ENJOY A SUPER LOVEFEST.Byline: KEVIN MODESTI Ten days before the Super Bowl that will make history as the first to feature a head coach named Lovie, I'm shopping for party provisions. Wine coolers, check. Salad toppings, got 'em. Doilies, here they are. Kleenex ... can't have too much crying tissue. If you expected Budweiser, five-alarm chili, paper towels, and monster-truck videos for the post-game winding down, you must be thinking of one of the other XL Super Bowls. Super Bowl XLI Super Bowl XLI was the 41st championship game of the modern National Football League (NFL). The American football game was played on February 4 2007 at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, a suburb of Miami, following the 2006 regular season. Kickoff was at 6:27 p.m. , I've come to realize after letting the Bears-Colts storylines sink in, is shaping up as something different. It's going to be the kinder and gentler, sweet and sensitive Super Bowl. The squeezably soft NFL NFL abbr. National Football League NFL (US) n abbr (= National Football League) → Fußball-Nationalliga championship game. I mean, you love the Super Bowl, we all love it. But have you ever wanted to cuddle with it before? It's Super Bowl lite this time. It's just so nice. Peyton Manning Peyton Williams Manning (born March 24, 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is an American football quarterback who plays for the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League. He was drafted by the Colts with the first overall pick in the 1998 NFL Draft. cried for joy after Indianapolis closed out New England New England, name applied to the region comprising six states of the NE United States—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The region is thought to have been so named by Capt. , and chances are the whole country is going to be weeping softly a week from Sunday evening, so many are the possibilities for a happy ending in Miami. The coaches: The Bears' Lovie Smith Lovie Lee Smith (born May 8, 1958 in Gladewater, Texas) is the head coach of the Chicago Bears professional football team of the NFL. Smith narrowly became the first African American coach to lead a team to the Super Bowl, only hours before Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts and the Colts' Tony Dungy will be the Big Story. They're the first black coaches to take teams to a Super Bowl. They're also good friends, Smith having worked for Dungy in Tampa Bay. Whoever wins, the All-American cause of racial equality wins. Whoever wins, the other guy will be happy for him. Sweet. The quarterbacks: Manning and the Bears' Rex Grossman are the super strivers. Manning finally gets past Tom Brady to reach the Super Bowl, shaking off a 2-for-8 start to the fourth quarter to lead the AFC (1) (Application Foundation Classes) A class library from Microsoft that provides an application framework and graphics, graphical user interface (GUI) and multimedia routines for Java programmers. title- winning drive. Grossman rewarded Smith's faith after an up and (very) down season, following a 1-for-11 stretch with a 5-for-5 drive to the touchdown that put away New Orleans in the NFC NFC abbr. National Football Conference game. Everybody said they couldn't do it. Then they did it. Heartwarming heart·warm·ing or heart-warm·ing adj. 1. Causing gladness and pleasure. 2. Eliciting sympathy and tender feelings: a heartwarming tale. Adj. 1. . The franchises: The Bears haven't been to a Super Bowl since they won it 21 years ago (with the 46 Defense and 46 points of offense), and the Colts haven't been since they won it 36 years ago (on Jim O'Brien's kick). Never before have both teams in a Super Bowl come off such extended droughts. Whatever you might have hated about the last Bears Super Bowl team -- Mike Ditka, Buddy Ryan, Jim McMahon? -- is gone. Whatever might chap your hide about the Colts -- the dead-of-night move out of Baltimore? -- was avenged by the Ravens' 2000 title. These are a couple of long-suffering teams, not tiresome bullies. Instead of One of the Thumb, somebody wants A Thumb for The One, praying Manning's sore digit won't spoil the day for the best quarterback going. The cities: Nobody ever chanted, ``Beat In-dy!'' Everybody's kind of town, Chicago is. It's hard to find somebody to hate in a Super Bowl without Dallas, New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of or wherever Al Davis calls home at a given moment. There's no villain, just vulnerability. There's no giant to slay slay tr.v. slew , slain , slay·ing, slays 1. To kill violently. 2. past tense and past participle often slayed Slang , no inflated ego to puncture. Only one player, Bears defensive tackle Tank Johnson, has been found to have an illegal cache of firearms in his house, which makes this closer to a convent than a typical Super Bowl. So far, the only controversies about this Super Bowl involve a judge's decision to permit Johnson to play while awaiting trial, and a restaurant trade group's protest that a scheduled commercial starring Kevin Federline is demeaning de·mean 1 tr.v. de·meaned, de·mean·ing, de·means To conduct or behave (oneself) in a particular manner: demeaned themselves well in class. to fast-food workers. Clearly, what we need in the next week and a half is for Manning to moon the photographers, Grossman to issue some sort of guarantee, the Colts to announce they're moving to Los Angeles, or Terrell Owens to blow into Miami and open his mouth. Otherwise we're looking at a Super Bowl Week in which all the intrigue is about how the best offense in one conference (the Colts') will perform against the best defense in the other (the Bears'). Well, that won't do. That won't do at all. What a precious little Super Bowl, full of nice people on nice teams trying to make nice towns happy. If you're coming to the party, bring your own herbal tea. heymodesti(AT_SIGN)aol.com (818) 713-3616 |
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