Requiem for a circus

 Today is the first day of the stupidest month of the year, February, when we slowly begin to understand that The Sun Is A Myth Created By The Mayans, and also that The Damn Rodent Lies, Winter Is Going To Last Until May.

It's the month Ted Turner forgot to colorize, a monochrome dial tone in which we celebrate the birthdays of two presidents, but not on either of their birthdays. Also Valentine's Day, when men venture tremulously into the haunted realm of candy and flowers and Victoria's Secret. Also Super Bowl Week, which begins today but won't be like any Super Bowl Week in recent memory thanks to the Bastard Plague.

See, this won't be like usual, when the two teams show up at the game site a week before the game and are subjected to five days of questions about their families and their SECRET DESIRES, and that coach in PAL who convinced them there were Big Things in their future. No, sir.

 In deference to the pandemic, the teams won't be arriving until Friday. Which means, among other things, no Media Day or Opening Night or whatever they're calling it these days.

Instead, there will be a virtual Media Day/Opening Night, assuming the Zoom links all work. Which of course takes all the circus out of Super Bowl Week's most circus-y manufactured event.

It's always been the event that most defined the Roman Numeral Game, and showed us what a national holiday would look like if it wore a fright wig, fake nose and giant clown shoes. Alleged media types show up dressed as superheroes or brides or even, one year, Mozart. They ask grumpy coaches to put on funny hats just to hear them grump. They ask the players what a football is, and who their favorite Marvel character is, and what position Chewbacca would play if Chewbacca were a football player.

(An actual question actually asked of Bears tight end Desmond Clark one year)

It's all dumb and annoying and three rings of elephant dung. And yet, sometimes, even when Gilbert Gottfried shows up, you're compelled to laugh at it..

Not this year, though. This year won't be the same. 

This year, it will be players answering dopey questions from, I don't know, their  bathrooms or some place.

And how do you ask Coach Grumpy to put on a silly hat when he's 1,000 miles away?

Man. Some circus this will be.