A gorgeous Yumi Sakugawa comic called “Of Light.”

Another comic, this one about Groundhog Day, by Cassie J. Sneider.

Plus some great links from our fabulous weekend editors Zoe Ruiz and Gina Frangello.

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Whether actively experiencing the spectacle or not, there are a few reasons to like the Super Bowl in 2013, besides the fact that the Baltimore Ravens are the first major professional sports franchise, so far, to be named after a 19^th century poem. For starters, in a sports year that’s already brought us doping cyclists and fake dead girlfriends, the teams in this year’s contest are welcome standouts. The San Francisco 49ers were the first NFL team to join the “It Gets Better” campaign, and their opponent, the Ravens, has a team captain who is the most outspoken advocate of LGBT rights in the NFL, and whose presence has evolved the once overtly homophobic locker-room culture of his entire team.

In addition, the stories of players Colin Kaepernick, Vernon Davis, Justin Smith, Joe Flacco, and Ray Lewis are more heartwarming, grotesque, impressive, and tragic than the game itself can ever be. I must leave many stories out, but there are other places where, for instance, you can read about how the opposing teams in this Super Bowl are coached by brothers Jim Harbaugh (49ers) and John Harbaugh (Ravens); do a Twitter search for #HarBowl and you’ll find many more. Also, Ravens tackle Michael Oher’s difficult and triumphant life journey has already been comprehensively detailed in Michael Lewis’s book “The Blind Side,” and in the film of the same name starring Sandra Bullock, so I’m not going there either. Instead, let’s start with the story of an NFL player who, should his team win the Super Bowl, wants to appear on Ellen and dance with her on set.

BRENDON AYANBADEJO – THE ACTIVIST

On August 29^th, 2012, a 72-year old Baptist minister named Emmett Burns, Jr., a Democrat in the Maryland House of Delegates, was apparently upset after he learned that a Ravens player had donated two game tickets to a fundraiser for Marylanders for Marriage Equality. He wrote a letter to Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti with the following statement:

“I find it inconceivable that one of your players, Mr. Brendon Ayanbadejo, would publicly endorse Same-Sex marriage, specifically as a Ravens football player … I am requesting that you take the necessary action, as a National Football League Owner, to inhibit such expressions from your employees and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions. I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing.”

Emmett Burns, Jr. did not get his desired result. Other NFL players came to Ayanbadejo’s defense; three Oakland Raiders personally thanked Ayanbadejo for his stance following their next game. Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe memorably wrote Burns, “I can’t even begin to fathom the cognitive dissonance that must be coursing through your rapidly addled mind right now … I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won’t come into your house and steal your children. They won’t magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster.”

For Kluwe, the cockmonster heard ‘round the world was his first step out on the timely issue (Minnesota, like Maryland, had a ballot measure related to same-sex marriage in November 2012) but for Brendon, the 36-year old special teams captain of the Baltimore Ravens and 11-year NFL veteran, this public kerfuffle was a long time coming.

In 2008, Brendon was frustrated that then-candidate Barack Obama did not openly support same-sex marriage, and in April 2009 expressed his opinions on the Huffington Post. This made Brendon one of the first pro athletes to openly express support for same-sex marriage. At that time in the Ravens locker room, marriage equality was somewhere between stoichiometry and cholera as an off-field interest. Players made crude remarks and asked him when he would reveal his homosexuality, Brendon told the New York Times. “If I was walking by, and they wanted to be immature and make comments, I’d keep walking. If they wanted to be real men and have conversations, I would have, but no one did.”

Brendon, who has a six-year old daughter and one-year old son with his longtime girlfriend, isn’t in it for himself, per se – he won’t be the first active gay NFL player. Born in Chicago to a Nigerian man and an Irish-American woman, he credits experiences from his difficult youth in fashioning the open-minded man he is today. As a small child living in a housing project, dependent on charities for Christmas gifts and Thanksgiving meals, Brendon tells the New York Times, “You were around every kind of person you could imagine … differences didn’t matter, because we all had struggles.”

When Brendon, his mother, and siblings moved to Santa Cruz, California, he also took to heart the acceptance his new friends had for “a biracial boy from a Chicago housing project,” and befriended openly gay students at his high school. By the time he was a football player at UCLA, he was quickly active in his new community, volunteering to teach theater at local high schools to help make up for cuts in arts funding.

On the field, Brendon doesn’t get a lot of face time, but he’s one of the best in the NFL at what he does, being voted to the Pro Bowl (the NFL’s all-star game) three times as a special teams player. As the Ravens’ special teams captain, he’s one of a scrum of players doing an unglamorous job protecting kickers and trying to tackle returners, but is good enough in the open field to earn occasional appearances at linebacker when the Ravens’ opponents are in obvious passing situations.

For now, Brendon doesn’t mind that he’s more famous for what he does off the field, and wants to use the media blitz surrounding the Super Bowl as an opportunity to continue the fight for same-sex marriage. “There [are] still 47 or so states that don’t have it passed,” he recently told The Baltimore Sun. “It needs to be passed federally. Why not be the person to carry that message not only to the United States but to the rest of the world? I have this huge platform. The whole world is watching. It’s a message of positivity.  It’s a message of equality.  And it’s a chance to get it out. It’s not going to affect the way I play football but it’s going to affect a lot of people’s lives off the field.”

