The general feeling here seems to be that this could be a great Super Bowl. In fact, I cannot remember a Super Bowl game where people — media people, fans, everyone — seemed so HOPEFUL before a game.

This, of course, is just my feeling — but as I remember it, nobody seemed too jazzed before last year’s Steelers-Cardinals game, though it turned out to be a great game. Most seemed to believe the Patriots would annihilate the Giants the year before, and that the Colts were quite a lot better than the Bears the year before that. I think you have to go back to the Broncos-Packers game in 1998 to find a game that people honestly seemed to think, coming in, had a chance to be a classic. And people seem even more excited about this game.

I suppose this is because the feeling coming in is that neither team will be able to stop the other. The mind imagines something like that classic Dolphins-Chargers playoff game, the one where neither team had any chance of stopping the other, the one where San Diego tight end Kellen Winslow died four times during the game and still came back to make winning plays at the end.

Of course, it might not work out that way. The Saints might just be happy to be here. The Colts might suffer with a wounded Dwight Freeney. Turnovers could turn the game into an early rout. Who knows? But as Super Bowl XLIV begins, there are big hopes for something that everyone will remember.

In the meantime … what the heck am I doing? Right. I’m sitting here thinking about stupid things. And so , we offer the first installment of …

Stupid Stuff — I Think About — Before Super Bowl — XLIV

How long do you think the Yellow Brick Road was on the ballot before the people Of Oz and Munchkin Land actually voted for it? And, even more to the point, WHY did they vote for it? How in the world did THAT bond get passed? One, that road had to be ridiculously expensive to build. Yellow brick all the way from Oz to Munchkin Land? That’s really wasteful.

Second, was there even a need for this road? I would have to assume to that the Ox Anti-Tax groups opposed it. And those groups were right. Think about it: does Dorothy pass a single person the entire way to Oz? Even one? No. Not one person on a bicycle. From what I can tell, not one person commutes from Munchkin Land to Oz. Dorothy is passing scarecrows and rusted tin men and talking lions. But not another soul. There is absolutely no need for that road. And it certainly did not have to be made of yellow brick.

Third, what about loss of life in the road’s construction? The human cost. The feeling seems to be that about that about 20,000 people died building the Transcontinental Railroad. And that wasn’t opposed by two fairly violent witches, crazed monkeys and guards under a wicked spell. Plus the railroad had to wind through woods with lions, tigers, bears (oh my) and very angry trees who throw apples about as hard as Brian Bannister.

All in all, I think the Yellow Brick Road is the most wasteful and pointless public works projects ever.

Unless you consider the last 10 minutes I spent writing a public works project.

Super Bowl quote sheets are one of the many things that stunned me when I started to cover the Super Bowl. If you cannot talk to the players (or get to the all the players you needed), the league will go and talk to the players for you. They would get you quotes. Free. Incredible. Now, true, these were not always the most compelling and enlightening quotes …

Sample quote from Indianapolis tight end Dallas Clark quote sheet:

(On how the Colts adjust during the game)
“There’s a lot of adjusting and making moves on the go.”

… but, seriously, how could you beat this? They would get quotes for you … from virtually every player on both teams. Plus coaches. Plus celebrities. One of the things I would do at every Super Bowl I ever attended was collect all the quote sheets — I do go back to that era when we would read things on this substance called “paper” — and read through them to see if I could learn anything about the game. I did not learn anything* but it was fun.

*It was also dangerous. The thing about reading all the quotes is that, at some point, you start to buy into the cliches and the hype and you can begin to lose touch with reality. I remember the San Francisco-San Diego Super Bowl here in Miami in 1995. Coming in, everybody KNEW the 49ers were going to wax the Chargers. That game had no chance to be close. I knew this on Monday. But during the week, I talked to a lot of players and I read all the quote sheets and by Thursday, I started to think that, hey, maybe the Chargers had a chance. By Saturday, I had so much knowledge and perspective that the game seemed to be a toss-up.

Then, on the first play on Super Bowl Sunday … San Francisco’s Steve Young threw a bomb to Jerry Rice, who was open by about 45 yards. And I thought: “Hmm, I guess I was right the first time.”

They still have the actual Super Bowl quote sheets — they cover about 10 picnic size tables — but now the league magically transmits them right into my phone and … hold on, my phone’s buzzing. Hey, it’s a Super Bowl quote sheet from New Orleans coach Sean Payton. Let’s see what it says.

(Opening Statement)
“It’s been a good week of practice. We have two more; one today and a walk through tomorrow at the stadium.”

Riveting. OK, so now I’m going to attempt the ultimate Super Bowl magic trick … I’m going to write a Super Bowl XLIV story with XLIV quotes in it. Please, don’t try this at home.

* * *

Well, we know the cliches. We know, as New Orleans receiver Courtney Roby says, “Special teams will be very, very important.” We know, as New Orleans backup quarterback Mark Brunell says, the teams have to “go out there and execute.”*

*Or in the words of Indianapolis defensive back Antoine Bethea “Go out there and make plays”.**

**Or in the words of New Orleans linebacker Scott Shanle “I think you make your own luck”.

We know that turnovers will play a major role in the game because both offenses are so good. “The name of the game in football, especially for defense, is creating turnovers,” Saints cornerback Jabari Greer says. It’s an interesting twist adding that “especially for defense” in there.

Colts defensive back Kelvin Hayden is even more direct. “We want to force turnovers,” he says.

But these things are basically true of every Super Bowl — of ever football game, really. Special teams. Turnovers. Make your own luck. Whatever. The question is: What makes THIS Super Bowl special? What defines this matchup between a Saints team that on its first 13 games this season and a Colts team that won its first 14 games? What makes Super Bowl XLIV different from the XLIII games that came before?

Well, you have to start with Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. It’s a funny thing: When the season ended, people were discussing who should be MVP. Seriously? What would the Indianapolis Colts’ record be this year if they had even an average NFL quarterback? Before you answer, remember: The Colts finished dead last in the NFL in rushing offense. They had one proven wide receiver — Reggie Wayne — and a couple of young guys with unlikely football names: Pierre Garcon and Austin Collie. Their defense finished 18th in yards allowed and 18th in forcing turnovers and 17th in sacks.

And that team won its first 14 games and is in the Super Bowl. Peyton Manning isn’t just the league’s MVP this year, he might be the league’s ALL-TIME MVP.

“Unlike everybody I’ve been around,” Colts quarterback coach Frank Reich says. “He knows everything that’s going on, on the field. Everything.”

I believe Manning will go down as the greatest quarterback in NFL history. He might already be there. And while, yes, it does something seem that Manning is overexposed — you can’t escape Peyton Manning — he is probably the best spokesman for any sport in America right now. What’s not to like? He’s classy, he’s funny, he’s an incredible player. A lot of that, of course, comes from his father. I really like this quote from Peyton on what it was like Archie Manning would come off the field after a game.

“My dad would always come out and get us on the field and take a little time to be with us,” Peyton says. “He always would sign his autographs for all fans after the games.  Most of these times after tough losses.  But I couldn’t tell at the time.  I didn’t really know if they won or lost at the time.  I was 3, 4, 5 years old.  He was always the same.  So that always had a positive influence on me.”

Manning, of course, is unlike any other quarterback. He knows. He maneuvers. He may be funny in commercials but not on the field (“He’s not really cracking jokes in the huddle,” Colts Offensive tackle Ray Diem says). Before every play, it seems, Manning points this way. He yells that way. He waves his arms. He shouts what sounds like nonsense.

“Everything Peyton does means something,” Collie says.

“Ninety-five percent of the time, it’s real,” running back Joseph Addai.

Yes, even Colts teammates disagree about how much of Payton’s motions are significant. There are many people — Saints included — who think A LOT of Peyton’s act is a bluff, empty audibles, football fog.

“You can try to play that chess game and go back and forth with Peyton,” Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma says. “I don’t know how long you want to do that.”

“I don’t know how you match wits with the guy,” Saints safety Roman Harper says. “The guy is all over the place.”

Well, one thing the Saints hope to do is hit Manning — early, late and often. When the undefeated Patriots faced the Giants in the Super Bowl two years ago, it was widely believed that no team could intimidate Tom Brady or slow down New England. But the Giants pressured Brady relentlessly, and under that kind of heat even the best offenses and most brilliant quarterbacks can wilt.

“We need to deliver some remember-me hits,” New Orleans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams said on a radio show … a bit of Super Bowl bulletin board material that inspired Saints coach Sean Payton to send him a shut-up breakfast of peanut butter and sand. But Williams is exactly right. The Saints have built a reputation as a defense that plays on the edge, maybe even over the edge, maybe even dirty …

“I wouldn’t say we’re dirty,” Saints defensive end Will Smith says. “I’d just say we’re a team that plays hard.”

Well maybe dirty is overstating it a bit, maybe there’s a better word …
“We don’t know if we want to call ourselves dirty,” Saints safety Darren Sharper says, “but … it is like taking a shower when you get up in the morning and are going to cut your grass. You are nice and fresh when you cut the grass. But at the end you have a little griminess to you. We want to call ourselves a little grimy.”

OK, fine, grimy. Whatever the word, the Saints best hope of slowing down Manning is, like Gregg Williams says, to knock down Manning.

“Look, everybody talks about disrupting Peyton’s rhythm, getting him hit, making him nervous, making him get happy feet, all of those things that you would say about every other quarterback,” Colts center Jeff Saturday says. “The good thing is that Gregg doesn’t play.”

Of course, there are so many other stories besides for Manning. There’s the city of New Orleans — lots of talk this week about how important the Saints have been to the city rebuilding itself after Hurricane Katrina. “All the time, they’re telling us we inspire them,” Saints center Jonathan Goodwin says. “And they inspire us.”

