

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