COLIN KAEPERNICK – THE PHENOM

Opening the 2012 season, the San Francisco 49ers starting quarterback was a man named Alex Smith. Alex had led the team to the NFC Championship game last year, one game away from the Super Bowl. Through his first nine games this year, he was the best quarterback in the NFL at completing his passes; over 70% of his throws were caught. His win-loss percentage since 2011 was 76%. He had the third-highest quarterback rating in the NFL. He was like a bus that was clean and almost always on time and had a driver that looked like the boring version of someone who dumped you in college.

Then Alex got hurt; nothing major, he’d only miss a few weeks, and this is why NFL teams have backup quarterbacks. It just turns out that the 49ers backup, 25-year old Colin Kaepernick. is the fastest 6’4”, 230-lb man in probably any sport, and can throw like hell to boot, making him perhaps the most dangerous and unpredictable offensive force in the game. In so many words, the deliberate, steady bus was replaced by a flaming Apache helicopter flown by a nude Vladimir Putin. By the time Alex got healthy in November, the switch was official. The most accurate quarterback in the NFL hasn’t started a game since.

At the time, Alex Smith probably didn’t know that the young man who took his job is really more of a baseball player. Colin was drafted by the Cubs, offered numerous Division I scholarships in baseball, but only one in football, by the Nevada Wolfpack, who wanted him to play safety, not quarterback. By rights, Smith could argue, Colin shouldn’t even be here, but much of Colin’s journey—from being born to an unwed 19-year old mother to starting in the Super Bowl—is an unlikely one.

When he was six weeks old, Colin’s mother gave him up for adoption, and he joined the Wisconsin family of Rick and Teresa Kaepernick. The Kaepernicks had two children already, and having lost a pair of infant sons to congenital heart defects, badly wanted another child, and Colin, a mixed-race boy with an African-American father and a white mother, became the youngest and final Kaepernick child.

Colin grew up loving African-American music and culture (in middle school, he even got his hair braided like basketball star Allen Iverson) but was never curious about his biological parents. When he was a teenager, his mother told him everything she knew about his adoption and birth parents, but he wasn’t, and still isn’t, interested in meeting them. Since he’s become famous as the quarterback for the 49ers, his birth mother, Heidi Russo, 44, now of Thornton, Colorado, has come out of the ether and waged a public campaign to make her biological son’s acquaintance. Colin is not, as yet, willing to reciprocate. The Kaepernicks say they support any decision he makes.

On Sunday, February 3^rd, heartbreaker Colin Kaepernick will make his tenth start in the NFL, making his path to the Super Bowl the third-fastest in history for a starting QB. Comparatively, he’s still not making much money from the sport. He’s still playing off of his rookie contract, and has no Super Bowl-related performance bonus, but as you may have heard on NPR or numerous other outlets, he’s already at work on a bit of merchandising. His habit of kissing his bicep after scoring a TD, which he calls “Kaepernicking,” has been trademarked in the same fashion as Tim “Tebowing” Tebow and Jeremy “Linsanity” Lin before him, figuring that if people are going to make products with that phrase, he should see the profits made in his name.

Colin also has a different plan for those profits. He wanted to give the proceeds for his “Kapernicking”-related merch sales to charity, and his first idea was to call his parents. Remembering how they lost two infant sons to congenital heart conditions, he asked them for help in finding a nonprofit associated with that medical issue, and they chose Camp Taylor, a camp for children afflicted with heart defects.

“What happened to the boys, it’s not something that we talked a lot about,” Rick Kaepernick told USA Today. “I think it’s his way of hurting with us, but also saying, ‘Let’s do something about this. Let’s help.’”

VERNON DAVIS – THE RENAISSANCE MAN

Brendon Ayanbadejo and Colin Kaepernick are notable off the field for their political activism and charitable work, respectively, but San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis is a different stripe of citizen-athlete altogether.

In a college sport where the student/athletes can have bullshit majors, infrequent attendance, mediocre graduation rates, and still be celebrated like heroes, a Division I football player who chooses an interesting major and works unusually hard at it during and after school is quite uncommon. On the spectrum of American probabilities, it’s somewhere between having a condom break during sex and having Meat Loaf’s autograph. A studio art major while at the University of Maryland—not “Art Appreciation,” mind you; this dude had to seriously paint—Vernon has taken his love for art with him to San Francisco.

He’s started a philanthropic organization called The Vernon Davis Foundation for the Arts, which provides grants to nonprofit programs and scholarships to dedicated art students. He has also teamed with the San Francisco Unified School District to create the Vernon Davis Visual Arts Scholarship, which goes yearly to a college-bound public high school student interested in a visual arts career. He’s even opened his own gallery, Gallery 85, on Santana Row in San Jose, California, making the gala opening a fundraiser for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the San Jose youth nonprofit UnityCare.

In addition, Vernon’s an interior designer and co-founder of the firm Modern Class Design, with clients from the Bay Area to Miami, many of them fellow athletes. “I really enjoy looking at different rooms and putting ideas and designs together,” he told 49ers.com. “I love being creative and putting my touch on the houses.”

From what I’ve seen, a Vernon Davis-designed interior seems to prominently feature abstract paintings, which very well could be Vernon Davis originals. He still paints regularly year-round, and if you want to buy one of his pieces without having him rearrange your furniture, I just saw one on eBay for $600.

Still, not every teammate is spellbound by Vernon’s oeuvre. “Justin Smith teases me all the time, saying, ‘Man, that’s nothing,” Vernon says. “My son could do this!’”

JUSTIN SMITH – THE WOUNDED WARRIOR

On December 16^th, 2012, 33-year old San Francisco 49ers defensive end Justin Smith tore his right triceps in a game against the New England Patriots.