Yes, the Saints players have talked a lot about their chemistry. New Orleans guard Jahri Evans summed it up: “We hang out together – go to the mall together, chill out together, play video games together. We do it all.”

Hang? Check.
Chill out? Check.
Go to mall? Check.
Play video games? Check.
Yep, that’s just about everything.

The Saints also have a female owner, Rita Benson LeBlanc, who has been quotable this week. “I wasn’t very athletically inclined,” she says. “I was a manager, that kind of thing. So, I would be involved, but I have very interesting peripheral vision. I’m one of those people that will duck away from the ball.”

But the two big stars on the Saints side — for two very different reasons — are quarterback Drew Brees and running back Reggie Bush. Brees has been one of the tall-time overachievers. He was lightly recruited out of high school, told many times that he was too small to play in the NFL, and suffered a shoulder injury that many thought could end his career. Only here he is, a superstar quarterback leading the Saints to the Super Bowl. I think you can learn a lot about Brees by just reading a quote he gave when asked about the fleur-de-lis symbol on the Saints helmet. That’s one of the Super Bowl questions that usually gets a quick and dismissive answer. Brees offered a history lesson instead.

“The fleur-de-lis symbol dates back to the French monarchy,” he says. “So much of New Orleans’ culture comes from the time when we were under French rule. That’s just a big part of the culture. It’s a big part of what New Orleans is all about. So when you look at that symbol, it is the symbol of the city.”

That quarterback can lead my team anytime.

Reggie Bush, on the other hand, has been a chronic disappointment. He came out with, what Brees calls, the highest expectations of any player in the history of the NFL. And I think that may be right, or its certainly very close. Bush, mainly, has not met those expectations. He has had injuries. He does not seem to have the durability or makeup to be an every down back. Hey, he can be a gamebreaker. He’s fun to watch and an exciting player as a receiver, third-down back, kick returner. But as of right now he seems more in the Eric Metcalf mold than Barry Sanders mold.

“I kind of imagined that I’d have a couple Super Bowl rings by now and a couple Pro Bowls,” Bush admits. “It’s a tough league.”

On the Colts side, much of the talk has been about pass-rusher deluxe Dwight Freeney, who has a nasty ankle injury and may or may not play.

“You want him,” Colts defensive end Robert Mathis says. “If he is not in there it has to be next man up.”

“Freeney’s got some voodoo witch magic,” Colts linebacker Gary Brackett says.

“I think this is part of the game,” Freeney himself says. “You don’t really want to reveal everything.”

Yes, secrecy is another part of Super Bowl week. Or as Saints tight end Jeremy Shockey says, “Even if I had the answers for you, I would never tell you.” The coaches — particularly Sean Payton — would like to keep things quiet. With Payton, this could be because his particular genius seems to be his ability to line up and create match-up problems for the other team.

“Coach Payton does a good job of different formations and plays every week to create the match-ups that we are looking for,” Saints tight end David Thomas says.

“He knows how to scratch where it itches, so to speak,” says Colts defensive coordinator Larry Coyer — a quote so good I don’t even have to understand what it means to use it.

Yes, Payton seemed to turn around the Saints using his strategic skills and his remarkable memory for detail. “He was telling a story about when he first got into coaching,” Saints GM Mickey Loomis was saying. “He was talking about the breakfast that he had eight years ago, and he knew exactly what he had for breakfast. If he could remember exactly what he had for breakfast eight years before, then I knew he was detailed because I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. ”

Indianapolis coach Jim Caldwell is a bit tougher to explain. He was a longtime college assistant who coached at Wake Forest for eight years, posted a 26-63 record and got fired. That hardly seems to lead to Super Bowl glory. But Caldwell’s particular strength seems to be a certain steadiness … the players feel like they can count on him all the time. Listen to his quote when someone asked how he would feel if the Colts lost:

“Would it be okay if I didn’t answer that in that regard,” he asked back. “I’m a big believer in self-fulfilling prophesies. There is a Chinese proverb that says ‘be careful if your life is shaped by your thoughts.’ So, I stay away from that kind of ending. I haven’t seen that ending in my mind or am I contemplating or thinking about it at this point in time.”

There is something about being positive … something about never letting small problems slow you … something about a constant force of optimism that can make good teams and veteran teams respond. Tony Dungy had it. Jim Caldwell, apparently, has it too.

So, what else have players been talking about. Well, they have been talking about how important vision is for a football player.

“The biggest thing is your eyes,” Saints corner Tracy Porter said about being a shutdown corner.

“Vision is imperative,” Colts running back Donald Brown says. “Holes don’t stay open for long so you need to be able to see everything.”

OK. And, of course, many players have been talking about the hype of the Super Bowl, the significance of it, the honor of playing here.

“It’s the Super Bowl,” Saints defensive end Bobby McRay says. “There is really nothing that can overcome that.”

“I have been trying to soak it up without acting like a tourist,” New Orleans guard Carl Nicks says.

“Let me tell you something,” Colts receiver Reggie Wayne says. “I turned my phone on this morning, the first thing that popped up was 40 text messages. I immediately cut it back off.”

Then, there were these two quotes that seem to play well off each other. Someone asks Colts linebacker Clint Sessions about fame. He shrugs.

“People  really don’t know who you are when you play defense,” he says. “Unless you are Ray Lewis or Darrell Revis people don’t know who you are.”

OK, fine. But someone asks Colts defensive tackle Daniel Muir how he gets fired up.

“Looking up,” he says. “Looking up in the stands you see thousands of people and you’re just like, ‘Man, they’re all here watching me.’”

Of course … you know all those people in the stands are probably NOT watching Daniel Muir. But I prefer his line of thinking.

And finally, there are a few straggler quotes to help up get to the 44 we need to finish off this baby.

Here’s New Orleans receiver Marques Colston on his philosophy of playing receiver: “I like to see myself as a guy that can be open even when I’m not open.”

Here’s Indianapolis’ ancient Matt Stover — who is actually two years younger than I am — on what kind of pressure a kicker feels when trying to make a game-winning kick: “If you’ve ever had a 10 foot putt for 100 dollars with a close friend, multiply that by 1000 and that’s what it’s like.”

Someone asks New Orleans tackle Jermon Bushrod to grade his performance: “The only grades I need to know is a ‘W’ or an ‘L’.”

Many people ask Indianapolis receiver Pierre Garcon, who is of Haitian descent, how he feels playing here with the devastation in Haiti. This answer, I think, sums up his thoughts: “It means a lot. To make it to the Super Bowl is very tough, but too be here with everything that’s going on in Haiti, it means a lot for me and the Haitian people that are dealing with it. It is probably bringing a bit of happiness to them dealing with what they’re dealing with right now.”

Here’s Colts defensive end Raheem Brock on the Colts playing outdoors: “They have a good field here in Miami. It is nice to play outside. Hopefully it is not raining.”

And finally, a quote from Colts legendary offensive line coach Howard Mudd. He has been coaching offensive lines in the NFL since 1974, and he has seen everything, coached every kind of player, had every kind of success. If you can follow the scheme of this quote, I suspect you too could be an offensive line coach:

“You have to be willing to throw the ball in the dirt and go punt if you have to.  That is a characteristic, if you can’t get them all blocked, you have to be able to do that.  If you stand there and hold it that is when people have the most problems with that team is when they have unblocked guys.  Maybe the quarterback thought he was going to be blocked or they have them all blocked and they aren’t.  You can see play after play with other teams.  Not all other teams, but in situations they get caught without knowing who wasn’t blocked and they raise havoc.  In a different, but similar way, that sounds contradictory but it is not.”

Well said. Yes, well said.

So, here’s something you definitely did not need to know about me: I like to eat while I’m reading. I always struggle for something to say when people ask me to name a hobby. I don’t golf. I don’t ski. I don’t fish. I don’t hunt. I don’t watch hardly any television … it was flat frightening when I was telling a friend the other day all the shows I have never watched, not even a single episode:

– CSI. Any of them.
– Law and Order. Any of them.
– Mad Men.
– Entourage.
– Lost
– Survivor.
– Any other reality show except Top Chef, which I watched for one season.
– NCIS (is this different from CSI?)
– Bones, The Mentalist, House, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Desperate Housewives … I’m just going down the list of top-rated shows.

I do not say this with any sense of pride, any sense of “I would not waste time watching television.” Quite the opposite. I LOVE television. I’m a child of television. I have little doubt that if I started watching many of these shows, I would get hooked on them. But I don’t. It’s not a choice, exactly. It’s just … I work. I hang out with family. This seems to take up my days.

But, I was thinking today: I actually do have a hobby, a really weird hobby. I like to go out to lunch and read. That’s my deal. I was thinking about this today because I was going to lunch, and because of another plane screwup — I have probably left 25 books and various important electronic devices on planes through the years — I was without a book to read. And I was sort of frantic … I really wanted a book to read with lunch. I don’t have a car here in South Florida as I wait for the Super Bowl, so I just walked around the area, walked and walked, looking for a bookstore or something resembling a bookstore or a place that might sell books.

All I found was a Family Dollar. I went in there and, sure enough, there was a pile of books on the table in front. Unfortunately, most of these books had titles like “The Democrats’ (Not So) Secret Hope That America Gets Destroyed” and “Republicans Want You To Starve.”*

*There was a short time when I would get a kick out of angry political books. I came up with a little scoring system — a “Sincerity Scale” — a 10-to-1 scoring system based on how much I thought the person writing the book believed what he/she was writing.

In all my modern reading, I think the highest I ever scored a book was a 6. There were more than a few “authors” who scored 1s in my scoring system. But, hey, I suppose that’s natural. Hey, you can play too — what do you think about Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, etc? Forget whether you like them or not, agree with them or not, where do they rank on your sincerity scale?

