SUPER BOWL JOURNAL: Snoop Dogg Gets More Respect Here Than Condolezza Rice

Condolezza Rice and former associate

TAMPA, Fla. — I went to the Philadelphia Flyers-Tampa Bay Lightning game Friday night.

Why? The ticket was free, the arena is a block from my hotel, and it was actually a good place to escape the zooiness and claustrophobia of what’s going on around here for a few hours.

In walking toward the Channelside restaurant/nightclub district before the game, a long line snaked down a sidewalk. People were waiting to get into the Bud Bowl, which is no longer an animated television commercial, but instead a concert event of some sort.

Snoop Dogg was the master of ceremonies. And like I said, people were lined up for a long way, waiting to get in. My theory: People love Snoop Dogg.

But … that doesn’t mean it was solid gold box office. Lots of would-be scalpers were on street corners looking forlorn, unable to dispose of Bud Bowl tickets. They were asking $20 a throw at 7:30 p.m., and getting no takers that I saw.

Geez, people down here are spending $20 just to talk to someone about paying much-higher cover charges.

Inside the arena, the Flyers beat the home team like a rented mule, 6-1. Late in the first period, the public-address announcer told the crowd that former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice was in the building, and they showed her on the video screens above the ice.

Some people cheered. It sounded like more folks booed. Either that, or they booed louder than the cheerers cheered. It wasn’t like they really, really booed her. But it was still sort of uncomfortable to witness.

In the grand tradition of public figures, Rice had a big smile and acted as if everyone was applauding.

I don’t know how Snoop Dogg’s Bud Bowl went. I’ll bet he didn’t get booed, though. Except from the scalpers.

By the way, Condi is a candidate to become the next Pacific-10 Conference commissioner. Wonder how that would go over with the people of, say, Berkeley and Eugene?

More on that: http://www.thewizofodds.com/the_wiz_of_odds/2009/01/rice-a-candidate-for-pac10-job.html

SUPER BOWL JOURNAL: Paul Blart: Mall Cop and More

Kevin James, celebrity

TAMPA, Fla. — The two football teams in the Super Bowl are now sequestered from the media, the weekend has begun, and the influx of celebrities and pseudo-celebs has begun.

In the legit celebrity category, comedian/actor Kevin James was going from one radio table to another Friday morning to promote his movie “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.”

An older woman came up to him with a blissful look on her face.

“I loved your show (“King of Queens”),” she said. “I memorized every line.”

“Oh, you want to do a scene?” James asked her as he put an arm around her. “I’ll be Doug.”

James’ character was named Doug, by the way. And he made that woman sooooo happy by interacting with her.

 Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio worked Radio Row, too. That was thrilling.

A Sports Illustrated swimsuit model named Brooklyn Decker went from one radio show to the next. What could the hosts have had to ask her? How do you like being a swimsuit model?

What kind of surprises me, pleasantly, is how many NFL players are here to promote something good.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, for instance, was drumming up notice for www.bpsuccesszone.com, a site dedicated to helping people get their blood pressure to a healthier state.

Both of McNabb’s parents suffer from hypertension, so he’s doing something about advancing the cause of those who do.

David Tyree, the New York Giants’ wide receiver who last year made what is considered by many to be the best Super Bowl catch ever, was here to tout the American Heart Association.

Tyree’s mother, Thelma Tyree, died of a heart attack in December 2007.

Then, there are those who are just … here.

Tim Snyder, Churchill Downs’ chief party officer during last year’s Kentucky Derby, was here to promote the Kentucky Derby, I guess. He had a horse’s image on his shirt, anyway. Or was that a mint julep?

Former “Dancing With the Stars” star Stacy Kiebler was to start making her media swing through Radio Row this afternoon, but the Hlog has bigger fish to fry. I’ll be hosting a live Super Bowl chat starting at noon, Iowa time.