“What surprises me is he actually got hurt,” Kirk Farmer, a teammate of Justin’s at Jefferson City High and at the University of Missouri, told the San Jose Mercury News. “I played with him and I was hurt all the time. He’s never been hurt — ever.” This is not hyperbole. When Justin missed the next game, a Dec. 23^rd contest against the Seattle Seahawks, it was the first football game that Justin had missed, on any level.

The 49ers are clearly not as good without Justin in the lineup. The first time they played the Seahawks, with Justin, they won 13 – 6. Without Justin, they were humiliated 42 – 13, and Justin’s replacement in the lineup, a likeable gentleman named Ricky Jean-Francois, was repeatedly exploited by the Seahawks’ rushing attack. For the 49ers, the results of life with Justin’s backup uncovered a disorienting revelation. It was the football equivalent of finding out what song your parents had playing the moment you were conceived, and learning that the song was “What’s New Pussycat.”

What they witnessed against the Seahawks could not be unseen, but what in heaven’s name could be done? Rushing Justin back to the field was out of the question. Dr. David Chang, an independent orthopedic surgeon, predicted a recovery time of 12 weeks. ESPN injury expert Stephania Bell predicted that if he returned at all, he “isn’t going to be full strength again this season.” Evidently, Justin didn’t get the memo. He was playing again by January 12^th and in every game since. It’s clear that for Justin, there’s simply no other way to live.

He’s known in the NFL as “Cowboy,” and not because he likes country music or calls every pair of shoes “shitkickers” or says things like “Cowboy Up!” when he’s in the cereal aisle. He grew up on a 1400-acre cattle farm in rural Missouri, spent his entire life doing the hard work of raising Hereford truebred cattle, and when he wasn’t lifting hay bales, he was in the gym, lifting weights. It’s where he met his wife, then a varsity long-distance runner, in college.

During his first year on the 49ers, Justin’s defensive line coach Jim Tomsula saw him spitting out tooth fragments after a collision with a teammate, and asked if he wanted treatment for the chipped teeth. “Nah,” Justin grunted. “Hell, I got a bunch of ‘em.”

Partially torn triceps are a different realm than chipped teeth, however, and playing through this kind of injury can exact a dear tuition, payable in future surgeries, decades of painkillers, financial insolvency, and for the moment, having a known, exploitable bulls-eye on his right arm.

Former NFL fullback Lorenzo Neal, no stranger to injury in his own Pro Bowl career, spoke to a radio station about what Justin Smith should expect. “Guys are going to be hitting it, chopping it,” Neal said. “The triceps is mostly when you extend. He’ll have one arm to punch with, I think the other arm will be more to grab and wrap and tackle.”

“He’s going to be sore,” Neal adds. “And I know what he can do. They can put him on Toradol.” (Toradol is a potent non-steroidal anti-inflammatory) “Toradol, they inject in your butt. It’s a pain killer, it numbs the pain. You can play through it. Toradol, it’s candy. It was tea for me. I was taking Toradol like I was drinking coffee. You’re tight, you’re sore, and it relieves the pain for those three hours. We’ll see how Justin responds to it.”

We will see, indeed. Former player Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, writing for NFL.com, recalls, “One veteran player looked at me and said, ‘Take a shot of that and you won’t feel a thing when you play.’ I jumped in line, and that was the beginning of my Toradol dependency. After my first shot, I heard someone yell across the locker room, ‘Once you get on the T-train, you won’t get off.’”

The side effects are well known. Toradol rips up your stomach lining, and can cause vomiting, bloody stool, liver disease, and congestive heart failure. In addition, its pain-masking qualities make the player temporarily ignorant of further injuries endured while under the influence of the drug, with concussions and plantar fasciitis being among the most common collateral “side effects.” So, when the drug wears off, you may have a completely new injury, which can either mean surgery and the potential end of your career, or more drugs, and that’s not a choice that most players think over for too long.

Miami Herald writer Dan Le Batard wrote a recent story on former Miami Dolphins defensive end Jason Taylor, who was in so much pain, he couldn’t bend over to pick up his kids for almost two years and had to sleep standing up in a hallway. Taylor was so dependent on Toradol to play football, it numbed him to the compartment syndrome that developed in his calf; at one point, Taylor was three hours away from having his leg amputated.

Le Batard also mentions former NFL player Keith McCants, whose dependence on painkillers led to a post-football life of street drugs, and a suicide attempt, all in an attempt to stop the pain. The stories of Taylor and McCants puts the recent suicides of retired players Dave Duerson and Junior Seau, and that of active player Jovan Belcher, who also killed his girlfriend before killing himself, into chilling context. Their paths may have started, in part, with the injection that Justin took on January 12^th.

“Players play, it is who we are,” Jason Taylor told Le Batard. “Would I do it all again? I would. If I had to sleep on the steps standing up for 15 years, I would do it.”

In 2011, a group of former players led by Joe Horn filed suit against the NFL, accusing the league and its teams of repeatedly administering the painkiller Toradol before and during games, despite the drug’s tendency to exacerbate high-risk injuries.

The NFL, for its part, has been actively trying to limit the use of the drug, and has begun requiring a waiver of liability for players who take it. The players’ union opposes this waiver, claiming that it’s a violation of the collective bargaining agreement, and in the meantime, the T-train keeps on rolling, with stops in all 32 locker rooms.

Justin’s been quiet on his injury, its treatment, and its effects. He told the New York Times, “I don’t want to get into how it feels, or this or that.”

“The parent in you worries about it,” Justin’s father, Dave Smith, told the San Jose Mercury News. “You don’t want him to do anything that will cause lasting damage. When he comes home to his wife and kids, he’s just Dad.”

