Super Bowl Week: Let The Spectacle Begin

Super Bowl Week has arrived and America rejoices. The week leading up to the Super Bowl is truly American spectacle at its finest.

No sporting event dominates the landscape like the Super Bowl, just look at the raw numbers of households watching. Even the totally football-clueless tune in. There's a whole sub-genre of the Super Bowl surrounding the commercials that will be run during the game. That's the absurdity of the Super Bowl, and how it's an American institution like none other.

The only downside to the immense popularity of the game, and the week leading up to it, is that all that spotlight has driven out the crazy. The crazy is half the fun of Super Bowl Week. Can we get a Max McGee sneaking out the night before the game and getting tanked then starring in his team's win? How about the Colts partying like the Raiders in New Orleans, or the Cowboys of the 90's as chronicled by Jeff Pearlman in Boys will Be Boys? Maybe a Stanley Wilson cocaine bender, or a Eugene Robinson soliciting a prostitute?  Heck, how about something tame like Drew Brees pulling a Joe Namath and guaranteeing victory?

Nowadays, we usually get no such luck on the crazy front. We can only hope and pray someone says or does something crazy. Especially since SB Nation is on-site covering Super Bowl Week from Miami. We've sent Joel Thorman for general coverage all week.

Unless some player makes the news, we'll just have to talk about the teams and the game.

Up first, the NFC representative, the New Orleans Saints. The Saints have never played in a Super Bowl before. The Colts won one a few years ago. The Saints are kind of the new fresh-face of Super Bowl contenders. The Colts are the seasoned veterans who have been elite for most of the decade. Plus, they have Peyton Manning. Given that scenario, Indy is considered the favorite and some of the media are already proclaiming a victory. SB Nation's New Orleans Saints blog, Canal Street Chronicles, begs to differ. Clark Judge lays out the winning scenario for the Colts, Canal Street Chronicles offers up a point-by-point retort.

Meanwhile, there is significant news in the Indianapolis Colts camp. Star defensive end Dwight Freeney has ligament issues in his ankle, and is listed as questionable for Sunday's matchup. If Freeney can't go, that's a huge issue for the Colts.

SB Nation's Colts blog, Stampede Blue, will be covering the Super Bowl from a Colts perspective all week long. Big Blue Shoe is on the road to Miami and will detail his adventures all the way through the Super Bowl game.

They also take a look back at the guy who helped build this Colts team, Tony Dungy. This is the second time a team has gone to the Super Bowl one year after Dungy left as head coach. Jon Gruden's Bucs pulled off the trick, and now Jim Caldwell's Colts have done the same. Dungy's imprint was on both teams.

Putting team success above personal accolades is just one of the values Dungy instilled while he was in Indianapolis. Another value Dungy put in place while he was in Indianapolis was sticking to your convictions, even when it was unpopular.  During the Colts' Super Bowl run, fans were calling for Dungy to make drastic changes to fix the team's woeful run defense, but he knew the system was working, they just had to put the right players in the right places.  We've seen how that value continues to guide the Colts under Jim Caldwell.  Caldwell stuck to his belief that benching the Colts' starters against the Jets was the best decision amidst backlash from fans, the media, and even within the locker room.