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Super Bowl Media Note

All players and coaches of both Super Bowl teams are available to the media for three days of Super Bowl week, Tuesday through Thursday.

Tuesday is the famed "Media Day" when both teams are interviewed at the stadium. Players are in uniform because Media Day began as Picture Day. Official team photos for the program are still taken after interviews. Wednesday's and Thursday's interview sessions take place at the respective team hotels in the morning before practice. Players are in civvies.

At least, they used to be. Dial-flipping this morning, I paused with horror at the NFL Network to see the Colts' players were in uniform for their final interview session of the week.

Somehow I don't think this was the Colts' own idea. Ever alert to visuals, the TV-centric NFL undoubtedly mandated uniform wear so the networks and local stations broadcasting Super hype can rezt assured the audience knows the subject is football. Otherwise, some folks might see Peyton Manning in casual wear and think it's really Gen. Casey testifying to the Senate about Iraq.

Super Bowl interviews were already the most awkward, embarrassing means of human communication ever devised by man, a cross to bear for both sides of the dialogue. It's the genius of the NFL to invent a means of making them even more stilted and awkward, a task I would've thought impossible. That, as they say, can't be coached.

For Super Bowl XLII next year, they'll probably make the players wear pads, too.

posted by Michael Gee @ 11:20 AM