So, I was stuck for a book … and then I saw “Between You and Me” by Mike Wallace. Now, I’ve always liked Mike Wallace. I liked the way Christopher Plummer played him in “The Insider” — though I guess Wallace really didn’t like the movie. I liked the way his subjects were always scared of him. I liked how much he seemed to ENJOY making people uncomfortable and asking tough questions. There’s an amazing exchange in the book that he had with Lyndon Johnson in 1971, and because it’s Mike Wallace I believe it. He told Johnson that he had been a fervent admirer of his going back to his time in the Senate. He especially appreciated how Johnson had done more to advance the cause of Civil Rights than any President since Lincoln.

“But then,” he said, “everything turned sour, Mr. President, and you know why?”
“Why?” LBJ demanded.
“Because you let that war get out of hand. Vietnam (bleeped) you, Mr. President. And so, I’m afraid, you (bleeped) the country. And you’ve got to talk about that.”

You may agree with Wallace, you may disagree, you may angrily disagree, but the point is that Wallace as a journalist would not back down. He demanded confrontation. He believed that the only way to truth was confrontation. And, frankly, he got joy out of confrontation. It’s an uncommon skill.

So, as you can tell, I picked up the book* and read over lunch. My hobby.

*The book cost me a dollar. Exactly a dollar. I don’t think that I’ve ever actually gone into a Family Dollar store before — there was never one close by — so now I wonder if everything in there was a dollar, like at “The Dollar Tree.” I brought the book up, the cashier told me it was $1.06. I gave her two dollars, and she gave one back and said, “Oh, never mind, my register is 6 cents over so just keep that.” Exactly a dollar! At Family Dollar!

OK, it only took me 905 words to explain why I was reading Mike Wallace’s book over lunch. And we get to the point: I’m reading about how Wallace and John Kennedy went to the same school in Brookline, Mass., at the same time. The Edward Devotion School. Wallace says people assume that’s a Catholic school but, well, I’ll let him pick up …

“(This) reveals how little they know about Brookline’s glorious history. Edward Devotion was an early hero of the American Revolution. One the night Paul Revere made his legendary ride through Boston and neighboring towns, his friend and fellow patriot, Devotion, mounted his horse and went on a similar gallop to sound the alarm that the British were coming. The course he followed took him through Brookline. I suppose the main reason why Devotion’s ride of warning has been so overshadowed is because many years later, when Longfellow sat down to write his famous ballad, Revere happened to be the horseman he chose to immortalize.”

OK, two things.

One, I love stuff like this. Love it. I love to hear the stories about the underrated people of history. And this is where the sports twist comes in: I feel certain that this is a big reason why I’m so into Halls of Fame. The Halls help define the reality of sports. It’s like this: I believe Dwight Evans was a better player than Jim Rice. I believe Tim Raines was a better player than Andre Dawson. I believe Dan Quisenberry was a better pitcher than Bruce Sutter. I believe Otis Taylor was a better receiver than Charlie Joiner. I believe Terrell Davis was a better running back than, well, better than a dozen Hall of Fame running backs at least.

But that’s just my opinion. And my opinion is just my opinion. These Halls of Fame DEFINE opinion. They CRYSTALIZE opinion. They make a record of opion. Rice is in, Evans out. Dawson is in, Raines has yet to capture the minds and hearts of the voters. Sutter is in, Quiz is out. Joiner is in, Otis is out. Getting into the Hall of Fame is a little bit like Longfellow writing about you: “Listen my children and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” You have a chance to stay famous for a long time.

Now, I should say, it isn’t like everyone in the Baseball and Football and Basketball Halls of Fame becomes famous or immortal. Not even close. The other night over dinner, someone was talking about how I should write a post taking five people out of the Baseball Hall of Fame. I said, hell, I could take FIFTY people out of the Hall of Fame, and 98.74 percent of baseball fans would not even notice. There are a lot of people in there you’ve never heard of.

No, it’s more like this: Halls of Fame create this record. People who are baseball fans may know that Lou Whitaker and Ryne Sandberg were awfully similar as baseball players. But Sandberg is in. So he will appear in the news more often. People who go to the museum will see his plaque. Cubs fans will have tribute days to him. As time goes on, and time goes on, and time goes on, the likelihood of Ryne Sandberg being remembered as an all-time great is pretty good. Meanwhile, Whitaker is not in. And the likelihood of Whitaker being remember as an all-time great … not as good. Sandberg is Revere. Whitaker is Devotion.

So, it was reading Mike Wallace’s book that I got for a dollar that got my thinking one of the reasons I like taking up Hall of Fame causes and pushing against players I think are overrated and think so much about this stuff. It’s about trying to get history right.

And that, unfortunately, leads me to the second point …

… apparently the whole Mike Wallace Edward Devotion story is, as my father used to say, “a bunch of baloney.” It appears to be completely untrue. The school was built on land donated by Edward Devotion, a prime citizen of Brookline who died 30 years before the Revolutionary War and the ride of Paul Revere. The school was NAMED for his grandfather, the elder Edward Devotion, who settled in Brookline (or as it was known then, “Muddy River”) in 1645 and was, according to the Brookline Historical Society, a collector of taxes and preserver of the peace.

In fact, I could not find any reference other than Wallace’s to an Edward Devotion who made a midnight ride on the same night as Paul Revere. And I wanted to find another reference … I loved this story which is why I looked into it in the first place. But the Devotion as Midnight Rider tale is not even mentioned in relation to Edward Devotion House OR the Edward Devotion School — you would think they would mention it if it was even slightly true.

How does this happen? The only thing I can figure is this: William Dawes — who DID ride the same night as Revere and has mostly been forgotten by history — rode through Brookline and perhaps went by the Edward Devotion House. Maybe Mike got confused by this. Or maybe it is true and I just can’t find any record of it anywhere. Or maybe an Edward Devotion teacher taught him this story back in the fourth grade, and he never forgot it. I like to think of it this way. I remember being taught at that age that if you step over someone lying down you will stunt their growth and I still believe it.

As another aside to the aside to this whole post, which is really an aside, I will say that in searching vainly for the Edward Devotion of Mike Wallace’s memory, I did come across the story of Israel Bissell. On April 19, 1775, Bissell apparently rode 345 miles — from Watertown, Mass to Philadelphia — shouting “To arms! To arms! The war has begun!” This is much, much, much more impressive than Revere’s ride or Dawes’ ride and probably much more significant too. But, as others have pointed out, not much rhymes with Bissell. And there’s really only so much you can do with whistle, thistle, dismissal and bristle. And so he too has found himself lost in history’s Hall of Very Good.

So what’s the point of any of this? There is no point. Why does everything need a point?

But since you made it down this far, here are the Pro Football Hall of Fame finalists I would vote for if I had a vote:

– Jerry Rice. Of course.

– Emmitt Smith. Of course.

– Cris Carter. Damn good receiver.

– Richard Dent. There’s only one Hall of Famer on that 1985 Bears defense? (Reader update: There are actually two already in — Mike Singletary and Dan Hampton).

– Dermontti Dawson. Six time first-team All-Pro and there are not enough offensive linemen in the Hall of Fame.

– Shannon Sharpe. Great receiving tight-end. And — not that this is important — but he gave me numerous great columns through the years.

– Tim Brown. You know what: I never appreciated how good Brown was. He had 1,000 yards receiving for nine consecutive seasons. I understand football statistics — especially receiving statistics — are not always telling. But there’s only one other guy in NFL history who had 1,000-yards receiving nine straight seasons. Jerry Rice.

– Paul Tagliabue. I don’t know if commissioners or owners SHOULD go into the Hall of Fame. But they do and Tagliabue is almost certainly one of the 10 most important people in NFL history.

How many am I allowed to vote for? Probably not even the eight I already have voted for. Here are the others on the ballot, many of them deserving as well in my opinion:

– Don Coryell
– Roger Craig
– Russ Grimm
– Charles Haley
– Rickey Jackson
– Cortez Kennedy
– Dick LeBeau
– Floyd Little
– John Randle
– Andre Reed

I’m definitely in favor of a BIG Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Well, one thing that it means is that I’ve seen all this before. Many times. And after a while, it all just begins to feel … normal. The hype. The absurdity. The ridiculous questions. The cliche answers. Normal. At my first Super Bowl, one of the big questions to players was this: “How are you dealing with the Super Bowl hype?” As time went on, the question turned on itself: “How are you dealing with all the questions about the Super Bowl hype?” And now, the question has added another layer: “How will you dealing with the hype of media day where people will ask you about how you are dealing with the hype of the Super Bowl?”

It’s only a matter of time before people ask how players are the dealing with the questions about the questions about the questions about the questions.

That’s OK to me, though. It seems to me that when you name a game “Super Bowl” and place Roman Numerals after it and bring back The Who from the crypt to play halftime, you are pretty much letting everyone know in advance that you consider this a pretty big game. Hype is part of the Super Bowl just like sensory overload is part of a trip to Las Vegas and the “It’s a Small World” song is part of the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World. If you’re going to write about the Super Bowl, you better embrace the hype.

What’s not OK to me, though, is that after being a few of these Super Bowls, it’s easy to lose the thrill of it all. You can’t help it. Media day loses its weirdness. The back and forth banter loses its charm. The hype loses its hype. I remember the first time I went to a Super Bowl banquet hall press conference. You probably know that every Wednesday and Thursday of Super Bowl week, they will rent out these giant banquet halls and they will get every player from each team and put them at a table somewhere in the hall. And then — seriously — they will give reporters treasure maps* so that will know where to find the players we want. It’s like journalism and an Easter Egg hunt all at once.*

*I have always thought they should make these maps really complicated so that we have to solve Da Vinci Code type puzzles in order to figure out where, say, Jeff Saturday is sitting. So far, they haven’t done it that way, but I hope.

