The longest week in sports kicks off in Tampa

TAMPA, Fla. " The longest week in sports officially kicked off Monday with this less than startling revelation:

The Arizona Cardinals seem to dress better than the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Granted, the survey in this case consisted of just five players from each team and their respective head coaches. But it was clear from looking at Kurt Warner's salmon-colored tie and the expensive suit Larry Fitzgerald was wearing that the Cardinals take their sartorial responsibilities far more seriously than their opponents, who showed up for their first media gathering in sweats and golf shirts.

That alone probably wasn't enough to prompt the bookies in Las Vegas to change the betting line, which has held steady at 7 points almost from the time it was posted last week. If fashion style points mattered in football, Michael Strahan would have had a lot more rings to go with the one he won last year with the New York Giants.

But this is Super Bowl week, and fans are starved for inside information. They must be, or else hundreds of writers, photographers and cameramen wouldn't have bothered to bolster the Tampa Bay economy by getting here early enough to record the first utterances of this, the 43rd Super Bowl.

What did we learn, other than Steelers' coach Mike Tomlin looks a lot better in his sideline gear than he does in what looked like a leisure suit from Pittsburgh's dynasty years of the 1970s.

Plenty, because all we had to do was ask.

Let's start with Warner, who plans to lead by example this week and show his younger teammates how to handle the pressure of the big game. Well, not the big game itself, but the media appearances they make to hype a game that is never supposed to need any hype.

Warner has been through it twice, and is determined not to show any fear in the face of the notebooks, microphones and cameras pointed his way.

"If you start panicking," Warner said, "they start panicking."

Apparently defensive end Bertrand Berry didn't get the memo because he began fighting his emotions after fans gathered to give the team a send-off at the Phoenix airport.

"It's overwhelming when you start to think about it," said Berry, who couldn't have thought much about it much before because he plays for the downtrodden Cardinals, after all.

Things seemed a little calmer in the Pittsburgh tent, where Troy Polamalu had his famous hair neatly pulled back in a ponytail, Tomlin had already held a team meeting, and Ben Roethlisberger talked about how different things seem this time around than when he nervously quarterbacked the Steelers to their fifth Super Bowl win a few years ago in icy Detroit.

Twenty Steelers from that team will be on the field Sunday, which might prove more significant than their fashion sense because the Cardinals have only five players with Super Bowl experience.

"I'm going to have fun, going to enjoy this because it may be my last," Roethlisberger said. "I hope I have five more, but you just never know."

Indeed, the players are perhaps the only variable in a weeklong dance the NFL choreographs to the minute before the teams finally take the field Sunday night to give Americans a much-needed respite from worrying about the economy collapsing around them.

All signs of the impending game are already in place, from the throngs of media to the Goodyear blimp floating lazily overhead. Security forces were promising a safe game, while party planners were promising fun to all lucky enough to get an invite to the festivities around town.

Still, the economic meltdown threatens to cut into the fun.

The Super Bowl is the ultimate corporate event, but with companies laying off workers by the thousands it's hard to justify sending executives to the game. Newspapers in dire straits are sending fewer reporters, if any, this year, and the NFL did something unheard of to make sure the stadium is full, dropping the price of a block of 1,000 game tickets from $800 to $500.

None of that mattered much Monday, when everyone seemed excited just to get the week going. For the newcomers it was just a taste of what will happen on Tuesday when all players and coaches are required to attend hour-long media gatherings at the stadium that sometimes border on the bizarre.

It was there last year that a Mexican TV reporter in a wedding dress got the scoop of the week when she asked Patriots coach Bill Belichick if she was more attractive than model Gisele Bundchen, Tom Brady's squeeze.

"I wouldn't go that far," Belichick said.

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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlbergap.org