The Glamorous Life

Ahh, yes... the glamorous life of a television reporter. That's me, along with our sports director, at about midnight after the Super Bowl. It's oddly appropriate that the picture is blurry, since that's how I felt. And that was before the four-hour-long journey back home.

Super Bowl XLI was the first-ever Super Bowl to be played in the rain. And anyone down here will tell you that it hardly ever rains in the winter in Florida. What they neglect to tell you, however, is that when it rains during the summer, the showers last for maybe an hour. When it rains in the winter, it rains all day long.


And that's what happened on Super Bowl Sunday.

As a "special tv reporter" at the Super Bowl, I essentially had permission to roam around the stadium during the game, though "special reporters" don't get the privilege of a seat in the press box or in the stands. I managed to find a spot to watch most of the first quarter... and I shot a few pictures with my trusty digital camera to keep myself distracted from the fact that I was soaking wet.


Don't expect to be impressed by these photos, by the way. There's nothing particularly interesting or spectacular about them. For the most part, they're just pictures.

In this one, you can see a close-up of Rex Grossman on the giant screen. For some reason, I imagine he was talking to himself kind of like Tim Robbins' character in Bull Durham, mumbling things to himself like "Why does he keep calling me 'Meat?'"

This woman loved Lovie Smith (The Bears Head Coach). I think she was from his home town. Her sign says "Big Sandy, Texas is Lovie Country!"

Speaking of Bears, I know I've expressed my fondness for mascots before. I enjoyed watching the Bears mascot share a high-five with one of the stadium security guys. The high-five happened just after the Bears scored their second touchdown of the game. I missed the first TD (Devin Hester's Kickoff Return Touchdown) because I was in line to buy Cory a souvenir. He better damn well wear it every day for the rest of the year.

I didn't get a very good picture of the Bears TD-- though I got a shot of Reggie Wayne celebrating after his first-quarter touchdown reception. Too bad they were all the way on the other side of the stadium, otherwise the picture wouldn't have been nearly as blurry.

By this point, I was cold, wet, and downright miserable. At the end of the first quarter, I decided to go for a walk and see if I could find any cool souvenirs. Not surprisingly, everying was phenomenally overpriced. I bought Cory a visor for $25, and I got myself a shirt-- a bargain at $32. So how overpriced was everything? Get this... a 12 oz. beer was ten bucks!

Cold and bitter, I wandered down to the working media room to watch the rest of the game. And here's where it gets really glamorous, as you can see from the picture. But hell, it was warm, it was dry, and there was plenty of free food. I loaded up on fajitas, Cape Cod chips, popcorn, m&ms and sour gummi bears for the next three hours. I didn't even go back into the rain to see Prince in the halftime show, opting to watch it on the hi-def TV in the workroom instead. At a few points, I regretted not going out in the rain to see him-- but I kept telling myself that what I saw on Thursday was infinitely cooler than having to share a Prince concert with 80,000 other people.

(By the way, did anyone get the Prince connection with the title of this post? Kudos to you if you did.)

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. I didn't go down on the field to see the trophy presentation. I hung out at the satellite truck until it was time to do our live shots (I wasn't reporting, so I just watched). We saw a guy that Clayton was convinced was Ladainian Tomlinson, but it turned out to be Jerry Azumah. We had to ride a shuttle bus 30 minutes to get to our car, then turn around and drive back the exact opposite direction to go back home. I got to the condo by 4:15 a.m. and was in bed by 4:20.

The glamorous life, indeed.