Anyway, the first time I went into one of these banquet halls, I thought it was just about the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Here were all the players and all the coaches, each one with his own story, his own journey, his own feelings about playing in the biggest game in American sports. I was just blown away.

And, to be honest, I don’t get the same feelings walking into that banquet hall now. This is probably because I have been in the Super Bowl banquet hall so many times I understand that, yes, they all HAVE their own stories and journeys and feelings. But they mostly SAY the same things, which includes how:

1. It’s a dream come true.
2. They have to treat this like any other game.
3. They have a lot of friends who want tickets.
4. They will take it one play at a time.
5. They will find time to enjoy the moment.
6. They have the ultimate respect for their opponent.
7. They think they will win.

Virtually everything that is said in the banquet hall will fall under one of those seven categories. And so, yes, it’s so easy to get used to the banquet hall press conferences, to grow deaf to the same quotes, to get exhausted by Super Bowl week. But, I think that’s dangerously close to becoming jaded. And that’s not good.

So, this year, I am taking the quotes very seriously. I am writing down every single thing I hear, whether I think it’s interesting or not. I am reading every single quote sheet.* I am going to try to see this game with the same wonder I felt when I went to my first Super Bowl.

*There have been 103 … and counting.

And so this is the plan: Tomorrow, I will write a Super Bowl XLIV column with XLIV quotes in it. And today, in honor of The Nails’ classic song “88 Lines about 44 Women,” I am offering LXXXVIII lines about XLIV Super Bowl.

If nothing else, this should give all the people too busy to follow the Super Bowl something to talk about at the office on Friday.

1. Colts quarterback Peyton Manning always looks like he’s changing plays at the line.
2. Many people think he’s bluffing.
3. The Colts teammates insist he’s not bluffing.
4. But those Colts teammates could be bluffing.

5. People in New Orleans have been inspired by the Saints.
6. The Saints insist that it’s the people of New Orleans who have inspired them.
7. It’s like a big inspiration circle.

8. Saints’ coach Sean Payton is a mastermind at creating matchup problems.
9. This leads to the inevitable comparison between coaching football and playing chess.
10. In chess, though, it doesn’t really help if you yell at your bishop.

11. Colts receiver Pierre Garcon is from Haitian descent.
12. This has led to many questions about the devastation and suffering in Haiti.
13. This is a very difficult line to walk. On the one hand, Garcon’s heart obviously aches for Haiti and he hopes his Super Bowl performance can bring just a little bit of light into the terrible darkness. On the other hand, he’s a football player playing a game; what can he say that will sound right when dealing with this sort of tragedy?
14. Still, the question keeps coming at him.

15. Colts coach Jim Caldwell seems like a very nice and very boring guy.

16. Colts tight end Dallas Clark went to Iowa as a walk-on linebacker.
17. As a junior, he won the John Mackey Award as America’s best college tight end.
18. He then left for the NFL.
19. Dallas Clark has to be the only player in college football history to start as a walk-on and then leave school early to join the NFL.

20. The Saints want to cause turnovers.
21. The Colts want to cause turnovers.
22. You get the feeling neither team feels too confident in their ability to actually STOP the other teams offense. They need fumbles and interceptions.

23. The Super Bowl media center is only a couple of miles away from where Chris Evert learned how to play tennis.

24. People have underestimated Drew Brees all his life.
25. People are still underestimating him and this Saints team.
26. Brees likes being underestimated.

27. Special teams will play an important part in the game.
28. The offensive lines will play an important part in the game.
29. Defensive intensity will play an important part in the game.
30. Luck will play an important part in the game.
31. But good teams make their own luck.

32. Colts defensive end Dwight Freeney might not play because of a bad ankle.
33. Colts defensive end Dwight Freeney might surprise people and play even with the bad ankle.
34. The next 3,497 questions heard at the Super Bowl will revolve around Nos. 32 and 33.

35. Florida quarterback Tim Tebow did an anti-abortion commercial that will appear during the Super Bowl.
36. Many think Tebow will be flop in the NFL because of his flaws as a quarterback.
37. Many think Tebow will be an NFL star because of his competitiveness and athletic ability.
38. After the Freeney questions, the next 1,734 questions will revolve around Tebow.

39. Brees says that nobody ever came into the NFL with the expectations of Saints running back Reggie Bush.
40. Bush has not yet rushed for 600 yards in an NFL season.
41. Bush admits it’s disappointing that he has not yet achieved stardom.
42. But after playoff run — three touchdowns in two games — he thinks he is on the brink.

43. The Who is playing at halftime.
44. Nobody seems to know if Pete Townshend will smash his guitar after the performance.
45. The guess seems to be that, yes, he will smash his guitar.
46. Townshend smashing his guitar at halftime of the Super Bowl will show you just how much of a cliche that tired bit of music rebellion has become.

47. The Colts cannot run the ball at all. They finished dead last in the NFL in rushing yards.
48. The Colts DO NOT run the ball. They were second-last in rushing attempts.
49. The Colts insist they will try to run the ball in the Super Bowl.

50. A few people suggest that the Saints defense “plays dirty.”
51. The Saints’ defenders insist that they do not play dirty at all.
52. The Saints prefer to call it “playing hard.”

53. The Super Bowl Media Center is about three miles from the Swimming Hall of Fame.
54. Does Michael Phelps have to wait five years after his last Olympics to be eligible?

55. Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams said that his players need to hit Peyton Manning early and often.
56. Of course, EVERY defensive coordinator says that before the team plays the Colts.
57. Manning was sacked 10 times all year. He was sacked 14 times last year.
58. The Saints are probably not going to hit Peyton Manning a whole lot.

59. Colts coach Jim Caldwell seems like a very nice and very boring guy.
60. Oh, wait, I already said that.

61. Matt Stover at age 41 will kick for the Colts.
62. Matt Stover has never led the league in scoring.
63. But Matt Stover, over his career, is fourth all-time in the league in scoring.

64. The Saints offensive line won the Madden Most Valuable Protectors Award as the best offensive line in football.
65. The award was accepted by Saints great Archie Manning which is striking on two counts.
66. One, Manning is of course the father of Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.
67. Two, Manning never got much offensive line protection in his Saints career.
68. Archie Manning was sacked 49 times in 13 Saints games in 1975.
69. Peyton Manning has been sacked 45 times the last three seasons. Combined.

70. This looks to be the last game for Colts legendary offensive line coach Howard Mudd.
71. Mudd was at the first Super Bowl as a fan.
72. Mudd has coached offensive lines for six NFL teams (seven if you count the Seahawks twice) going back 36 years.
73. He’s been around so long, his official Colts’ title is “Senior Offensive Line Coach.”

74. This is the first time since 1993 that No. 1 seed in both conferences will face each other in the Super Bowl.
75. People recite this stat mechanically. But doesn’t it mean something? Doesn’t it mean that being a No. 1 seed — being the best team in your conference — does not provide enough of an advantage come playoff time?

76. Saints receiver Marques Colston, at 6-foot-4, 225 pounds, is expected to cause match-up headaches for the Colts.
77. Colston went to Hofstra and, perhaps because of that, was a seventh-round draft pick. He was chosen 252nd overall.
78. Don’t you wonder: How do NFL teams who spend countless hours and millions of dollars scouting players — and all desperately need big receivers who cause matchup problems — miss players like Marques Colston?

79. The Saints players embrace that they’re the underdog.
80. The Saints players insist that they’re not the underdog.
81. The Colts players embrace that they’re the favorite.
82. The Cols players insist that they’re not the favorite.

83. Neither of these teams have played outdoors since the beginning of January.
84. Because of this, there has been way too much talk about the weather.
85. The weather right now looks like it will be 71 and sunny.

86. The highest-scoring Super Bowl was in 1994 when San Francisco beat San Diego 49-26.
87. The highest-scoring COMPETITIVE Super Bowl was 1978, when Pittsburgh beat Dallas 35-31.
88. There’s every reason to believe and hope this will be the highest scoring competitive game in Super Bowl history.

If you look very closely — I mean very closely — you can see the NFL Films camera quiver ever so slightly as it follows Kansas City Chiefs coach Hank Stram up and down the sidelines at Super Bowl IV. You will remember that Super Bowl film — that’s the one where Stram was miked and said that it looked “like a Chinese fire drill out there.” A high pass made Stram wonder if the ball had helium in it. And, mostly, the film showed Stram calling the 65-toss power trap, begging for the 65-toss power trap, celebrating his own genius for coming up with the 65-toss power trap. It’s fair to say that, because of NFL Films and Hank Stram, the 65-toss power trap is the most famously named play in pro football football history.*

*Though Red Right 88 — the pass play that led to Brian Sipe’s tragic interception and a Cleveland Browns playoff loss to Oakland, and a giant hole in my childhood — is right up there.

The point is that if you watch closely, you can see the camera shaking just a tiny bit. That is Steve Sabol laughing. There are a million beautiful things about NFL Films — its history, its writing, its voices, its music, the way Films changed the landscape of story telling in and out of sports. But if I could sum up the thing that had made NFL Films different and such a special part of my life as a sports fan, it would be, simply, the humanity of it. When Stram was riffing on the sideline, Steve Sabol — now president of NFL Films — was filming. He heard it all through his headset and could not keep himself from laughing. And that, too, is part of the record of Super Bowl IV.

“My Dad was so mad when he saw the film,” Steve Sabol says of his father Ed, who unwittingly started NFL Films when he bought the 1962 NFL Championship Game rights for $5,000. “But I told him: ‘Dad, wait until you hear what the guy’s saying. You won’t be able to stop laughing.’”