Join me at  http://kurtwarner.gazetteonline.com/?p=220

SUPER BOWL JOURNAL: Springsteen and His Band Meet the Press

A bandleader and a member of Tony Soprano's crew

TAMPA, Fla. — Bruce Springsteen held his first press conference of any sort since 1987 here Thursday, to drum up interest in his halftime performance at the Super Bowl.

Based on the fact several hundred international media showed up to hear what he and his E Street Band mates had to say at the Tampa Convention Center, the word of Bruce surely has quickly been spread to every corner of the globe.

What follows are some of the comments, in chronogical order, from the 20-minute-long event:

Springsteen: “If there’s going to be a lot of questions about football, this is going to be the shortest press conference ever. Because I don’t know anything about it.”

 

“Clarence actually played football, which is why he has the cane.”

 

“It’s my first press conference with anything wrapped around the mike (an NFL logo).”

 

“As far as who decides the songs, well … I’m the boss. The boss decides what to play. Nobody else decides. People suggest … hint … beg … cajole. But I decide.”

 

“I did play in a (football) game in my backyard around the summer of 1958. But I haven’t played a lot since. I’ll date myself now. When I think Steelers, I think Terry Bradshaw. When he retired they said ‘Terry, what are you gonna do now?’ He said ‘I’m gonna live like my dog.’ They said ‘What do you mean?’ And he said ‘My dog just lives to live.’ I don’t think he did that, but that’s the first thing I associate with Terry Bradshaw, so that’s my knowledge about football.”

 

“As far as the Inauguration goes (Springsteen played in the Opening Inaugural Celebration Jan. 19 at the Lincoln Memorial), it was a good warm-up for this. We’ll have a lot of crazy football fans, but you won’t have a Lincoln staring over your shoulder. So that takes some of the pressure off.”

 

“What’s special for me right now is I really believe our band is going through sort of a golden age. We’ve made three of some of our best records in a row, which is really one of the reasons we’re here. And the band, on the last tour, played the best it’s ever played.”

 

“We’ve been on the road a while. We’re some old soldiers. But the band’s still really burning, and I want people to know about the record. It’s been a good year.”

 

Nils Lofgren: “It (the atmosphere at Arizona’s 32-25 NFC championship win over Philadelphia in Glendale, Ariz.) kind of reminded me of our last shows in Barcelona, recently actually. There were about 72 and a half thousand people in Barcelona. It was that level of intensity and just joy.”

 

Lofgren: “Whether it’s four hours, three and a half, it’s full out, out of the gate. You get to get lost in this great music and don’t come for air till it’s over.”

 

Springsteen: “The idea of the show is you’re going to the Meadowlands or one of the shows that we regularly play. You get lost on the way. You’re watching the clock and ‘Damn, the show’s starting.’ You stop in a bar to get some directions. The bar gets held up while you’re there. It takes another 45 minutes to get out of there. You come back and you miss your exit on the turnpike. So you drive another 30 to get back around there. So you make it into the stadium at two hours and 48 minutes of the show. That’s what you’re gonna see. The last 12 minutes.”

 

On why he thinks he’s drawing young fans on tours now as well as baby boomers:

 

“Just by sticking around long enough. You don’t die and people get a chance to see you. You’ve been around and around and around and around, and suddenly young people show up in the front rows at night. It’s nice. We sort of skipped a generation somewhere in there, and then the last two tours we’ve noticed a large influx of young people.”

 

“There was a time when music was intentionally factionalized. It was very hard along generational lines. For some reason, it might have to do with the Internet or some other things, but people are just taking their music wherever they can find it. Cause people are like me, they like the White Stripes, they like rap music – it just cuts across the board. It’s great.”

 

“It’s a very, very exciting to come out and see young folks in the crowd. Because we come out and we  play like we’re 16. That’s the point.

 

“I think the main thing you have to remember is we’re playing where the cheerleaders usually go. Basically, we want it to be a 12-minute party.

