Jim Souhan: Up close, Super Bowl isn't just glitz

It's Super Bowl week, meaning we have a week to complain about the excess of the most grandiose football game ever to provide a platform for goofy TV commercials.

From afar, everything about the Super Bowl seems overdone. Media Day is a joke lacking a punchline. The two weeks of coverage seem overblown and redundant. Super Bowl Sunday itself lasts — and this is a proven fact confirmed by NFL consultant Bill Nye The Science Guy — 74 hours.

As someone who is heading to his 10th Super Bowl, I can assure you that human moments not necessarily captured by the thousands of cameras occur before and after the game.

Here are a few of my highly-personal favorites:

• My first Super Bowl was XXIV, in New Orleans, when the 49ers beat the Broncos 55-10. Late one night I was in a little bar in the French Quarter. The joint was filled with NFL and team officials. In walked Julius Erving with his finely outfitted entourage, yelling, "The Doctor is in the house!'' and everyone just nodded. During Super Bowl week, Dr. J was just another celebrity athlete.

• My second Super Bowl was the Giants' shocking, 20-19 upset of the Bills the next year in Tampa, Fla. The year before, I had run into Everson Walls in a New Orleans restaurant. I had gotten to know Walls when I covered the Dallas Cowboys. Jimmy Johnson cut him after the '89 season. So in New Orleans, Walls was an old, slow cornerback looking for a job.

Giants coach Bill Parcells was happy to make Walls a starter. Against the Bills' remarkable offense, which dominated in a 51-3 victory against Oakland in the AFC title game, Walls helped limit the passing game and made a diving, shoestring tackle of Thurman Thomas that might have saved the day. As time ran out, Walls fell to his knees, arms outstretched, exhausted and joyful. That silhouette should be part of the Super Bowl logo.

The music-act news conferences are often brief and awkward. Prince walked to the mic, said, "No questions,'' brought his band out and put on a short, killer show. There are veteran NFL writers who say that is their favorite Super Bowl moment.

• After the Colts won that game, in the rain, I lingered in the Colts' locker room, wanting to congratulate Tony Dungy. I wound up talking one-on-one with Colts center Jeff Saturday. Saturday noted that Peyton Manning was such a control freak that when the Colts had slow moments during practice, Manning would bring out a bucket of water, dunk footballs in it and practice taking snaps from Saturday.

"We call it the wet ball drill,'' Saturday said.

I ran into Archie Manning, the former Viking and Peyton's dad. "The wet ball drill, huh?'' he said. "Even I have never heard of that one.''

• If all politics are local, then all of the best sports stories are, as well. The Superdome is a dump, with few and faulty elevators. During the Ravens' victory over San Francisco, the lights actually went out, delaying play. After the game, Baltimore center Matt Birk lumbered off the field wearing the usual markings of an NFL offensive lineman — red abrasions where his helmet had been smashed against his forehead, scratches on his arms, blood on his jersey, sweat-soaked pants.

"I'm not some big name like Ray Lewis,'' Birk said. "Guys like me don't announce their retirements at Super Bowls.''

He'd retire soon after, meaning that final image of Birk, the Cretin-Derham Hall High product who became an overachiever with the Vikings, was of him, for the first and last time in his career, walking off a field with confetti stuck to his jersey.