* * *

Here are five of my favorite NFL Films coach quotes:

1. Vince Lombardi at the chalkboard: “What we want is to get a seal here and seal here, and run the ball in the alley.”
2. Bill Cowher: “Yeah, I’d like to have 75 degrees and sunny all the time too, but that’s not football.”
3. Marty Schottenheimer: “This is a game of the heart. Focus and finish.”
4. Lou Saban: “You can get it done. You can get it done. What’s more, you gotta get it done.”
5. Jerry Glanville to official: “This isn’t college. You’re not at a homecoming. … This is the NFL, which stands for ‘Not For Long’ when you make them horse-bleep calls.”

* * *

Steve Sabol is an interesting case. Here is a guy doing something he has wanted to do all his life. And that is special. Only in Sabol’s case, it’s jaw dropping because the job he has wanted all his life did not actually EXIST when he was young. There was no NFL Films and no particular reason to have such a thing. It would be like someone today dreaming of, I don’t know, getting paid to sit in baseball dugouts and come up with snarky comments or making the NBA by just shooting half-court shots at the end of halves and games. Make pro football films? Who is going to pay you to do that?

Then, Steve Sabol came from a family of dreamers. His mother, Audrey, ran an art gallery in Philadelphia and had a remarkable feel for the direction art was heading — she championed (and was friends with) pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Wayne Thiebaud, Ed Ruscha and, frankly, a bunch of other people I had never heard of until Steve mentioned them. Steve’s father, Ed, sold overcoats, but he had been a spectacular athlete in college and he had performed on Broadway in his younger days. Steve’s sister, Blair, would write for The Village Voice and be a radical force on the fashion scene. She still writes.* The Sabols were people who felt certain that their bodies were too small to contain what they wanted to do while living on this earth.

*Steve Sabol: “My sister is the kind of person who, if she calls you, well, if you are in a certain business you don’t want her to call you. You better be careful. She’s a tough critic.”

Steve Sabol, perhaps, felt that even more than the rest. “I’m more talented than Jimmy Brown,” Sabol told Sports Illustrated in one of the more fascinating stories ever to appear in the magazine. The story is fascinating not so much because of what’s in it — it’s an interesting story — but because it was ever written at all. The story appeared in 1965 — before Sabol had even started working full time for NFL Films. He was just a moderately talented running back for a decidedly non-football power, Colorado College. As you might suspect, moderately talented running backs at small losing schools do not generally get 3,000-word features in Sports Illustrated. Sabol literally talked himself into national stardom. He took out advertisements in the program and local paper celebrating his own greatness. He invented an exciting past for himself.* He created this character — Sudden Death Sabol. He made himself into a piece of pop art.

*The story is called “The Fearless Tot From Possum Trot,” — Sabol had claimed to be from a place called Possum Trot, Miss. Of course, the place doesn’t exist. Possum Trot was not Sabol’s first choice as imaginary hometown — originally he claimed to be from Coaltown Township, Pa., another place that doesn’t exist. Sabol had grown up in Villanova, Pa., which does exist but was not romantic enough for Sabol’s football sensibilities.

Steve prepared to be an artist because, as mentioned, he did not have even the slightest suspicion that he would be able to make a career out of filming football games. Then Ed hired him to be a part of NFL Films. And together they created a whole new vision of the NFL. The editing, the cinematography, the sound, the music, the rhythms — a lot of people are responsible for the NFL Films style. But the vision comes from Steve. When it came to football, he heard John Facenda’s voice of God narrating in his head long before he knew John Facenda. In his mind, even as a kid playing sixth grade football, the games were epic struggles. The players were gladiators. The uniforms transformed mortals into gods. The autumn wind was a Raider. No, Steve Sabol never thought small.

To make the point: Before the Sabols and NFL Films, mud on the football field was just mud on the football field. NFL Films turned that mud into something holy, something that reflected guts and manhood and courage. Mud proved a Herculean test for the players’ souls. NFL Films showed cleats sloshing in mud, mud dripping off taped hands, mud caked on arms, the way mud made turned linebackers into heroic and dangerous figures. We take that for granted now because NFL Films has created this image of pro football, but there’s nothing intrinsically romantic about mud. This is best demonstrated by Eric Dickerson’s semi-famous and unfortunate “This is a cleat” sideline report during a Monday Night Football game.

But this was the lens Steve Sabol saw football through long before he carried around a camera. Mud! Snow! Heroes! Warriors! Villains! Sabol will tell you he spent his childhood mainly doing two things — playing football and going to movies. And he was never entirely sure where one began and the other ended. Truth is, he never thought one or the other ended. It was all the same thing. The plays did not matter. The scores did not matter. The only thing that mattered was the story.

* * *

Here are five of my favorite characters on NFL Films (in no particular order):

1. Lou Saban. NFL Films turned Lou Saban — a nomad who coached at 10 places in his life and who had a losing record in the NFL — into an every man legend. He’s the guy shouting, “They’re killing me, Whitey!” And, as mentioned, who can forget the gritty yet desperate look on his face when he told his men: “You can get it done. You can get it done. What’s more, you GOTTA get it done.”

2. Earl Campbell. One of the greatest player in NFL history anyway, but NFL Films took him into a whole other stratosphere. My vision of Campbell is of the NFL Films where he runs over Los Angeles’ Rams Isaiah Robertson. The thing that turns the amazing run into art is the voiceover NFL Films uses of Campbell. He essentially says, “I saw this guy standing straight up and I thought, ‘You don’t really think you’re going to tackle me standing straight up.” In later years, Campbell — one of the classier men you will meet — has refused to talk about that run because he was told that it really messed with Robertson’s head and he never quite recovered from it.

3. Marty Schottenheimer. One of the great sound bite coaches of all time — he’s the man behind the already mentioned, “Focus and Finish.” There’s “One play at a time for as long as it takes.” And, my personal favorite, “There’s a gleam, men. There’s a gleam. … Go get the gleam.” Whatever the hell that means.

4. Art Donovan. I was having a discussion with someone — who are the funniest athletes in the history of sports? That’s probably a whole other post. I think Bob Uecker would have a real shot at being No. 1. Bill Lee: Hilarious. Casey Stengel. Charles Barkley. I’ll come up with a list to discuss. But it’s possible that Artie Donovan is the funniest of them all. Then again, part of it is the delivery. Donovan can read a Denny’s menu and I’d be on the floor laughing. Especially when he said “Moon over my hammy.”

5. Ken Stabler. It has always shocked me that the Snake is not in the Hall of Fame. Then I look at his numbers — 194 touchdowns, 222 interceptions, only played in four Pro Bowl and made All-Pro once — and I think: “Meh.” The thing is, NFL Films made Stabler seem larger than life. The Holy Roller.* The sea of hands. The Ghost to the Post. Stabler was a throwback, a wild-off-the field quarterback who on the field was a rock of steadiness in the final two minutes. Read that last sentence in the voice of Facenda, by the way. I think Stabler belongs in the Hall of Fame … but I get that from NFL Films.

*Bill King’s famous call: “Stabler back … here comes the rush … he sidesteps. The ball is flipped forward. It’s loose. A wild scramble. Two seconds on the clock. Casper grabbling the ball. It is ruled a fumble. Casper has recovered in the end zone! The Oakland Raiders have scored … on the most zany, unbelievable, absolutely impossible dream of a play. Madden is on the field. He wants to know if it’s real. They said yes, get your big butt out of here. He does! There’s nothing real in the world anymore.”

My favorite part of that call — the “He does!”

* * *

Sabol talked a little bit about some of those things that have made NFL Films legendary.

The slow motion shot of the spiral. The most iconic shot at NFL Films is probably the one of the spiral pass hanging in the air for what seems like weeks. Sabol says that shot — like so many of the things that worked at NFL Films — came out of luck and happenstance. The Sabols were watching an AFL Championship Game film — that was the competition — and they weren’t especially impressed with it. But one shot caught there eye — some cameraman was able to follow a ball in mid-air. It wasn’t that great a shot because it was at regular speed, but Steve was awed. “I remember saying, ‘That’s an unbelievable shot.’”

The shot was taken by an old Navy guy with ridiculously steady hands named Ernie Ernst. So, Sabol hired Ernst and told him to get that shot again and again. And when they slowed it down, slowed it way down … magic.

“That’s what we call the Jesus Christ shot,” Sabol says. “Because it makes you go, ‘Jesus Christ, who shot that?’ It’s a signature shot for our films, and it’s something that’s very, very hard to do.”

Ernst incidentally — or perhaps not incidentally — is also the only cameraman who followed the ball all the way into Franco Harris’ arms during the Immaculate Reception.

John Facenda. You probably already know this but Facenda — the Voice of God whose deep voice defined NFL Films — knew almost nothing about football. And the owners wanted no part of him.

“The owners said to us, ‘Why don’t you use Jack Whitaker or Curt Gowdy or Chris Schenkel. These were the big sportscasters then. And my father said, ‘No, wait, we’re trying to show Pro Football in a whole new way. We’re trying to show Pro Football the way Hollywood would. We don’t want a sportscaster. This is the guy we want.”

Ed Sabol was a natural salesman. And even though the NFL owners were a famously conservative bunch, he convinced them to let NFL Films use Facenda.

Steve: “I remember when we were making ‘They Call It Pro Football,’ which was our Citizen Kane. The first line is ‘It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun.’ Well, we had John read it. And as soon as he read that line, that one line, I remember looking at Dad, and our eyes met. And we both just knew that this was something really great. John was a unique talent.

“But it is true that he didn’t know much about football. My Dad told the owners: ‘He doesn’t HAVE to know about football because Steve is writing it.’ But people never quite got that. I used to kid John: ‘I’m working so hard writing these lines and everybody thinks your just ad-libbing them.’”

