Padecky: Super Bowl excesses have no ceiling

The question, without question, has no rival in Super Bowl history. Its recipient stood slack-jawed, stunned. The people that had gathered in a crescent stared with blank faces, hoping a punch line to follow. It was Media Day, Super Bowl XXII, a few days before the Redskins and Broncos faced off.

“Doug, how long have you been a Black quarterback?”

To this day I do not know if it was a man or a woman who asked it. It was a question that transcended time and space and credulity. If Doug Williams, Washington’s quarterback, had answered: “For about six months now. I took this Black pill, it was FDA approved, and overnight I started having an urge to . . .”

To Williams’ credit, he mumbled something incoherent. A fine gentleman, Williams knew better than to go down this rabbit hole. Thank goodness. The question stood alone. Like a rotting tree ready to fall. Don’t want to get anywhere near it.

In the 23 Super Bowls I covered and the 23 Media Days that proceeded each one, the “gathering” as I like to call it, included reputable news organizations but more interestingly, a circus collage, consistently of all manners of dress and attitude. Fantail dresses. Tuxedoes. Helmets. All that glittered was not gold. Cosmetics are layered so thick upon both genders that you wish someone would turn up the heat to see the melt.

And the questions!

“If you could be any tree?” Oak was the leader in the clubhouse.

“What’s your favorite color?” A rainbow was my favorite answer.

“If you could be any animal?” Bald eagle, hands down.

“What astrological sign are you?”

The question was asked of Pittsburgh defensive lineman Ernie Holmes. However, Steeler linebacker Jack Lambert was walking by and couldn’t help but respond.

“Feces!” Lambert shouted.

Before Super Bowl XV in 1981, Raiders quarterback Jim Plunkett was asked the vilest, insensitive and most disgusting question ever asked on Media Day. If the NFL has ended Media Day right then, no one would have objected.

“Was it dead mother, blind father, or blind mother, dead father?”

As fine and decent a man as I ever met in the NFL, Plunkett didn’t launch a vengeful volley but instead corrected with a monotone that neatly sheathed his anger: Blind mother, blind father, living mother, dead father.

It was a remarkable display of composure. At the end of the session, some of us went up to Plunk and apologized.

A Super Bowl Media Day is a license to kill the language (Lambert) but also to twist common sense into a knot. This week we’ll hear that the brothers Travis and Jason Kelce are the first brothers playing against each other in a Super Bowl. No, they’re not. They both play offense. Their teams are playing each other.

Every time Media Day hypes a Super Bowl as a cataclysmic event I refer to Buffalo head coach Marv Levy for perspective: “This (Super Bowl) is not a must-win. World War Two was a must-win.”

Then again, WW2 never offered us much in the way of humor.

“I’d run over my own mother to win a Super Bowl,” said Washington offensive lineman Russ Grimm.

To which Raider linebacker Matt Millen replied, “I’d run over Russ Grimm’s mother to win a Super Bowl.”

Millen probably wouldn’t but there is no underestimating the tension and anxiety layered over the game of games.

“If I do get nervous before a game,” said Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, “they usually go away after the first play. For the Super Bowl, it never goes away.”

Because the NFL is so popular - what other sport owns a day of the week (Sunday)? - this Sunday is an event whether one is in Arizona or not. Parties. Super Bowl commercials. Game bets. A buffet line that could feed a third-world country. And it has never mattered what Washington running back Duane Thomas once said about the game.

“If it’s the ultimate game,” Thomas asked, “then why are they playing another one next year?”

Truth to tell, and Thomas knew this as well as anyone, Americans love spectacles. Fourth of July fireworks. Blue Angels overhead. Parade of yachts or paddle-wheelers or battleships into a harbor. Grandiose speeches. Concerts and circuses and ribbon cutting and puffed oratory.

So why not jets jetting over the stadium before kickoff? Why not cover the field with an American flag while singing the National Anthem? Why not a hip-hop-rap-rock-and-roll concert at halftime? Why not pass placards or balloons or God knows what else to 80,000 people? Why not charge $5,000 a ticket? Why not blather and slather and all sorts of pity patter?

Why not check out?

No one ever says it’s too much. And there’s a good reason for that.

For four or five hours, if we concentrate hard enough, if we drink enough, if we eat enough, we can take a break from Ukraine and the earthquake and the political squabble and the racial divide and get lost in an event that for that most of us won’t make a conversation over the office coffee maker by the end of the week.

It will start on Media Day with a snap, crackle and pop. Wretched verbal excess. Offensive astrological signs. Colorful costumes. People in glitter will ask inane questions. Everyone will wait for the dancing bears that will never show - but the clowns with microphones will. It’ll be empty and entertaining. Like whipped cream.

A week later - Hey, Marge, my stomach still hurts. But they’ll be sound bytes and video outtakes and a Super Bowl commercial so compelling it’s on every station until it’s worn us out. That’s America, too, wear us down, wear us out, until the next Big Thing.

Which will be Sept. 7, 2023. That’s the start of the next NFL season. Get your tickets now.

To comment write to bobpadecky@gmail.com