Super Bowl XXXV won't be played until Sunday in Tampa's Raymond James Stadium, but the game's participants must first endure an obligatory rite of passage - a week's worth of intense grilling under the media spotlight.
The 2001 edition of the Super Bowl features a pair of unlikely championship candidates, in that neither the Baltimore Ravens nor the New York Giants had a winning record a year earlier.
Irish fans in search of a "local angle" won't have to look far: Sunday's game features a couple of players - the Ravens' Tony Siragusa and the Giants' Keith Hamilton - who are alumnae of the Emerald Isle Classic, both having played for Pittsburgh against Rutgers in the 1989 game at Lansdowne Road.
Siragusa and Hamilton are both defensive linemen, and hence will not square off against one another on Sunday, but the two most prominent figures in the game, Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis and New York quarterback Kerry Collins, will.
Indeed, there was more speculation about how the pair would hold up to a week's interrogation over their respective pasts than over how they might perform in the Super Bowl itself. Ray Lewis spent much of last spring as a defendant in a double-homicide, the result of a brawl in an Atlanta nightclub following Super Bowl XXXIV last January 31st.
Kerry Collins, on the other hand, came to the Giants, his third NFL team, saddled with an almost unshakeable reputation as a racist, a drunk and a quitter.
After being famously photographed wearing an orange prison-issue jump suit and manacles, Lewis spent 15 days behind bars. Although some witnesses testified that he had either punched or kicked one of the murder victims, no one was able to place a knife in his hands, and it was widely surmised that the actual stabbing had been done by other members of his posse.
Eventually he entered into a plea-bargaining arrangement whereby he pleaded guilty to the wonderful catch-all "obstruction of justice." The murder charges were dropped in exchange for his agreement to testify against two friends who had accompanied him that night. (They were subsequently acquitted amid a jumble of conflicting testimony).
Sentenced to a year's probation (and also fined a record $250,000 by the league), Lewis went on to become the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year, anchoring a Baltimore defensive unit that allowed the fewest points in a NFL season.
Collins also had a sullied reputation to reclaim. In his prior stops around the NFL, he had been arrested on drunk driving charges, and emerged from jail defiantly puffing a cigar. Worse, he had quit on his first team, the Carolina Panthers, telling then-coach Dom Capers he no longer had the will to play football, and was given his release.
Most damningly of all was the racist tag, one Collins brought upon himself when he described certain team-mates as "niggers." (Confronted with the charge, he did not deny it, but attempted to excuse his usage of the racial barb by pointing out that his black teammates sometimes called one another the very same thing).
A day before Lewis' first exposure to Super Bowl interrogation, Ravens coach Brian Billick attempted to blunt the inquisition by staging a pre-emptive strike at the media. Noting that his team's run through the playoffs had spurred a concomitant interest in revisiting the events of last January 31st, he ripped into the press for "inappropriate" and "reprehensible" stories about Lewis.
On Tuesday, Lewis had his own forum when he faced hundreds of reporters and dozens of television cameras. ("That chapter in my book is closed.") Portraying himself as a victim in the case, he likened himself to Jesus Christ.
Although he had by his own admission paid for the getaway car and had, at the very least, fled in the company of the actual stabbers, he claimed that he had only been charged because of his high profile.
Particularly infuriating was his utter lack of compassion for the victims. Asked whether he had anything to say to the families of Lollar and Baker, Lewis smirked, shook his head, causing his diamond-encrusted gold earrings to jangle, and replied "Nah. Why should I?"
Collins, on the other hand, looked his inquisitors in the eye and described himself as "a drunk." He recalled having his first drink at 13, and acknowledged not having been able to handle booze in the quantities he subsequently consumed. When Collins revisited the Carolina racial incident this week, he blamed that on alcohol as well. "It was the last night of training camp and we were all out having drinks," he recalled. "I was very intoxicated, and I used a term that was not meant to be malicious. It was more of a joking manner; I was trying to be a funny guy.
"In a strange sense, in my polluted, chemically-altered mind, I believed that maybe in some way it would reinforce some sense of camaraderie," he said. "I certainly didn't mean for it to be taken the way it was. I've always been a person who has had a lot of black friends, friends of all nationalities, and have always supported and believe in equality."
Prior to this week, like many of my colleagues, I'd never had much use for Kerry Collins, either as a man or as a quarterback, while the Ray Lewis of this past season may have been the best defensive player I've ever seen.
There's not much doubt about who won the battle for respect this week, but now, alas, they still have to play the game. And the good guys don't always win.