The early years. When NFL Films first began, Steve Sabol would take the film — and he would usually take along a couple of NFL players like Frank Gifford or Del Shofner or Alex Webster — and they would go to a Kiwanis Club in Reading or an Optimists Club in Pottstown or a Rotary Club in Binghamton. And they would show the movie — usually on a bed sheet or a blank wall — and then answer a few questions. That’s what NFL Films was for a few years.

“I remember when we had our first premier,” Sabol says. This was 1962 before the operation was called NFL Films. It was “Blair Motion Pictures” — named after Blair Sabol — and Steve had come back from college to help out. They had filmed the championship game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants — and they had absolutely no idea how to promote this thing. That game was lousy, and it was on a cold miserable day — Ed Sabol would say that it was the second most miserable day of his life behind only the day he stormed the beach on D-Day. They called the film: “The Longest Day.”

“It wasn’t a great film,” Steve says. “We were still learning then.”

They decided to show the film at Toots Shor, the famous bar in New York where sportswriters were likely to be hanging out anyway.

“All of a sudden, halfway through, the image disappears. And there’s this sickening crash. I look up; someone had tripped on the cord and there was the projector and film laying in crab meat and shrimp sauce. You could not have thought of a worse disaster. Dad’s cursing, I’m trying to clean it up with a wet towel, we’re screwed.

“And then Pete Rozelle stands up. And Pete starts taking questions. There were some players there — Gifford, Pat Summerall — and they join in. They’re holding press conference while I’m desperately trying to get the film back up. Some of the writers left, but some of them stayed and they saw the rest of the movie. And the ones that stayed gave us pretty good reviews.”

On Ed Sabol and the first incarnation of NFL Films. “My Dad hated his job,” Steve says. “He sold overcoats, but he wanted to make movies. He had a failed career working with the Ritz Brothers — there were like the Marx Brothers only a tier below. I always a picture in my mind of him in a straw hat.

“But as a wedding present he got an old windup movie camera. And so everything I did as his only son, he would film. Pony rides. Haircuts. He filmed everything. He especially loved filming my football games. I was pretty good, and so he would film every games. He would film from the end zone. He would shoot slow motion. Nobody was doing that stuff in those days.

“And I remember we used to invite all the kids on the team over to watch the games. We would put out ginger cookies. And everybody would watch themselves play. My Dad would put in a John Philip Sousa march in the background go to with the film. It was really neat, and you can see the direct connection to NFL Films.

“In fact, when my father bid $5,000 for the 1962 Championship Game, that was a huge amount. It was double the bid the year before. Pete Rozelle was flabbergasted. Who was this guy who was willing to spend so much money on what seemed like relatively worthless rights to the NFL Championship Game? And, Rozelle got a little concerned. He asked my father what experience he had shooting football. And my Dad said — this is absolutely true — that his experience was filming his 14-year-old son.”

* * *

Five of my favorite Steve Sabol/John Facenda lines:

1. “Lombardi. A certain magic still lingers in the very name.”

2. “The autumn wind is a Raider
Pillaging just for fun
He’ll knock you round and upside down
And laugh when he’s conquered and won.”*

*This is from Steve Sabol’s poem “The Autumn Wind is a Raider.”

3. “Do you feel the force of the wind? The slash of the rain? Go face them and fight them. Be savage again!”

4. On defensive linemen: “It’s one ton of muscle with a one track mind.”

5. “The third quarter was dying. And so were the Colts.”

* * *

After all this time, it turns out that Steve Sabol is an artist after all. He is have an art gallery opening here in Miami Wednesday night. I’m no art critic, of course — can’t even claim I would know art if I saw it — but I like the Sabol stuff because it’s interesting and weird and nostalgic. It blends football and advertising and America … which I think was the magic of NFL Films too.

You know: I love the Ice Bowl film. That’s the film that featured the NFL Championship Game between Green Bay and Dallas when the field was frozen solid* and the temperature was minus-15. I love it because NFL Films turned such a disastrously cold day — a day, you could argue, clearly NOT meant for football — into legend. You could feel the cold rushing through the television set. You could feel the despair of the players trying to get any footing. You could feel the hopelessness everyone felt and yet they went on because winning and losing still mattered.

*You probably know this: Sabol insists Facenda never actually said the words “The Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field.” Not only that, but Facenda was not the narrator for the original Ice Bowl film.

To me two of the most arresting shots from The Ice Bowl film — beyond the great shots of Bob Hayes running routes with his hands stuffed in his pockets — had nothing to do with football. One was of the Green Bay cheerleaders, layered in clothes, frozen solid, trying still to go on. And the other was of a single fan pulling out a flask, drinking from it, and then looking at the camera as if to say: “Ain’t life funny?” There’s that humanity again. Sure NFL Films is propaganda — sweeping music, military references, some overwrought words. But I love it still. Because of the humanity.

One of my editors at Sports Illustrated called me up before I wrote the Sabol essay and said that something struck him. He had been watching a history channel documentary on the battle at Stalingrad. I guess he’s something of a student of Stalingrad. And as he watched it, it occurred to him: This is NFL Films! The icy ground is Lambeau. The voice is Facenda. The music is emotional. The narration is poetic.

And ever since then, I have thought about how often I see something on television or in movies or just in daily life that was inspired, at least a little bit, by NFL Films and Steve Sabol. I think it happens all the time.

“I think we looked at the game like a Cubist painter,” Sabol says. “We wanted every angle. We wanted different perspectives. I think we were studying the game the way Picasso studied a bowl of fruit.”

And Sabol stopped — he wondered if he was sounding immodest. Cubist painters? Picasso? Well, it’s how he felt. And Sabol knew that it would have sounded even better if John Facenda had said it.

*Or the New York Nationals or whatever they happen to be called that day.

One of my favorite newspaper columns was one I did on Generals coach Red Klotz a couple of years ago. It’s a story that has been done many times — and I have no illusions that I did it any better than it had been done before. But it’s like walking on the Great Wall or trying to catch a taxi in the New York rain, the point is not how well you do it. The point is to do it. The point is every sportswriter, at some point in his or her life, should write about Red Klotz.

“I don’t want anyone on my team that doesn’t play to win,” Klotz told me. He lived a winners’ life long before he started coaching the Generals. He was a 5-foot-7 guard with a deadly two-hand set shot; he played for the famous Philadelphia Sphas, perhaps the best professional basketball team in the world before the NBA began. The Sphas beat the Globetrotters a couple of times in those years before Sweet Georgia Brown and the games were entirely on the level. He played briefly in 1948 for the Baltimore Bullets of the old Basketball Association of America — the league that would become the NBA. And, as he said, he fought in World War II and helped “win the big one.”

Abe Saperstein asked him to create a team that would travel around with the Globetrotters. In the 58 years since, Klotz’s teams have beaten the Globetrotters twice. And they have lost more than 13,000 times. Even Rod Marinelli winces.

Of course, you want to know about the two victories. Everybody does. The first happened in St. Joseph, Michigan in 1962. The scoreboard operators at Globetrotters games are not, as you might have guessed, especially vigilant during games. And in this game, the score was actually quite close and the Generals hit a couple of shots at the end that the scoreboard people did not bother to register. Everybody left the arena assuming — and as assumptions go this seemed pretty valid — that the Globetrotters won. But Klotz showed the Globetrotters the scorebook afterward and, in his own words, “They admitted it.” I have not actually heard anyone from the Globetrotters admit it, however.

The second time is more real. It happened at the University of Tennessee-Martin in 1971. There were 3,600 people in the stands, and the game was going as these games always go. The Globetrotters had a 23-point lead in the second quarter, they were weaving and playing around and getting ready for the water bucket gag. But there are two things many people don’t know about Globetrotter games:

1. There are only so many gag periods during a Globetrotters-Generals game. During those gag periods, things are a bit scripted and the Generals play the dupe on defense. But the rest of the time, the two teams are really playing basketball.

2. The Generals are not hindered in any way on the offensive end the entire game. That is — if they can score every single time down the floor, they are welcome to do that. The fun stuff only happens on the Globetrotter side of the court.

So, the Generals kept playing. And they got hot. Really hot. Klotz at age 51, made a few long shots. They came all the way back. They took the lead. And suddenly, the Globetrotters realized that they were in danger of actually losing and started to play hard. The crowd realized it too. They started to boo mercilessly. “It was like killing Santa Claus,” Klotz said merrily more than three decades later. The Generals killed the clock, won the game 100-99, and ran off the court to the most beautiful sounding boos Red Klotz ever heard. It was a bit of a scandal, and the Globetrotters owner George Gillett met his team in Arkansas to scream at them. The Globetrotters destroyed the Generals that next night.

And … the Globetrotters have won easily pretty much every night since. Klotz listed off for me some of the places where his teams lost. They lost in 97 countries. They lost in Attica. They lost in a bullfighter’s ring. They lost on a floating basketball court in African waters. They lost in Lenin Square. They lost inside the DMZ during the Vietnam War. They lost at a leper colony in the Phillipines. They lost under different names — Klotz actually retired the name “Washington Generals” in 1995 because, well, you have to change your luck somehow.

Funny thing is, the Generals are back now, which leads to the whole point — the greatest quote ever. One of the perks of being a writer at Sports Illustrated is that I get flooded with press releases. Many of these offer experts I might use in my stories or they tell me about exotic sporting events that I probably cannot attend or they introduce me to remarkable or semi-remarkable athletes I may consider writing about. Today, I got a press release announcing that the Globetrotters will play the Washington Generals. At Central Park. On ice.

Yes, the Globetrotters on ice. Well, why not? As Globetrotters CEO Kurt Schneider says in the release, the Globetrotters have played on battleships and in empty swimming pools, so playing a basketball game on ice is really just the next thing. And if you are going to play on ice, you have to play in Central Park. I mean, that’s obvious. The game is scheduled for February 9, if you plan to be in the city on that day.