 

Steve Van Zandt: “I think one of the things we’re kind of proud of is there is a certain inspirational quality to what we do. Because of when we grew up, we had very high standards in the ‘60s. We’re trying to attain that kind of greatness that we grew up with, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, people like that, Bob Dylan. So we’ll always kind of be 16, like Bruce said. We’re always trying to attain that greatness that we grew up with. Which really gives us that extra motivation when we get on stage. I think that helps communicate a little bit of inspiration.”

 

Springsteen: “Initially (playing the Super Bowl) was sort of a novelty. It didn’t quite feel right. I was with a young musician … and we got talking about the Super Bowl. He said why don’t you play Super Bowls. I said ‘Well, they kind of play in the middle of a football game.’ He said ‘Someday, I hope my band is big enough to play in a Super Bowl.’ “

 

“I think that really, why we said yes this year – they asked us many times – was because one, we have new album coming out, dummy! Come on! Therer’s a new record in the stores! It just happened to come out this past week.”

 

“We have our mercenary reasons, of course. Besides our deep love of football.

 

“Really, we have a record out, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, but we’ve made three really, I think, great records in a row, and I think this is one fo the best of them. I believe the music that we’re making right now, I think it’s rare for a band of our vintage to be in the studio and writing and recording as well as I think we have. That’s important to me, because the job’s important to me. I like my job, I love my job. We come out to inspire and that’s a part of what we do.”

 

“They throw money at us and we keep that, too. But we do come out to inspire.”

 

“They’ve really moved it from being some sort of novelty moment to a moment when you can come out and do what you do. You just come out and be the band that you are and do what you do. It’s a great show for the folks at home. It’s fun.”

 

“The main thing I’m really proud of is just the band at this point in time. We stayed together. We stayed alive, that’s hard to do for people in our business.”

 

“Also, imagine you’re working alongside the same people you were with in high school for 40 years or so and keeping that together.”

 

“In the end it’s corny, but it’s the long, long ride that it’s all about, the fact that I’ve been able to have these guys and ladies at my side and we’ve made it this far and that we’re here to do it. It’s the consistency. Professionalism is alive and well. We just want to carry on and give people some smiles on Sunday and a good time and some inspiration.”

 

 

 

SUPER BOWL JOURNAL: Warner Knows Who Springsteen Is, But Doesn’t Know His Music

Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Patti Scialfa

TAMPA, Fla. — Maybe you want to make a reach that Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner and rock star Bruce Springsteen are kindred spirits, guys who have made it big in life but given back a lot to others who need it.

OK. But Warner couldn’t name a line from a Springsteen song if you spotted him a “Tramps like us …”

“I’m not really a music fan much at all,” Warner said Thursday morning, six hours before Springsteen and his E Street Band were to hold a press conference of their own here to tout their halftime show in Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“It’s not a knock on the Boss,” Warner said, at least knowing Springsteen’s nickname. “Bruce Springsteen and the band, they do a tremendous job. I’m just not a huge music fan. So I don’t listen to a lot of music. I don’t know a lot of songs.

“I know the name, and it’s kind of cool to have him performing at the Super Bowl, but I just don’t know a lot about his music.”

Whether Springsteen knows anything about Warner, we’ll find out this afternoon.

Podolak

It sounds like there’s hope for Ed Podolak staying in the Iowa football radio broadcast booth.

Good.

SUPER BOWL JOURNAL: Floyd Mayweather, and Someone Much Bigger

Floyd Mayweather is making a statement

TAMPA, Fla. — So I’m meandering around Radio Row at the Super Bowl’s Media Center Wednesday afternoon, looking for the odd, the strange, and the curious.

That doesn’t count the radio guys themselves, who talk way too loudly. Don’t they know they’re using microphones? Does the screaming make for better radio in Sacramento and Buffalo and Baltimore?

Anyway, I saw a guy who was about 7-foot tall and 400 pounds. This, I said to myself, is someone famous. And if not famous, he was certainly someone big.

It turns out his name was Alfonso Redic. I Googled him and got nothing. Nothing. How does any name combination not produce something on Google? Especially when a guy is 7-foot, 400 pounds.

