It’s travel time for your frenemies at PFT, with nearly the entire crew descending on New York/New Jersey for Super Bowl XLVIII.
MDS is heading to wintry Manhattan from even more wintry Chicago. Darin Gantt travels from non-wintry Charlotte. Part-timer Curtis Crabtree will be coming to New York from Seattle, where he covers the Seahawks for KJR radio. Josh Alper already lives in New York. And I’m repeating the same journey made 18 other times since Labor Day.
Meanwhile, part-timer Mike Wilkening will remain hunkered down in Chicago, posting regular updates on the Super Bowl teams and all other NFL topics.
We’ll never complain about the weather at the Super Bowl site, although I reserve the right to continue to point out the failure of a certain host city in North Texas to have no plans or capabilities to remove two inches of hockey-quality ice from the streets and sidewalks for four full days. It’s the Super Bowl, and we get paid to spend the week covering it. How could we complain about anything, other than two inches of hockey quality ice covering the streets and sidewalks for four full days?
Of course, the weather becomes an obvious topic because of the chance that it will impact a game that traditionally has been played under clear, dry, and warm conditions. For the first time ever, the NFL is playing Russian roulette with America’s premier sporting event. That necessarily makes it a key storyline.
But we’ll be following every storyline that already exists and that may arise, with a regular stream of stories posted right here, all week long.
Each day this week, PFT Live will originate from Radio Row at the Super Bowl Media Center. It’s available at noon ET, by clicking the box in the right rail.
Also, Pro Football Talk on NBCSN (hosted by yours truly and Erik Kuselias) expands to 90 minutes on Monday, Thursday, and Friday (starting at 5:00 p.m. ET each day), with 60-minute shows on Tuesday and Wednesday. For the week, the show moves from the NBCSN studios in Connecticut to 30 Rock.
In-studio contributors will include Tony Dungy, Rodney Harrison, Hines Ward, and Scott Pioli, along with weekly regulars Ross Tucker, Shaun King, and Jon Ritchie.
Technically, it all gets rolling tonight on NBC with the Pro Bowl. Starting at 7:00 p.m. ET with Cris Collinsworth’s postseason awards special, the first-ever unconferenced game kicks off at 7:30 p.m. ET. At halftime, Dan Patrick will sit down with Peyton Manning, and I’ll be interviewing Russell Wilson. Throughout the game, MDS and I will be answering your question on the chat that accompanies the live stream of the game at NBCSports.com.
With Dan heading to Russia for the Olympics, I’ll also be sticking around to guest-host his weekday radio show (simulcast on NBCSN from 9:00 a.m. to noon ET) on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after the Super Bowl.
That’s 11 days in all of work that isn’t really work but please don’t tell anyone it isn’t work or someone may be tempted to try to stop paying us. Since you’ll never have to pay for any of our content (which means you’re guaranteed to always get your money’s worth), we hope you’ll be checking us out every day, multiple times per day. Through Super Bowl XLVIII and beyond.