JOE FLACCO – THE STOIC

The oldest of six kids in a tight Italian-American family from South Jersey, Joe Flacco seldom got in trouble while growing up. “He was very responsible,” his mother, Karen, tells Baltimore Magazine. “He was known as Father Joe.”

Despite being a starting quarterback, and having the attention that implies, Joe has always tried to keep a low profile. While at high school, he carpooled to school with buddies. In college, he rode his bike to class. As an NFL rookie, he showed up for training camp in his grandmother’s 1992 Cutlass Ciera. (He now drives a Ford F-150, so he’s wearing his success on his sleeve a bit more.)

“Unless you are in the locker room or you know me, it’s tough to get a read from me because I’m not a very outgoing person,” Joe says. “I’m not really vocal in the way a rah-rah kind of guy is.”

Joe Flacco, the quiet man with “the strongest arm in the NFL,” according to ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski, is still not a household name. Despite a strong career playoff record, including leading his team to the Super Bowl, he’s rarely mentioned among the “elite” quarterbacks, and his own team seems to be waiting to see how he performs on February 3rd before offering him a contract extension.

Then again, despite his physical gifts, Joe has never appeared to be elite. His high school team never had a winning record. His college team, the Delaware Blue Hens, didn’t even make him a captain (and quarterbacks are almost always captains). In the practices for the 2008 Senior Bowl, he showed all the talent in the world, but in his NFL career he has the tendency to completely disappear. With the exception of week 14 against the Redskins, Joe’s road record in 2012 was like seven incontinent toddlers in a bounce house.

“Flacco doesn’t rank in the top 10 in quarterback rating, completion percentage, touchdown passes or yards per completion,” Clifton Brown writes in The Sporting News. “That’s not elite. The Ravens have won 10 straight when [running back Ray] Rice runs for 100 yards or more. That’s still their best formula for success.”

But when Joe’s on, he could stand 500 feet downwind from a magazine stand and hit a photo of Kim Kardashian in the baby bump. He beat two of the best – Peyton Manning and Tom Brady – for the right to play football in February, and he beat them with his arm, throwing more TD passes than each of them, with no interceptions.

For their part, his teammates believe. “That’s why we’re going to the Super Bowl,” wide receiver Torrey Smith said to The Washington Post. “I’m sure there will be some people who won’t give him due unless we win it. But after the way he played in the second half [against New England], if that’s not elite, what is?”

“The question for Joe is about stepping up,” sportscaster Rich Gannon told USA Today. “With Ray Lewis retiring, Joe is going to have to step outside his comfort zone and be more demanding of teammates, play more of a demonstrative leadership role.”

This may be tough for Joe. “I think a tough guy doesn’t really show many emotions,” he says. “Not to say that I don’t have emotion, because that’s not true. But when things are going bad, as a leader, you can’t act like anything is wrong. You go out there and take each snap like it’s the same, no matter what the score is, no matter what happened on the last play. It’s just the way I was brought up.”

RAY LEWIS – THE SPECTACLE

No player has been more exhaustively written about in the run up to the Super Bowl than retiring 37-year old Baltimore Ravens middle linebacker Ray Lewis. He’ll likely be the most televised player in the whole shebang, from his pre-game Elaine Benes dance (seriously, if that’s not it, what is it?) to his post-game Michael Stipe act, where he peels off layer after layer of clothing to reveal various didactic t-shirts.

A former tight end for the Indianapolis Colts who I know has told me that he considered Ray Lewis among the most overrated defenders he ever faced; which is not to say that Ray is bad, just that his fine performance is not commensurate with the deafening noise around it. Over the past fifteen years, with the possible exception of the Chicago Bears’ Brian Urlacher, no NFL defensive player has been so hyped and so visible for so long, for all kinds of reasons.

Maybe you know that Ray was indicted for the murder of two men back in the year 2000 and was acquitted and testified against his buddies, who were also indicted, later settling out of court with the victims of the families when they sued him for damages. Grantland has a detailed breakdown of the trial; if you’re interested, start there.

After his acquittal, he immediately helped lead his team to the Super Bowl in 2001, so being a suspect in a yet-unsolved (and still unsolved) murder didn’t slow him down much. Ray has also since found Jesus in a serious way, fathered six kids with four different women, starred in some surreal Old Spice commercials, played video games on TV with Paul Rudd, and been a famously emotive linebacker for the same team his entire career.

Ray’s also done a ton of charity work, delivering much-needed medical supplies to Ethiopia, helping disadvantaged families in Baltimore through his Ray Lewis 52 Foundation, and even came to the aid of a 10-year old boy who was orphaned when his mother killed herself and his siblings. “I don’t want to come into his life for a phase,” Lewis said after spending a day with the boy. “I want to be in his life forever.”

Other people touched by Ray Lewis have reason to be less enthused by the prospect of his attention. The Baltimore Sun in 2000 detailed “allegations that Lewis hit or grabbed two former girlfriends, both pregnant, while he was in college at the University of Miami in 1994 and 1995″ and reported “accusations to police by several women”—one of them pregnant—”in the Windsor Inn on Nov. 30 [1999] that Lewis hit them.” He’s also been taken to court a couple of times by different women for back payment of child support, despite his insistence that “he is determined not to repeat his childhood experience. He never had much of a relationship with his father…who would disappear from home for lengthy stretches.”