I know that’s his name, too, because it said so on his Super Bowl guest badge, and you can’t be using an alias to get one of those. Even Fox Sports Radio’s JT The Brick has to go by his real name, which is John something-or-other.

Who really cares? If a guy calls himself a brick, he’s probably a brick.

Anyway, Redic is a bodyguard for Floyd Mayweather Jr., the retired boxer who won all 39 of his fights and still found time to be eliminated from “Dancing With the Stars.”

Mayweather is a raconteur these days. He was on Radio Row to go from show to show to promote his party in Tampa Friday night called “Champion’s Ball.”

Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr. hosts the sexiest star studded event, said the cards his people were distributing.

You know it’s a party, because Doug E. Fresh is co-hosting.

Among the guests I’ve heard of are Vivica A. Fox, Jim McMahon, and, uh, people whose names don’t ring a bell with me. Like Jackie Long, who Google says is the former boyfriend of Venus Williams.

And Taraji P. Henson, who is an honest-to-goodness Academy Award nominee for best supporting actress in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” OK, I’ll give Floyd that one.

Keyshia Cole and Robin Thicke are also on the party’s lineup of stars, and I can only imagine the head-shaking that comes from the admission I don’t know either. I’d go to this thing to introduce myself, but general admission is $250 and the VIP package is $650.

The VIPs get after-hours breakfast starting at 4 a.m.

The party is at the Cuban Club in Ybor City, a tourist district in Tampa. I was at the Cuban Club Tuesday night for the Super Bowl’s media party. It was more than a media party, really. It was everyone-who-lives-in-Tampa-and-St. Patersburg-and-maybe-even-Clearwater.

I wandered to the outdoor area in the back of the four-level club, and a rock band was pumping out familiar songs. The band was loud. It seemed competent enough.

.38 Special: This Band for Rent

 

 

It dawned on me that all the songs I recognized were .38 Special songs. “Caught Up in You,” “Hold on Loosely,” and others I couldn’t name the title of, but sure knew.

It then dawned on me this was .38 Special. Once a big act. Now playing private parties for people more concerned with getting free cheese raviolis, beef empanadas, and mojitos.

It made me sad, so I finished my raviolis and empanadas and got the heck out of there.

All kinds of other parties will be here this weekend, parties with special invitations and absurdly high admission prices. Needless to say, I won’t be at any.

That makes me sad, too.

SUPER BOWL JOURNAL: Al Michaels Knows Cedar Rapids

Al Michaels (above), who will work his seventh Super Bowl as a network television play-by-play man Sunday night, has family ties in Cedar Rapids.

“My son-in-law went to high school in Cedar Rapids,” Michaels said Tuesday at an NBC Sports press gathering. “He’s about Zach (Johnson)’s age. They got matched up when they were both in high school and my son-in-law beat him head to head.”

 The lad’s name is Jeff Cohn. He attended Kennedy High School, and had a more prominent prep career in soccer, in which he made the all-Metro squad.

Cohn married Michaels’ daughter, Jennifer. They met when attending the University of Southern California.

“Half the guests were from L.A., half were from Cedar Rapids,” Michaels said.

 Seeing “Cedar Rapids Gazette” on my media badge registered immediately with Dan Patrick, also. Patrick is part of NBC’s NFL studio show.

 

Dan Patrick

 

 

The aforementioned Johnson was a guest on Patrick’s radio show last week because, Patrick said, fellow Cedar Rapidian Kurt Warner’s Arizona Cardinals won the NFC title the same day Johnson won the PGA Tour’s Sony Open.

“I asked Zach who was more popular in Cedar Rapids, him or Warner,” Patrick said. He said, ‘Oh, Mr. Warner is by far.’ I said ‘You’ve won a Masters.’ He said ‘Yeah, but he’s won MVPs and won a Super Bowl.’

