Super Bowl: Big Ben has eyes on Norman
Ben Roethlisberger has more on his mind than the Super Bowl against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. Big Ben is thinking about the Oklahoma-Iowa State women’s basketball game Saturday at Lloyd Noble Center.
“Bigger than the Super Bowl,” Roethlisberger said of Carlee Roethlisberger’s game against Iowa State. “Saturday, my sister’s got a home game up in Norman, Oklahoma. I’m trying to go to it. I don’t think it’s going to happen.
“That’s a big game. I’m rooting for her. Hope she does good.”
The Sooners play at Baylor on Wednesday night in Waco, Texas, which is 100 miles closer to Arlington. But it’s doubtful Big Ben makes it to Waco, either.
Ben Roethlisberger has attended some of Carlee’s OU games over the years, including the 2009 Final Four in St. Louis.
Super Bowl: Gerald McCoy visits
Gerald McCoy is at the Super Bowl as a reporter for the OCNN, the Chad Ochocinco social network. Yes, it’s nonsense. But McCoy likes to have a good time, and his presence at the Super Bowl raises the class of Chad Johnson (he’s changing his name back) a tad.
McCoy stopped in to chat with the panel at the NFL Network on Tuesday at Super Bowl media day.
“It’s great being here,” McCoy said. “I’d rather have on a jersey right now, but hey, I’m having fun.”
McCoy, the rookie out of OU who was a star at Southeast High School in Oklahoma City, had a solid first year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. McCoy played in 13 games — an injury curtailed his season — and had 22 tackles and three sacks.
McCoy commented on a variety of subjects:
On his slow start to the season: “I kind of started off the same way at Oklahoma. I kind of got to get a feel of things. I don’t think necessarily it was nerves, just me getting a feel of how the NFL works. Then our coaches talk about turning it up the second half of the season, because we were on our a race to 10 (wins; the Bucs finished 10-6). I actually bought into that. I said, ‘OK, now turn it up.’ Really, I started to play better up until the injury and things started to flow for me.”
On the Bucs’ surprisingly successful season: “It all starts with the top. Our GM, Mr. Mark Dominik, and our head coach, Raheem Morris. You guys know how fiery he is. Think about how he is with the media. You can only imagine how he is with us, off camera. It kind of fires us up. It’s not an arrogant thing. It’s a confidence builder. We hear him say that, we know as a unit we have to back him up when he makes statements like he does.”
On his rivalry with fellow defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, the Nebraska Cornhusker, who was drafted second overall, one spot above McCoy, and made the Pro Bowl: “I’m not an excuse-maker. I require greatness, and until I get to that point, I’m not satisfied. Ndamukong Suh had a great year, Pro Bowl, all-pro. His surrounding cast was great. Mine was too. It’s just a different style of defense. We had a good unit. Like I said, I’m not an excuse-maker. He had a great year. He picked it up early. I started picking mine up early in the year, but he picked it up early and kept building each week. He’s just a great player.”
On McCoy’s advice to upcoming rookies at the NFL Combine, where McCoy participated in all the drills last February in Indianapolis: “Relax. Relax. Calm down. Relax. Train. Do what you’re doing right now, train, but go in there and just perform. Do everything. If you have nothing to hide, just go do everything. They want to see who will go in there and say look, I’m a player, I want to show you what I can do.”
On the Super Bowl experience Tuesday at Media Day in Cowboys Stadium: “The atmosphere is building the closer I got to Dallas. Flew out of Oklahoma where the weather is awful right now. It’s not great here, either. The closer the game gets, the atmosphere starts to build. I played in the national championship, I know how the atmosphere was there. I can only imagine what it’s like as a player about to play in this game. I’m here as a reporter, and I’m getting goosebumps.”
Super Bowl: Get ready for an arctic blast
At 3 p.m. Monday, the temperature in Arlington, Texas, was 55 degrees. Not bad for the last day of January and perfectly acceptable for a region about to be overrun with Super Bowl festivities.
The projected temperatures at 10 a.m. Wednesday in Arlington: 15 degrees.
Welcome to Texas, NFL. The league keeps taking its week-long football celebration to dicey weather locales, and it will pay the price this week, much like when that huge snowstorm paralyzed Atlanta during Super Bowl 34 (Rams-Titans).
The game will be fine — projected high for Sunday is 60 degrees — and you’ve got JerryWorld’s roof closed anyway. But the week is about parties and celebrations and, oh yeah, football practice for the Packers and the Steelers. Green Bay will work out at the Cowboys’ facility in Irving, while Pittsburgh will be at TCU in Fort Worth.
But the teams won’t be nearly as affected as everyone else. Indoor practice sites will take care of the Packers and the Steelers. Getting around town on icy roads, and staging massive parties without the option of going outdoors, that’s a little problematic.
I know it gets old going to Super Bowls in Miami and New Orleans and even Phoenix and San Diego. But there’s a reason those locales work. The weather cooperates. The Super Bowl is headed to Indianapolis next season, and East Rutherford, N.J., three years from now.
Should be fun. Dress warm.
NFL: Conference title games remarkably similar
The NFL’s two conference championship games were remarkably similar: Green Bay 21, Chicago 14, and Pittsburgh 24, New York Jets 19.
* Bitter cold weather. Temps at kickoff were 18 in Chicago, 15 in Pittsburgh, with wind chills below that.
Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher (54) looks over at Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (12) during the second half of the NFC Championship NFL football game Sunday, Jan. 23, 2011, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Jim Prisching)
* Spotty quarterback play. Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger both made lots of plays but lots of mistakes, too. Each threw two interceptions, and Big Ben added a lost fumble.
* Dominant starts, then hanging on. Green Bay led 14-0, and it seemed like 42-0. Pittsburgh led 24-0. Yet the Bears, with a third-team quarterback, rallied to get within 29 yards of a tie. And the Jets rallied to within a third-down stop of getting the ball back needing only a touchdown to win.
Now, the one big difference is that the Steelers-Jets didn’t have a Jay Cutler subplot.
The Bears quarterback was awful, but the criticism of Cutler NOT playing is silly. You can’t question the guy’s toughness. You can question his quarterbacking, which was terrible. You can question his leadership, for sitting sullen on the bench, detached from his team. But you can’t question his toughness.
Anyway, Steelers-Jets had none of that. No one is saying anyone on the Jets isn’t tough, with the possible exception of its tacklers, who let Rashard Mendenhall run wild. Give Rex Ryan his due: His Jets don’t quit. They play hard for him, even in awful circumstances, like a 24-point deficit in wind chill that would freeze a polar bear.
