Their arrivals were scheduled for early Sunday evening in Las Vegas.

And so it begins.

It’s Super Bowl Week in Sin City.

All the quiet of the previous week will be replaced by the noise and daily stories. It’s a tradition. It begins tonight with what they call Opening Night at the Super Bowl – what we used to call Media Day.

It used to be on Tuesday but a few years ago the NFL changed it to Monday night to allow fans to attend, etc. You know how it goes; it’s the crazy media free for all when players are asked the lamest questions that usually have nothing to do with football. You know there will be no shortage of mayhem with Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift questions. Patrick Mahomes can probably take the night off, there will be such a huge crowd around his tight end. Andy Reid will probably have his TV commercial persona while his tightly wound 49ers counterpart Kyle Shanahan likely won’t crack a smile. If he does, that’s headline news.

This week will be Brock Purdy’s time to possibly shine, the last pick chosen in the 2022 NFL Draft, who will be anything but irrelevant this week.

The media availability goes pretty much this way: after the frenzy where all players, coaches, etc. from both teams are made available Monday night, then each team will have just select players available on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday, the last day of availability, the two teams will have press conferences also at their hotels where all much be available, including assistant coaches,etc. The head coaches, QBs and a few key players will be at podiums and the rest will be at tables in a ballroom, like at a wedding. It’s a riot sometimes to see the few players sitting there with no one coming over to interview them. Talk about irrelevant. But it only lasts about an hour.

The idea of having a Super Bowl – heck, even an NFL franchise – in Las Vegas probably has late NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, the legendary chief from the 1970s who helped create the Super Bowl, turning over in his grave. The players will all be pretty much sequestered far away from The Strip, but you can bet once the fans arrive in full force usually on Thursday or Friday, watch out. And keep in mind it won’t be pool weather – temps will be low to mid 50s during the day, 40s and high 30s at night. More or less late March/early April weather around here.

Also this is the week when current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell holds his state of the game press conference. It used to on Friday, which gave it top billing with the teams not available. Then then several years ago it was moved to Wednesday, and now guess what – it is today. Yes, now the NFL wants it on Monday. And one more difference, a big one – it’s by invitation only. Invitation. The NFL is all-powerful, and they find any way to control the message. And by selecting who will be asking the questions, you can surely guess that message is in part being controled. Ugh.

And of course, this year’s Radio Row, fro m what we’ve seen on social media via video, is huge, in the Mandolay Bay Convenion Center, with hundreds of sports talk radio stations from major and not-so-major markets, and digital networks airing shows during each day starting today through the week. Typically, most of the crews from those shows don’t stay for the game and fly out Friday. Saturday is usually the quietest day – of course, in Vegas there is no such thing – until game day next Sunday.

Of couse here, there may be a hem and a haw and then a yawn as it’s been five years since the Patriots beat the Rams in Atlanta, and they haven’t had sniff of a Super Bowl Week since. And likely won’t for a while, it seems, but you just never know. Just like we didn’t think there’d be nine in 17 years.

Either way, Happy Super Bowl Week everyone.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on X (formerly twitter) @Telegraph _TomK.

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