So, OK, it’s a publicity stunt for a team that has over its long history excelled at publicity stunts. But the point is not exactly the game. The point is the Red Klotz quote about the game … pulled from the press release.

“We excel on ice,” Generals owner Red Klotz said. “I’ve been asking for this game for years, and I’m glad the Globetrotters have finally given in.”

We excel on ice. I laugh happily every single time I read that quote. We excel on ice. I’m laughing again. Has there ever been a more joyful and more hopeful statement uttered? We excel on ice. You know, I have tried hard to write about the fun side of sports, the optimistic side of sports, the bright side of the street. But I don’t think I have ever captured it quite like four words from an 88-year-old man who has lost more than 13,000 games in his career — that’s almost 36 straight years of losing one game every day.

We excel on ice. I have no doubt that they do.

Stan Musial never got thrown out of a game. Never. Think about this for a moment. Musial played in 3,026 games in his career, or about as many as his contemporaries Joe DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky played combined. He played across different American eras — he played in the big leagues before bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, and he retired a few weeks before Kennedy was shot. He played when Jimmy Dorsey and Glenn Miller ruled the Top 40 charts, and he played when Elvis was thin, and he played when Chubby Checker twisted. He played before television, and after John Glenn orbited the earth. And he never once got thrown out of a baseball game.

There was this game, early in ‘54, that year the Edward Murrow went after Joe McCarthy and Roger Bannister ran a mile in four minutes, and Musial’s Cardinals trailed the Chicago Cubs 3-0 in the seventh inning. Cubs lefty pitcher Paul Minner was baffling the Cardinals — he had allowed just two singles, had faced one over the minimum. Then he found himself facing Musial with Wally Moon was on first base and two outs. Musial crushed a ball to deep right field, a double. Moon ran all the around the bases to score. Musial cruised into second. The whole complexion of the game had changed. And it was only then that everyone seemed to notice the first base umpire, Lee Ballanfant, was holding up his arms. He had called Musial’s double a foul ball.

Nobody quite knew how to react. The ball, at least in the Cardinals view, had clearly been fair. It was not even an especially close call. And while the crowd cheered wildly (the game was in Chicago) the guys on the Cardinals bench went crazy. They rushed on the field, shortstop Solly Hemus first, manager Eddie Stanky right behind him, and both were thrown out by home plate umpire Augie Donatelli. Funny thing, Augie would play a big role in Musial’s life. Donatelli would be one of the umpires there less than a month later when Musial hit five homers in a doubleheader. Much later, he was behind the plate for Musial’s 3,000th hit. Anyway, he was here now, taking away a Musial hit, throwing out Hemus and Stanky, threatening pinch hitter Peanuts Lowrey with ejection, clearing the saloon like an old cowboy, even though, he certainly knew, the ball had been fair.

Musial, who in the confusion had not been told anything, walked over to Donatelli. Then, according to the stories, he calmly asked, “What happened Augie? It didn’t count, huh?” Augie nodded sadly and said the umpire had called the ball foul.

“Well,” Musial said, “there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Stan Musial stepped back promptly doubled to precisely the same spot in right field. This time, Ballanfant called the ball fair. The Cardinals scored six runs in the inning and won the game.

The story has been told many times, in many ways, by many people, most famously by umpire Tom Gorman. He seemed to remember that this event had happened against Brooklyn, in ‘52, and he had been behind the plate. He obviously was confusing this story with another, but that’s really not hard to figure. Stan Musial had a lot of beautiful moments. There are a lot of stories. “Stan,” Tom Gorman said often, “is in a class by himself.”

* * *

Stan Musial grew up in Donora, Pa., during the Depression. They were a family of eight in a five-room house. In Donora, the smoke and fumes from the zinc factory mushroomed so thick and poisonous that no vegetation could grow on the hill. That barren, brown hillside was a constant reminder that the air was killing them. Stan’s father, a Polish immigrant, worked in that factory and, not too many years after Stan started playing ball, died from the fumes.

Not that a tough childhood explains everything. Still, there was something about Stan Musial that did not let him forget Donora, did not allow him to change — “I’m so lucky,” he used to say every day, more than once every day, so many times that people would roll their eyes. But that seems to be how he felt, ever day, lucky.

Harry Caray, who of course first gained his fame calling Cardinals games on KMOX, would tell the story of a beaten down Musial going hitless in a Sunday doubleheader. The heat was unbearable that day — hell could not be much hotter than a St. Louis summer day — and after the game Musial walked gingerly to his car. He looked beaten down. He looked beat up. Musial never seemed to think of baseball as a job, but a daytime doubleheader in St. Louis might be the closest thing.

“Watch this,” Caray said to a friend as they watched the scene, and sure enough when Musial got to the car, there were a hundred kids waiting for him an an autograph. Stan leaned against his hot car and signed every one.

Musial. People like to say that people have changed. I don’t see that exactly. The world has changed. Technology has changed. Movie and ticket prices have changed. Gas prices have changed,. Many of the rules have changed — the reserve clause is gone, Title IX is in place, they let people swear on cable TV, airplanes and restaurants won’t let you smoke and you can no longer hold your infant in your lap in the front seat of your car. But people? I don’t know. I get a little queasy when I hear old time ballplayers talk about how none of them would have used performance enhancing drugs, and a little queasier when I hear old-time politicians talk about how they always reached across the aisle. You will still hear a lot of people romanticizing America in the 1950s. Those people tend to look a lot alike.

Still, it’s probably fair to say that there was something unique about the time that produced Stan Musial. Maybe in those days people treasured what that thing they used to call class. Maybe they expected their singers to be dressed in tuxedoes, maybe they admired strong and silent types, maybe they liked football players who did not celebrate their own touchdowns or boxers who spoke quietly, maybe they wanted their children to believe in a world where baseball players drank milk and said “golly” and married their high school sweetheart. It seems to me that the quintessential hero today is Josh Hamilton, left-handed power, supremely gifted, fallen from grace, back from the depths, crushing home runs and driving in runners while covered in tattoos that represent a time he regrets. That’s a story for our time, a story about a lost soul redeemed, and it touches our 21st Century hearts.

Musial is from his time. He smoked under stairwells to be certain that no kid saw him doing it. Friends say he drank privately, and very little, Stan the Man could not allow anyone to see him at less than his best. He often said his biggest regret was that he did not go to college. And, yes, he married Lil, his high school sweetheart, on his 19th birthday, almost 70 years ago.

He wanted to be a role model. He seemed to need to feel like he was giving kids someone to respect. That, as much as anything, drove him. Teammates had a standing wager on how many times he would use the word “Wonderful” in any given day. They usually guessed low. He was terrified of making speeches (this, friends say, is why he started playing the harmonica in public) and yet he almost never turned down a speaking engagement. He played in great pain, but nobody ever caught him running half-speed. When he felt like his skills had diminished, he asked for and received a pay cut.

Joe Black used to tell a story — he was pitching against the Cardinals, and as usual the taunts were racial. “Don’t worry Stan,” someone in the Cardinals dugout shouted, “with that dark background on the mound you shouldn’t have any problem hitting the ball. Musial kicked at the dirt, spat, and faced Black like he had not heard anything. But after the game, Black was in the clubhouse, and suddenly he looked up and there was Stan Musial. “I’m sorry that happened,” Musial whispered. “But don’t you worry about it. You’re a great pitcher. You will win a lot of games.”

Chuck Connors, the Rifleman, used to tell a story — he was a struggling hitter for the Chicago Cubs in 1951. He asked teammates what he should do. They all told him the same thing: The only guy who can save you is Musial. So Connors went to Musial and asked for his help. Musial spent 30 minutes at the cage with an opposing player. “I was a bum of a hitter just not cut out for the majors,” Connors said. “But I will never forget Stan’s kindness. When he was finished watching me cut away at the ball, Stan slapped me on the back and told me to keep swinging.”

Ed Mickelson only got 37 at-bats in the Big Leagues, but he has a story too. Musial invited him to dinner — he was always doing that stuff — and there Mickelson explained that he felt so nervous playing ball, that he could hardly perform. Musial leaned over and said quietly, “Me too, kid. Me too. When you stop feeling nervous, it’s time to quit.”

Well, there are countless stories like that, stories about Musial’s common decency and the way he could make anyone around him feel like he was worth a million bucks.

“Musial treated me like I was the Pope,” Mickelson said, and he was still in awe more than 50 years later.

* * *

Those were the emotions Musial inspired in his time. He was so beloved in New York, that the Mets held a “Stan Musial Day.” In Chicago, he once finished first in a “favorite player” poll among Cubs fans, edging out Ernie Banks. Bill Clinton and Brooks Robinson, growing up about an hour apart in Arkansas, were inspired by him.

Of course, it was mostly the playing. Stan Musial banged out 3,630 hits even though he missed a year for the war. He hit .331 for his career, banged 1,377 extra base hits (only Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds have hit more), stretched out more than 900 doubles and triples (only Tris Speaker has more) and played in 24 All-Star Games. He had that quirky and unforgettable swing, that peek-a-boo stance, and he probably inspired more famous quotes by pitchers than any other hitter.

Preacher Roe (on how to pitch Musial): “I throw him four wide ones and try to pick him off first base.”

Carl Erskine (on how to pitch Musial): “I’ve had pretty good success with Stan by throwing him best pitch and
backing up third.”

Warren Spahn: “Once he timed your fastball, your infielders were in jeopardy.”

Don Newcombe: “I could have rolled the ball up there to Musial, and he would have pulled out a golf club and hit it out.”