Even for a famous American football player, Ray is a complex man with a checkered past, and while he’s done his best to turn his life around with God’s word and good works, not everyone is a believer. Anna Burns Welker, wife of New England Patriots receiver Wes Welker, couldn’t stomach Ray’s showboating during the Ravens AFC Championship win over the Patriots and summarily tweeted:

“Proud of my husband and the Pats. By the way, if anyone is bored, please go to Ray Lewis’ Wikipedia page. 6 kids, 4 wives. Acquitted for murder. Paid a family off. Yay. What a hall of fame player! A true role model!”

You decide on Sunday whether to cheer for the player, the team, or both, should you be a Ravens fan. Still, even after Ray’s tears dry, be they of joy or sadness, you definitely haven’t seen the last of him; he’s already agreed to be a sportscaster for ESPN, ensuring that his effusive dogma and divisive histrionics will likely continue in public until he dies. As such, one of the most documented second acts in the life of an American athlete will linger, making the intervening time resemble something like forgiveness.

***

You can find “A Super Bowl Preview For People Who Don’t Know Football (2011 Edition)” here and “A Super Bowl Preview For People Who Don’t Know Football (2012 Edition)” here.

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If Hollywood could cast the Super Bowl teams, it wouldn’t choose most of the guys who make up the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. It also couldn’t invent the stories of how these people got here any better.

For instance, there’s Mark Herzlich, a former top NFL prospect who was diagnosed with bone cancer while in college, took a year off to beat the disease, returned to the game, and then went undrafted by every NFL team. As a last-ditch, he auditioned for training camp. By November, about two years after undergoing chemotherapy, Mark was a starting linebacker for the Giants.

There’s five-foot-seven Danny Woodhead of the Patriots, a player considered too small even for Division I college football, who went to the only place that wanted him, a little school in Nebraska called Chadron State, where he worked his ass off, and by the time he graduated, he was college football’s all-time leading rusher. He’s still so anonymous that he worked at a sporting goods store on a day off last year and pretty much no one recognized him. Now he’s a running back for a team in the goddamned Super Bowl.

Most players you see this Sunday began their lives at least as distant from the possibility of the NFL as you or I did, and will probably end in a much more desolate place besides. If the Super Bowl is the only football you watch all year, this is the one time in their lives you will see almost all of them.

How often do you get to see the unquestionable apotheosis of a man’s life, the sum of his purpose, the payoff for Mark beating bone cancer, the middle finger to all the assholes who said Danny’s too small, with it all ending in a W and an L and tears all around and no subjectivity whatsoever? You don’t have to like it, but it’s there, for real.

TOM BRADY

Let’s start here. Even if you’ve spent your life until now strenuously avoiding the NFL, eschew all bars with TVs, break up with people the moment they mention their fantasy football team, or cross the street to avoid obvious non-athletes in sports jerseys, you still probably know the name Tom Brady. And why not? Just look at him. It’s annoying. He’s like the goddamned Homecoming King of America. Look at him with Gisele Bundchen. That’s annoying too. Do you know they made a combined income of $76 million between May 2010 and May 2011? Annoying as urine in a public pool.

The man is like the personification of the (mainstream male) American Dream. And he hasn’t completely scotched it in the public eye like Tom Cruise or Tiger Woods or Brett Favre. Sure, there was that thing where he broke up with Bridget Moynihan right around the time they conceived their child, but he was present for his son’s birth, apparently has a civil relationship with Bridget, and spends time with the child he fathered with her. I’m not trying to stick up for the guy, but to say he ditched his pregnant girlfriend for a Brazilian supermodel isn’t quite the whole story, even if that phrase is easy to remember and fun to say.

That about covers why you shouldn’t like the guy. This is why you might: Even though he’s arguably the most effortlessly natural quarterback now in the game, and a guy that the NFL – meaning his fellow players – voted as the entire league’s best player, it was not a straight shot to success for Tom Brady. Until a fellow player’s freak injury, there was no guarantee he would ever even start a game in professional football. He was a benchwarmer who had made virtually no money by NFL standards and was on the path to becoming a career backup.

While he was born into a relatively well-off (and athletic) family in San Mateo, California, he was never handed a starting quarterback job on any team at any level. When his high school football coach told him he was too small and needed to hit the weight room, he did one better – he convinced his parents to hire him a personal trainer. He started working harder in the offseason than any other player on the team, to the point that the other players considered Tom’s personal workout regimen far more strenuous than the one mandated by the coaches.

Tom eventually earned the starting job, and while he performed well enough to get the attention of Division I programs, it looked like he had more of a future as a backup catcher in baseball. The Montreal Expos thought so, and in 1995 drafted him late (in the 18^th round, after two other future major league catchers), which meant that Tom could look forward to being the next Crash Davis.

Instead, he elected to attend the University of Michigan, which was a terrible idea if he wanted to play football. For years he was behind future NFL quarterback Brian Griese before being forced to split time with a younger, much more celebrated pro prospect named Drew Henson. He didn’t have the bloodlines of Griese (whose dad was a former NFL quarterback) or the hype of Henson, who the coach seemed to favor. A lot of players in Tom’s position would’ve transferred schools. Instead, he stuck it out and beat Henson for the job, leading Michigan to two bowl victories.

Even so, the folks at the next level once again were down on Tom Brady. Despite his hard-won success in college, he was considered a backup at NFL level by scouts who saw his unchiseled 190-lb. frame and weird delivery. Pretty much anyone taken after the 3^rd round of the NFL draft isn’t guaranteed a spot on a team. The Patriots took Tom in the 6^th. He had to fight just to be a benchwarmer.