“I said ‘I’ll call Kurt next time, I won’t call you, because he’s bigger than you.’ He said ‘Oh, by far.’ “

I told Patrick I thought Johnson might have underselling himself on that matter.

“That doesn’t surprise me with him,” Patrick said, “because Zach’s a good kid. I asked him who he wanted to win. I was hoping he’d say he was a Steelers fan. Didn’t happen.”

 In a more serious matter, I asked Keith Olbermann what he remembers when he thinks about last January’s Iowa caucuses. Olbermann, whose primary job is host of MSNBC’s “Countdown,” seemed happy to respond.

 

Keith Olbermann

Olbermann called Barack Obama’s win in the Iowa Democratic Party caucuses “an extraordinary and significant stop on a very long path that was an affirmation of something I don’t know everyone was confident of.

“In retrospect, and in the future they’ll have to teach this to people, that there was some doubt whether or not middle America would support a non-white candidate for pres of the US to a significant degree, and it here it was.

“It was an indicator that enough people had moved, whether by their own evolution, whether by society’s evolution, or by dint of the urgency of circumstance, had moved to visualize what was best for them with no racial component to it whatsoever.

“Which is really what we’ve all said we wanted. Here it was manifested. It was like here it is, sort of a miniature version of Election Night. Which was, you know, we’ve screwed up race relations in this country for 400 years, roughly. But guess which country was the first of the major Western nations, let alone democracies, to elect and choose an African-American or a man of African descent.

“As tortured a road as it might have been, we got there first.”

 

 

SUPER BOWL JOURNAL: Media Day Madness

The Tonight Show's "Ross the Intern" - No, I don't know him, either

Just a quick post from Tuesday’s Super Bowl Media Day at Raymond James Stadium. I’ll have more later in the day, and of a football bent. But let’s get some of the clown acts out of the way.

The guy you see pictured is Ross Matthews. I’m not a Jay Leno guy, so I don’t watch The Tonight Show. I will when Conan O’Brien gets the gig this spring. But apparently, Leno has this guy who he calls “Ross the Intern,” and Ross covers movie premieres, awards shows, wherever he can ask absurd, comedic questions.

Ross was here today with a pink football. Ross is openly gay, you see. 

Ross told Arizona Cardinals offensive tackle Mike Gandy there are so many hand signals in football, and asked why there wasn’t one for “Half-off sale, one day only.”

“What kind of sales would be going on in a football game, seriously?” Gandy replied with a straight face.

That’s what I liked about the shenanigans here. Everyone knows Media Day brings out self-promoting goofballs, but the players didn’t seem to be content to play unwilling dupes, instead putting the goofballs on the spot.

When some creature from Spanish-speaking television network Telemundo named Karim Mendiburu challenged Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end Nick Eason to dance to merengue music, Eason told him to produce the music.

Mendiburu did, and the 305-pound Eason danced with the man. In broad daylight. In front of a slew of other media. Without a trace of hesitation or embarrassment. Good for him.

Afterward, Mendiburu told the player “Now you’re prepared to win the championship.”

“What?” Eason replied. “That can’t help me win.”

I loved it, much as I loved Gandy’s retort to Ross the Intern about his dumb joke about a hand-signal for a half-off sale. They heard something foolish and pretended to take it seriously. They were funnier than the clowns.

The clowns sure did try hard, though. Maria Menounos of Access Hollywood — probably not the weeknight equivalent of “Face the Nation” — kept challenging players to name the judges on “American Idol,” or the names of the Jonas Brothers.

Dumb.

A Dallas radio station guy asked Arizona defensive lineman Kenny Iwebema, the rookie from the University of Iowa, if he could name the Roman numerals in Super Bowl 43. Iwebema immediately said “XLIII,” which was right, and the poor radio guy didn’t have much of a bit.

Not that he had one to start with.

The star players had their own booths on the edge of the Raymond James field, and it sounded like most of the questions they got were serious. Serious by sports standards, anyhow.

I’ll write about some of that for tonight’s Gazetteonline.com, Wednesday’s Gazette, and even the Hlog.