And so on. Maybe pitchers felt in awe because there seemed no way to pitch him, no weaknesses in swing, fastballs up, curveballs away, forkballs in the dirt, he hit them all. In 1948, he had his most famous season, his season for the ages, .376 average, 46 doubles, 18 triples, 39 home runs, 135 runs, 131 RBIs. And yet, the thing about Musial, is that for more than 20 years he was pretty much always like that. Four other times he hit better than .350. Four other times he hit more than 46 doubles. He hit double digit triples eight times in all, he hit 30-plus homers five times, he walked more than twice as often as he struck out.

I suspect Musial can never be reflected in numbers because his resume is so all encompassing — it’s like Bob Costas said, he never hit in 56 straight games, and he did not hit 500 home runs (never hit 40 in a season), and he did not get 4,000 hits, and he did not hit .400 in any year. He was, instead, present, always, seventeen times in the Top 5 in batting average, sixteen times in the Top 5 in on-base percentage, thirteen times in the Top 5 in slugging percentage, nine times the league leader in runs created. To me, the best description of Musial through his stats is to say that 16 times in his career Musial hit 30 or more doubles. It might not make for a great movie. But all his baseball life Stan Musial hit baseballs into gaps and he ran hard out of the box.

* * *

Here’s the thing: A lot of baseball fans have forgotten Stan Musial. Anyway, it seems like that. His name is rarely mentioned when people talk about the greatest living players. He’s never had a best selling book written about him. A few years ago, when baseball was picking its All Century team, Stan Musial did not even received enough votes to be listed among the Top 10 outfielders. The Top 10.

True, he did not play in New York like the baseball icons, like Ruth and DiMaggio and Mantle and Koufax and Mays. True, he did not break the home run record like Aaron, he did not get banished from the game like Rose, he did not break barriers like Jackie, he did not swear colorfully like Ted, he did not hit three homers in a World Series game like Reggie, he did not glare like Gibson, he did not throw like Clemente and he did not say funny things like Yogi.

No, Musial just played hard and lived decently. He hit five home runs in a doubleheader, and had five hits on five swings in a game. He hit line drives right back at pitchers and then would go to the dugout after the game to make sure those pitchers were all right. He wasn’t perfect, of course, but he didn’t see the harm in letting people believe in something.

And maybe that sort of understated greatness isn’t meant to be shouted from the rooftops. Maybe Musial is just meant to be quietly appreciated. Every so often, even now, you can read an obituary somewhere in American’s heartland, and you will read about someone who “loved Stan Musial.” Everyone so often you will meet someone about 55 years old name Stan, and you will know why.

I have avoided writing about the museum for more than a year now for very personal reasons. It has been heartbreaking watching the museum I loved — the museum, I should point out for ethical purposes, to which I dedicated many hours and many thousands of dollars — shift away from what I thought was its essence and focus and purpose. Reasonable minds can disagree about how a museum can tell its story. Reasonable minds will disagree about how a museum can stay viable and sustainable in this economic reality.

But the museum’s shift left away from Buck O’Neil and away from many of the people who had made it a magical place in the first place left me with the unshakeable belief that the people in charge had lost their way. The museum had lost it compass. And the place was doomed. I hoped I was wrong. I still do hope I’m wrong. Maybe this story will inspire change. Maybe it will rally people around the museum in the hopes of saving it. I hope so. But more than hope, I feel heartbreak. Like I say, I will write more on this in a few days.

No, still not strong enough.

Let’s go with this: I would call myself a huge fan of Conan O’Brien and I saw The Tonight Show exactly one time when he hosted it, just once, and the only reason I watched THAT night is because I was actually at the show, doing a story on race car driver Jimmie Johnson, who was a guest. The show was filled with all sorts of references that I did not get because, as mentioned, I had never watched his Tonight Show before. Apparently he was feuding with Hillary Clinton or some New Jersey mayor or both or something. I never watched the show again, so I never saw how it turned out.

I say all this because, like most Americans, I found myself reflexively and firmly on Conan O’Brien’s side in The Tonight Show drama that has taken place the last month or so. I never really bothered to study and analyze the details of the drama — but here was and is the way fuzzy way I understood it:

1. Jay Leno, the old host of The Tonight Show, left (or was pushed out) and publicly bequeathed the show to Conan O’Brien, who had paid his late night hosting dues by hosting Late Night With Conan O’Brien for 17 years.

2. Leno — and I still don’t understand this part — was then given “The Jay Leno Show,” which best I could tell (I only watched this show once too) was just a continuation of The Tonight Show, with the same tired jokes and bits. The only difference was that The Jay Leno Show was on an hour and a half earlier. I know very little about television, but I remain amazed that anyone on planet earth thought this would work.

3. The Jay Leno Show and The Tonight Show both had disastrous ratings. Some people seemed to think that the ill-conceived Leno Show was responsible not only for its own bad ratings, but also for a downturn in NBC’s local news ratings across the country and, by extension, responsible also for much of The Tonight Show’s own ratings problems and also the worst American housing market in decades and the staggering economic struggles of newspapers.

4. NBC determined that he best way for them to fix this mess — or at least lessen the mess — was to reinstate Leno into his old Tonight Show time slot (though cutting his show to only a half hour) and then moving Conan and HIS Tonight Show back a half hour, to a new 12:05 starting time.

5. Conan felt that the time move would destroy the very fabric of The Tonight Show and wrote a letter saying he would quit before he would move.

6. Many, many, many people who, like me, liked Conan but did not watch The Tonight Show backed him and his principled stand and ripped Jay Leno for his willingness to big-foot his way into this apparently coveted 11:35 p.m. time slot.

7. Conan left, and he was given $45 million to share with his staff and hundreds of thousands of letters of support. Leno, meanwhile, was torn apart by many people and competitors and media critics, but he did get The Tonight Show back. He would then do an interview with Oprah in which Oprah scolded him for making a not especially funny extramarital joke about David Letterman, who had spent much of his show tearing apart Leno. Most of us sided with Letterman too because his jokes seemed funnier.

I think that about covers it. You know, I am endlessly fascinated by what creates public opinion. Why do some apologies seem to break through the American psyche while others are rejected into the cheap seats? Why do some people (politicians, celebrities, athletes) seem to be teflon and untouchable (like they used to say about Ronald Reagan) while others seem easy and fun to beat on, like pinatas? If I was smarter and had a better understanding of human psychology, I would write a book about this.

But I’m not smarter and I barely kept up in my 10th grade psychology class* so I can only write this blog post.

*One thing I remember is that in that class the teacher played the Blood, Sweat & Tears song “And When I Die,” and we were supposed to discuss it. I only bring this up because I’m pretty certain that I have not heard that song since that class … and I don’t remember hearing it BEFORE that class either. And I still remember just about every word.

Here then is my uneducated guess on the Conan-Leno thing. I think it all goes beyond logic, beyond story lines, beyond the silly showbiz of it all — let’s be brutally honest here, two rich guys, bad ratings, one gets $45 million, the other gets a show at 11:35 at night, what in the hell is the commotion about?

I think it’s that people relate better to Conan’s story. Here was somebody who always seemed to be the underdog. He was almost entirely unknown when he was given Late Night — and the first three years of the show were widely viewed to be calamitous. He was a writer more than performer, an edgy comic voice who had worked on The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live. He was the smart and funny guy we knew, the guy who always left us in stitches, the guy we had always told: “Man, you are in the wrong field, YOU should be hosting The Tonight Show.”

Leno, of course, had a very different story. The first time I saw Jay Leno, he was a stand-up comic — and one of the funniest people I had ever seen. I remember he did this bit on how Mr. Potato Head could only have happened in America (“Kimba eat potato”) and I was laughing so hard I could not breathe. From what I have been told, Leno in those days was viewed by many of his comedian peers as a genius, sort of a Charlie Parker of stand-up comedy. That’s significant, I think, because if you did not know that, you would NEVER know that watching Leno’s Tonight Show. There was nothing resembling genius there. It was all safe and pat and ba-dump-bump — like Charlie Parker playing “Girl from Ipanema” nightly at the local Holiday Inn. Maybe that’s what The Tonight Show has to be (after all, remember, the show was No. 1 when Leno hosted). Still, I — and many people I know — could not watch the show without thinking about Leno when he had actually made us laugh. There always seemed something sellout about it.

So, maybe that’s it. Maybe we just like Conan’s story more — the cliche story of the underdog striving and reaching the peak against odds. Maybe we just like Leno’s story less — the cliche story of a star who does not want to leave the stage. Maybe we believe that Leno’s nice guy image is fraudulent and, behind closed doors, he pulled a power-play coup and took the Tonight Show slot away from Conan (which doesn’t seem all that likely since Leno was forced off The Tonight Show in the first place). Maybe we are sick of Leno’s cotton candy Tonight Show and believe that Conan, given enough time, would have made The Tonight Show viable and great again. Maybe we just don’t like seeing someone get a raw deal — even if Conan gets $45 million bucks on the other side.

Or maybe, Leno is just an easier target for our wrath. Like I say — this is my instinct too. Free Conan! Down with Leno! But I don’t really know WHY I feel that way. It seems to me that, with only a small turn, I could just as easily have felt that Conan, with his lousy Tonight Show ratings, was being pretty whiny when bitching and moaning about having his show moved a stinking half hour. It seems to me that I just as easily could have understood that Leno was only getting re-offered the time slot he never wanted really wanted to give up in the first place and the job he did well enough to get the No. 1 rating.

But that’s not how I felt. I don’t know why. I just know that I instinctively jumped into Conan O’Brien’s camp. I laughed when Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel savaged Leno. I agreed when friends said that Conan was getting a raw deal. And I watched the last Conan O’Brien Tonight Show. Well, no, that’s not quite right. I didn’t actually watch the show live. And I didn’t see the whole show … I watched highlights on the Internet the next day. What I saw was funny. Like I say, I really like Conan O’Brien. I hope he gets another show. I don’t know if I will watch it. I hope so.