The following year, the Patriots’ starting quarterback, Drew Bledsoe, went down with a freak injury in Week 2. The benchwarmer was given a shot, and Tom performed ably. Bledsoe had been the team’s franchise quarterback since 1993, and when he recovered months later, he wanted his old job back. The team elected to go with the hardworking kid from California, and Brady led them to a Super Bowl victory in his first year as an NFL starter.

“There are plenty of things I’m deficient at,” Brady told Sports Illustrated in 2005. “I’ve never been the fastest, never had the best arm, and never been very strong. I still question sometimes whether I’m really cut out for this. I think I am pretty insecure.”

Seven years later, he’s playing in his fifth Super Bowl. I hope he thinks he’s cut out for this now.

ELI MANNING

Unlike Tom Brady, who had to forge his own legacy on every level of football, Elisha Nelson Manning has followed in the footsteps of a famous NFL father (Archie) and brother (Peyton), and has received every advantage that this implies, every step of the way.

If you watch the Super Bowl, no doubt the cameras will cut to Archie and Peyton about 20,000 times (probably sitting with the third brother, Cooper, who quit football at 18 because of a congenital spinal condition). The family drama in the Manning empire is immense and deep-seated. Archie played forever on a horrible team (the New Orleans Saints of the 1970s and 80s). He never made the Super Bowl once. He never even made the playoffs once. While he still made a good living, he spent his career toiling in half-empty stadiums, every year having to explain to his little sons why their dad is watching the Super Bowl on TV.

Eli followed in Archie’s academic footsteps, attending his dad’s alma mater (Ole Miss) where he was quarterbacking his freshman year and starting by his sophomore year. He was considered the top QB in the country coming out of college in 2004, and the historically awful San Diego Chargers (who at that point had only four winning seasons in their last 20 years) had the first overall pick in the draft and planned to choose Eli.

Archie, perhaps remembering the frustration of his career spent on a bad team, wasn’t thrilled about his son revisiting this fate. Neither was Eli. The family ordered the San Diego Chargers not to draft Eli. They did anyway. They made him pose with a Chargers jersey and took photos. Eli looks like a man who won a cash prize for Best Erectile Dysfunction.

For the brief time he was a Charger, Eli threatened to never join the team. He talked about instead going to grad school (he had a 3.44 in college, outstanding for a football player). He felt pissed off that the Chargers drafted him, even though they made him a millionaire several times over, because he told them not to. Overall, the first impression many NFL fans had of Eli was that he was a big whiny baby.

And probably not for the first time in his life, Eli got his way. He was traded to the New York Giants for draft picks that coincidentally helped make San Diego a consistent playoff contender.

Some people, especially the folks in San Diego, still hold this against Eli. I guess that’s fair. But to most of the NFL, Eli’s leadership and skill as quarterback of the Giants has outshone the petulant way he entered the league. He’s also been a good, decent, even interesting guy off the field. He married his college sweetheart, Abby McGrew. He hosts a charity golf event for the blind. He’s helped raise five million dollars for a children’s hospital in Mississippi. He’s co-authored a children’s book. He’s appeared on The Simpsons.

He was also the second member of his family to win a Super Bowl, in 2008, the year after his brother Peyton won one for the Colts. Eli’s Super Bowl, incidentally, was against Tom Brady’s Patriots, who were undefeated entering that game, and therefore heavily favored. Unfazed, Eli beat them with one of the most thrilling Super Bowl finishes of all time. Tom Brady hasn’t beaten Eli since.

Eli Manning typifies the kind of quarterback Tom was always warming the bench for, with his NFL bloodlines, his easy roads to starting jobs, his high draft status, his instant riches and quick success. Tom is undeniably the better quarterback now, and has earned a life many would envy. But there’s still one thing he has to do.

CHAD OCHOCINCO

Since the retirement of Dennis Rodman from the NBA, the title of Craziest Dude In Sports undeniably belongs to Chad Ochocinco. Let’s start with the name. Born Chad Johnson, he took the jersey number 85 upon entering the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals, and after several years of success, toyed with the idea of putting “Ochocinco” on the back of his jersey (never mind that “85” in Spanish is ochenta y cinco; he knows this).

Problem is, he wasn’t in the XFL. You can’t just put some shit on the back of your jersey like Rod “He Hate Me” Smart; in the NFL, it has to be your real name. So he legally changed it. He is, on his government identification, Chad Ochocinco. He’s even considered changing it again to “Chad Hachi Go” (Eight Five in Japanese) but so far hasn’t followed through on this. So far.

Chad’s life started off pretty distant from all of this. He was raised by his grandparents in the poor Miami neighborhood of Liberty City, and didn’t see much of his father or his mother (who left him behind and moved to Los Angeles). He was hyperactive and a lousy student, one of those kids who got kicked upstairs every year he was in school.

What he did right was surround himself with other young talent that pushed him. His playground pals included Duane Starks and Terry Cousin, both of whom would go on to play in the NFL. He had two older cousins, Keyshawn Johnson and Samari Rolle, who were both putting in the work necessary to earn NFL careers, and Chad emulated them. Under the eye of his grandfather, he also stayed out of any major trouble. When Chad made his high school’s varsity team as a freshman, his grandfather attended every game.

One night during his sophomore year, Chad didn’t see his grandfather in the stands. He found out after the game that the man who raised him had been shot and killed. Chad was devastated. His grades, never great, continued to slip. Unlike his cousins and his playground friends, he wasn’t going to academically qualify for a Division I scholarship.

