TAMPA, Fl — It matters not who wins Media Day, even to the media, but of all the Super Bowl hoo-haw only two of the days really matter, this one and Sunday.

In a close call, Arizona wins this one, complete with voting paddles, as on “Dancing With the Stars.”

That silliness was under the direction of Warren Sapp, the once and no longer defensive lump who always nattered at least as well as he played. He had persuaded two Cardinals of his own ilk, 330-pound defensive tackles Alan Branch and Gabe Watson, to show their dance steps with a spangled beauty.

To music barely audible over the din of the day, the stars danced as stars do. Branch bit his lip and concentrated on his feet. Watson whirled and tried not to hurt his tiny partner.

At the end the paddles declared that Branch had won narrowly over Watson, though the pair of them were about as agile as a couple of front loaders. Handed his prize, a mirrored ball on a mirrored pedestal, Branch raised it over his head and bellowed—“Yessss!”—as if it were the Lombardi Trophy itself.
Sapp put his hands over is ears, slunk away, rolling his eyes back in his head. “Whoa. This is too nutty even for me,” Sapp said, leaving the poor young woman to fend for herself.
Not nutty at all, actually This is relatively mild for Media Day, no costumed brides looking for grooms, for example, as was one asking Pats quarterback Tom Brady for his hand. No costumed gorillas or bottles of Gatorade with feet.
The nonsense was down a bit, which had to disappoint the girl reporter from Austria.

“I ask you a question,” she said, not asked. And I nodded. “Vere ist Kort Vorner?”
I pointed in the direction of the Arizona quarterback, assuming that anyone named Kurt would be a big hit back in Salzburg. She did not say thanks.

The NFL encourages this annual folly, or at least does not discourage it, especially now with its own network to service. To find wisdom is futile, but one has to try.
“Right here is the epicenter of the NFL,” said Arizona coach Ken Whisenhunt, surprising for throwing the word “epicenter” into any football discussion and, at the same time, diminishing the occasion since the grandest game of the greatest sport of the greatest nation surely makes this the epicenter of the world.

Fred Dryer of the then Los Angeles Rams parlayed one Super Bowl experience into a career. Dryer gave the answer to my favorite Media Day question. Is the Super Bowl bigger than death? “No,” Dryer said, “but it comes in a bigger box.”

And now I have to give some consideration to this response to the question of what this all means.

“People are going through hard times,” said the Steelers Hines Ward, he not being one of them. “But in Pittsburgh if you’ve lost a job or your house you’ve still got the Steelers and you don’t worry about that, the light bill, the rent, stuff like that. When the Steelers play you’re hugging each other without regrets at the bar.”

Now, that’s the epicenter of something. Inflated self-importance for certain.

One shudders to think should the Steelers somehow lose to the upstarts from Arizona, what those bar hugs might turn into.

“There’s an old saying in football,” said Betrand Berry, now a Cardinal once a Bronco. “If you bite when young, you’ll bite when old.”
This is just the kind of gibberish that flows easily from the mouths of football players who are given podiums and microphones for a while. Philosophers, like dancing stars, are not born but made.
“You have to pass failure on the way to success,” said Cardinal punter Ben Graham, the notion sounding more profound because it came with an Australian accent. Austria and Australia in the same day. What a sport.
The NFL itself has operated all season under the slogan, “Believe in Now,” which was, I believe, the same position taken by bankers and brokers.

“I’ll carry this team on my back if I have to,” said Steeler Santonio Holmes.

The Chicago Bears were probably the best example of collective look-at-me-ism at a Super Bowl, but the thing has always had its share of outrageous individuals. The very first one had Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, who was, for his cheek, hammered by Green Bay. Still, The Hammer got the movie contract and his fame subsists.
Todd Christiansen of the Raiders showed up for Media Day with copies of his poetry, which he passed out as press releases. Dexter Manley tried a similar thing by pre-answering questions with a printout, the first public indication that he was functionally illiterate.

This is the one day of the football season when the anxious gives way to the excessive.

“When I retire, I’ll write a book,” said Arizona linebacker Chike Okeafor.

We all say that.