I’m off to the NBC press conference to hear the likes of John Madden, Bob Costas and Al Michaels.

SUPER BOWL JOURNAL: Warner for Secretary of State?

Norman Chad: A Warner follower and then some

Norman Chad is a funny writer.

OK, let’s alter that: Norman Chad writes funny stuff.

Ah, either one is right. And he’s fun to listen to on World Series of Poker telecasts on ESPN.

In his syndicated column this week, Chad predicts an Arizona Cardinals win in the Super Bowl. He predicted the Cardinals would get here before the 2008 season began.

He probably wasn’t serious, but so what?

In this week’s column: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/football/397428_chad26.html, Chad tells us what he thinks about the Cardinals and their quarterback. Here’s an excerpt:

I first saw Kurt Warner in 1999 and correctly identified him as a dome-dwelling, touchdown-tossing alien UFO. This is how much I believe in Kurt Warner: You want to fix the economy? Make Warner secretary of the treasury. You want world peace? Make Warner secretary of state. You want to walk on water? Make Warner cross the Mississippi after hopping on his back.

As for Warner himself, he was among a handful of Arizona players interviewed at the Cardinals’ team hotel Monday. Here’s what he said about his fan base in Iowa, and how important it is to him:

“My whole family is still back in Iowa. I love the people in Iowa, they have supported me from day one and it’s been kind of fun from that standpoint. Even though I didn’t necessarily play in Iowa, especially professionally other than arena football, I have a lot of fans there. It’s fun to go back. It’s fun to have something for them to cheer for. They don’t have a professional football team so I hope that wherever I go, they adopt my team and so we pick up some fans along the way. It always means a lot when you can impact a community in any way, shape, or form. For me to be able to do that over the years and have that interaction with the people there has been tremendous.”

SUPER BOWL JOURNAL: Day 1, at Radio Row

Why do they call this man "Mad Dog?"

TAMPA, Fla. — So here we are.

It’s been seven years since I covered a Super Bowl, and nothing of significance has changed. They’re still advertising the Bud Bowl. Representatives from future Super Bowl sites are still trying to tell anyone who will listen why their corner of the nation is America’s finest place to be.

And a lot of noise is still being churned out on Radio Row.

At the media center, which in this case is 600,000-square foot Tampa Convention Center, dozens of radio stations set up shop for Super Bowl week at tables in a ballroom. The tables are close together, and guests of any renown usually work their way across the room, making appearances on this show and that show.

It’s a noisy place, full of hot gas.

There’s 1040AM ESPN, and 1080AM ESPN, and 1250AM ESPN, and 710AM ESPN.

There’s WFAN of New York and KFAN of the Twin Cities.

The host of what I presume was a San Antonio radio show was loudly asking how many times the Spurs have won 60 games in a season. It seemed like a question that could have been pondered from San Antonio.

The Sports Edge is here, and the Sports Animal, and probably even the Sports Fry Cook and the Sports Isoseles Triangle.

WDBQ-AM in Dubuque has a table here, though it was unused Monday afternoon. It seems like it might be some sort of scam. I’ll continue to investigate.

I overheard Chris “Mad Dog” Russo doing his Mad Dog Radio on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio. Russo was a New York screamer for many years until he bolted for Sirius. He is a hyper, hyper fellow.

Someone called his show and asked if Kurt Warner should be a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee one day. Russo strongly said no.

“There were five seasons when Warner was a mess, not a factor,” Russo said.

It’s a minority opinion based on everything I’ve read and heard in the last week from learned football people, but I guess it isn’t good radio to go with the flow. Better to act the loud, uninformed fool.

Although, the Mad Dog was right that Warner didn’t do a whole lot between 2002 and 2006.

So, that was my first hour at the Super Bowl. Tonight will be a time to mosey around, get the lay of the land, and then plunge in Tuesday morning when Media Day is held at Raymond James Stadium.

Y’all come back now, ya hear?