Chad moved out to Los Angeles and attended Santa Monica College to get his grades in shape, playing football alongside Steve Smith (now a star wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers). An SMC coach named Charlie Collins became a mentor for Chad and helped him focus on and off the field. In time, his academic transcript improved. He got into Oregon State University in 2001 and finally began to reach his potential. Eleven years later, he’s in his first Super Bowl, during his first season on the New England Patriots.

In the last decade, Chad has also:

• Fathered four children

• Co-hosted a talk show (with then-teammate Terrell Owens) called “The T.Ocho Show”

• Rode a bull in a professional competition (for 1.5 seconds)

• Appeared on WWE Raw

• Starred in his own dating show, “The Ultimate Catch,” and continued a relationship with the winner, Rubi Pazmino

• Appeared in a PETA anti-fur ad

• Tried out for the Sporting Kansas City team of Major League Soccer and was offered a spot on the reserve team

• Beat a thoroughbred horse in a foot race

• Collected over 3 million Twitter followers

• Appeared on “Dancing With the Stars”

• Ran an ad looking for a roommate in Boston (his only requirements were that they had an Xbox and the Internet)

• Ultimately moved in with “Basketball Wives” star Evelyn Lozada, and had a giant fish-tank installed in the arch over their bed

• Live-tweeted the January 24^th, 2012 State of the Union address, at one point calling out John Boehner: @SpeakerBoehner Just read some of your tweets and you seem pretty angry kind sir. I can see you on tv but you’re not smiling. Hope you’re ok

This year, Chad spent more time ghost-riding his Prius in Boston than catching passes on the gridiron; he only caught 15 balls for the Patriots over the course of the whole season. It’d be a shame if the Patriots don’t suit him up on Sunday (it’s possible they may not). He’s come from poverty, worked his way into Division I football, and had a hell of a career, making it to his first Super Bowl at age 34. It would honestly be too bad if he just had to Tweet about it. But we’ll see him either way.

HATE THE GAME, NOT THE PLAYERS

The grim joke in pro football circles is that the NFL stands for “Not For Long,” and it’s the truth. The average NFL career is about three years, which you wouldn’t plan for, if you’re talented, but it happens. Then the world gets a 25-year-old with bad knees who’s been gunning for a pro career his whole life at the expense of everything else, it’s no big shocker that 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are in financial distress within two years of retirement.

Even the most of the guys who make it past Year Three are one major injury away from irrelevance, anonymity, and a good shot at eventual poverty, caused by/compounded with the physical and mental disabilities directly resulting from the brutal force and pacing of NFL football. The league has been famously neglectful of its veterans, and many are devastated by the financial and physical tolls of their football-related injuries. As a result, over one hundred former players have signed on to at least nine different lawsuits alleging the league’s deception about and negligence in its treatment of concussions in particular.

The NFL has since made significant changes to its diagnosis and treatment of concussions, requiring players to undergo a battery of tests before being allowed to return to the field, including independent exams outside the purview of a team’s medical staff. Still, considering that the most significant piece of protective gear – the helmet – is also the game’s greatest blunt force weapon (albeit one whose intentional use as such invites a significant penalty) the game will never be safe enough. Most of the players you’ll see on Sunday are only there because the game hasn’t utterly destroyed them yet.

So, hate the game. But try to understand the players. Millions play high school football. 10,710 get Division I football scholarships. Only 90 will wear a uniform this Sunday. This is the culmination of endless games of catch with Dad in the backyard, of 6 AM wind sprints on Saturday mornings, of disproportionate community attention, and the sacrifices that pruned the options that led away from, and miraculously toward, a difficult and matchless goal.

VICTOR CRUZ and WES WELKER

Victor (the young New York Giant) and Wes (the veteran New England Patriot) are the best wide receivers on their respective teams. They’re both short for an NFL wideout (Welker is 5’9”; Cruz 6’0”), they both have steady girlfriends (Welker actually just got engaged to Anna Burns after two years, and three weeks ago, Cruz had a child with his longtime girlfriend Elaina Watley), and they both had good role models in hard-working, blue-collar dads.

They also tied each other for longest touchdown in the NFL this year (each had a 99-yard catch and run) and during the season, only Detroit’s Calvin “Megatron” Johnson had more receiving yards than either of these guys. Plus, I love watching them. Wes always looks like he’s trying to slice a car in half with his face. And Victor runs at defenders like he’s driving through Jell-O on a bear made of knives. They’re two of the best in the game and easily capable of carrying their teams.

Which brings me to this: unlike Eli Manning, Tom Brady, or Chad Ochocino, neither Wes nor Victor was even drafted by an NFL team. Not even in the sixth round where projected backups like Brady were taken or in the seventh round where the total longshots get picked. When these two men came out of college, nobody even considered them worth a roll of the dice. They were training camp filler. Warm bodies. Tackling dummies you could beat the shit out of in practice because the team hadn’t invested any money in them.

Neither was an overnight success, either. Wes didn’t even stick with his first team, the Chargers, who dumped him after one game. The New York Giants initially thought even less of Victor. In the NFL, wide receivers are required to have a jersey number between 11 and 19 or 80 and 89 (I don’t know why, but it’s the rules, and if you’re on a team’s roster as wideout you must have a number in that range) and the Giants brass gave Victor Cruz a jersey that said #3. It’s kind of like firing someone before they’re hired. Victor could’ve considered that a dick move, and he’d be right.

Victor didn’t let it get to him. In his first game ever in the NFL, a preseason exhibition against the New York Jets, he torched one of the best defenses in pro football for 145 yards and 3 touchdowns. Jets coach Rex Ryan, being filmed for the HBO series “Hard Knocks,” responded, “I don’t know who the hell No. 3 is, but holy shit!”

