Bears coach Lovie Smith hasn’t seen anything until the requisite little kid from Nickelodeon challenges him to a staring contest.
Rex Grossman has never felt scrutiny until some boob from “The Best Damn Sports Show Period” looks him in the eye and asks if he thinks he is the worst quarterback ever to start a Super Bowl.
Brian Urlacher thinks no one gives the Bears any respect? When media day begins at 10 a.m. Tuesday and the giant scoreboard clock at Dolphin Stadium ticks down from 60 minutes–yes, the big six-oh, none of this hiding out in the training room and making a two-minute appearance in the locker room–Urlacher is going to want to give the Chicago media a big hug.
The Bears never have experienced what they are about to be immersed in during Super Bowl week. Grossman said the other day he understood he would have to do interviews, but it would all go away after Wednesday. Think again, Rex.
You have one-hour sessions Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. You are going to be one of the six players trotted out Monday too. And this is not counting whatever extra stuff ESPN has planned and anything CBS has paid billions of dollars to guarantee.
Guys you’ve never seen before and will never see again are not going to be the least bit shy about asking you every uncomfortable question you have been asked all season, and then repeating it for good measure. In a language you don’t speak.
On media day the week before Super Bowl XXXII between the Broncos and Packers in 1998, the Broncos’ offensive line and its coach, Alex Gibbs, were forced to break a season-long media “code of silence.”
Together, they amassed self-imposed fines of more than $20,000, only to break down in San Diego during Super Bowl week in the face of an NFL-threatened fine of $10,000 per player per day. All of that so they could answer the all-important question of the day: “Ginger or Mary Ann?”
“I can’t afford no $10,000 a day,” Broncos tackle Tony Jones said. “My wife would kill me if I wasn’t here today.”
At least they had a sense of humor about it, which is all any fan can hope of the Bears this week. A prickly team is generally a tight team.
If the Bears are smart, they lap up that underdog thing–we’re not exactly talking the ’69 Jets here–because, annoying as it is, it’s sort of the anti-jinx. The Broncos beat the Packers in ’98. The Patriots were so disregarded in ’02 before beating the Rams that they couldn’t even argue.
“I know the drill,” linebacker Tedy Bruschi said. “I was here last time, when everybody said we had no chance to beat the Packers (and indeed, New England lost 35-21 in ’97). Now they’re saying we have no chance to beat the Rams. So what am I supposed to say? Am I going to say Marshall Faulk [stinks]?”
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This is Super Bowl week. It’s supposed to be silly. Only here can Warren Sapp actually say, “I’m almost in awe just sitting here.”
It was that same 2003 Super Bowl in San Diego that one of Sapp’s teammates, tight end Casey Crawford, revealed, “I got asked if a duck with one leg swims in a circle and if vegetarians can eat animal crackers.”
Of course, Smith went through Super Bowl week as the defensive coordinator of the Rams in ’02. But he probably wasn’t posed the question, “If you had the chance to tackle Celine Dion or Clay Aiken, whom would you choose?”
Only a head coach has to face that kind of pressure.
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