THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE, Feb. 1, 2015
Soon the talk - or the lack of talk - will be over.
The two weeks of posturing will be over, an outcome will be decided, and all can go on to whatever it is they go on to next.
No, we're not talking about the Super Bowl, where one side has long grown tired of talking about DeflateGate, and one person on the other side just doesn't walk to talk about much at all.
We're talking about our building, where a Patriots fan in another department - we'll call her Marci - has been getting bombarded with anything and everything to do with the deflated football saga we've had to put up with the last two weeks.
Even Lucy and Charlie Brown are included in one of the cartoons. The others are ... well, you've probably seen many of them already on the Internet.
And Skittles were involved one day.
To her credit, "Marci" has been a good sport about it all. Should her team win today, I'll be curious what kind of payback she'll have for those who "decorated" her cubicle - among those being two from the editorial department. We'll call them "Ben" and "Mason."
We're a diverse building - in addition to fans of the teams playing today, we have fans of the 49ers, Rams and Bears, among others. So we've all had a dog in the hunt in a recent Super Bowl - some more recent than others.
SPEAKING OF dogs, I usually don't tear up over anything on the Internet - except when it is operating MADDENLY SLOW.
But Budweiser's Super Bowl ad with the Clydesdales and the lost dog certainly did the trick.
However, the parody offered up by GoDaddy.com was about as tasteless as humanely possible. Dog lovers must unite and find a way to punish the website for such a stupid ad.
If only Danica Patrick wasn't one of their pitchmen ...
ANYWAY, CAN you remember a recent Super Bowl where there was so much blather before the game, and so little of it about the actual game?
What about Tom Brady and the high-powered Patriots offense against the stifling Seahawks defense?
And, as a subplot, whether Seattle safety Kam Chancellor will be able to contain New England tight end Rob Gronkowski.
On the other side, can the Patriots control Russell Wilson, or will the 'Hawks QB be allowed to run around behind the line of scrimmage, from sideline to sideline, tiring out the New England defenders until he spots some wide-open pedestrian receiver 30 yards downfield?
The bigger talk centers around whether Richard Sherman's girlfriend - insert your own Legion of Boom joke here - can hold off delivering the couple's first child until after the game, so the Seahawks' talkative cornerback doesn't have to decide - family vs. football.
Or whether Marshawn Lynch, who for some reason kept getting paraded in front of the media when it was obvious he had nothing he wanted to say, will do the "Itchy Shuffle" if he scores the deciding touchdown.
NBC has likely already huddled and assigned cameramen to each of the footballs to be used in the game, lest anyone attempt to let the air out of any of them. If Gronk scores and spikes the football but it doesn't bounce back up, that might be a telling sign.
(Of course, this is not to be confused with two weeks ago, when the Packers figuratively let the air of the football once they thought they had a big enough lead on the Seahawks in the NFC title game. One reason why they aren't playing this week).
AND IT has come to our attention - through unsubstantiated, anonymous and possibly totally unreliable sources - that there may have been shenanigans involved in two of New England's three Super Bowl wins from 2002-05.
To wit:
In 2002, the Patriots stunned the St. Louis Rams 20-17. Years later, it was reported the Pats were accused of filming the Rams' walk-through the day before the game, a no-no. It has yet to be proven whether the Pats were involved.
However, another story went largely unreported. This was back in the days when teams were obligated to exchange game films before they played. As the story goes, the Rams dutifully sent the Patriots several tapes of their most recent games.
But in return, the Patriots allegedly sent the Rams tapes consisting of 100 hours of Body by Jake.
And in 2005, when New England beat Philadelphia 24-21 for the Patriots' third and last Super Bowl title - the one where Philly quarterback Donovan McNabb got sick in the fourth quarter - it didn't seem like a big deal at the time that New England had reportedly catered the Eagles' pregame meal.
Makes you wonder what other kind of side stories will emerge from today's game.
Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.