Wes was eventually picked up by the Miami Dolphins, who put him to use, making him the first player in NFL history to record a punt return, a kickoff return, a field goal, an extra point, and a kickoff in the same game. The Dolphins’ opponent that day, the New England Patriots, must’ve been taking notes. In 2007, they traded for him, and ever since, no one in the NFL has caught more passes than Wes Welker.

In his second season as a Giant, Victor Cruz had a new number (#80) and made the team out of training camp. Despite not initially making the starting lineup, he led the Giants in receiving. More famously, he created a personal touchdown dance based on the salsa moves taught to him by his Puerto Rican grandmother. Victor, born and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, is half Puerto Rican on his mother’s side, making him one of only three players of Puerto Rican descent currently in the NFL.

Although the Giants are marketing a t-shirt behind Victor’s salsa moves, he otherwise seems to want to keep a low profile, already turning down a chance to be on “Dancing With The Stars.” He hasn’t seemed to lose sight of the fact that, only two years after being a kid that no NFL team wanted to waste a draft pick on, he’s a starting wide receiver in the Super Bowl. “I don’t even know how to put it into words,” Victor told the New York Post. “I’m just happy to be here.”

Wes Welker has been to the Super Bowl once before – the heartbreaking loss to the Giants in 2008. In the meantime, the veteran has put his big paycheck to good use in his community, establishing the “83 Foundation” (after his uniform number) to help support sports programs for underprivileged students in the Oklahoma City area. His free football camp, which grows every year, reaches hundreds of kids in Oklahoma City and Wes has plans to expand it to Boston.

I don’t imagine the week of canoodling with his new fiancé will make Wes soft. He’s always been an overachiever (when he was 9, he once scored 16 goals in a soccer game, against an undefeated team) but going from undrafted cast-off to the most productive wide receiver in professional football is almost impossible. Coincidentally, the one person in the NFL with the best chance to match that achievement is Victor Cruz.

Victor and Wes are two anonymous men from disparate parts of America, who came from nothing, were handed nothing, and are now quantifiably among the best in the world at what they do. All they ask is three hours of your time on Sunday. Wish them well.

BRIAN WATERS

Brian Waters of the New England Patriots is probably the best human being in the NFL. In an environment as given to conspicuous consumption as professional sports, he stands out, but he’d be a saint in any profession for the level in which he devotes his life and money to helping other people.

In keeping with his personality, Brian plays guard, one of the most anonymous positions in pro sports. They form a line with the center and the offensive tackles to protect the quarterback from the defense. It’s a position with few quantifiable measures of success, and they pretty much only will get the ball if something goes horribly wrong. Brian’s done this position at an extremely high level for 12 years.

Raised by his grandmother in Waxahachie, Texas, Brian and many of his friends couldn’t afford a lot of sports equipment. Although they also struggled in other ways, their friends and neighbors were always around to support them. Brian would remember this, and when he earned a scholarship to play football at the University of North Texas, he chose an unusual major for a jock – community service – and in thirty years he may be known more for the work he’s done with that degree than anything he’s done on the gridiron.

He started the “54 Foundation” (like Welker, he’s named his charity after his uniform number) which employs no paid staff—Brian seeds it with hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and pays incidental costs out of pocket— and the scope of its works are impressive. He’s awarded over 80 college scholarships to low-income students, “adopts” groups of homeless children, sponsors Habitat For Humanity homes, and runs a free football & basketball camp.

Beyond that he also works with the Promise House in Dallas (which helps families in crisis), volunteers with an alternative learning center called the Genesis School, is spokesperson for the United Way, is a spokesperson for breast cancer awareness, is the chairman of a Down’s Syndrome program that raises $400,000 annually, and donated $100,000 to support Pee-Wee Football in his hometown. He also devotes his time to the Love Fund for Children, K.E.Y.E.S., Special Olympics, the Willa Gill Center, and the Third and Long Foundation.

“He’s not someone who only gives financially,” says Nicole Mansell of the Waxahachie Independent School District. “It’s easy to sit there and write a check, but he gives up his time as well. That personal connection that he tries to have with people is so very important.”

“I can give back now because of resources and connections that I have as a football player,” Brian says. “And what’s the reason for having success if you can’t share with others?”

Professionally, Brian had the same tough road to the NFL as Victor Cruz and Wes Welker. Undrafted as a tight end, he had to change positions (to guard, which he had never played before) before anyone would take a chance on him. After a couple years, the Kansas City Chiefs gave him his first real shot. He rewarded them with eleven seasons during which he made the Pro Bowl (the NFL all-star game) four times.

After last year, Brian was 33, old for a football player, and the Chiefs dumped him last July. Five weeks later, right before the start of the season, the Patriots, worried about injuries on their line, rolled the dice on the veteran. They didn’t regret it; at 34, Brian was the only man on the Patriots line to start every game at his position – and made the Pro Bowl again.

Still, Brian’s never even been to a Super Bowl before, and if the Patriots win, there’s a chance he could call it a career, devoting himself full-time to community service and inspiring others to follow his path. “Hopefully they will take my story and people can attach it to their life,” he said. “And be able to realize that they have a lot more to offer than they probably think.”

***

You can find “A Super Bowl Preview For People Who Don’t Know Football (2011 Edition)” here.

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Some friend or partner of theirs drags them to a Super Bowl party, and while it can be worth the hassle just to experience the expensive commercials, the unhealthy food, the surfeit of alcohol, the hilariously dumb halftime show, the Puppy Bowl, or drunk people wearing unattractive props, many people would rather spend three hours passing a stone than watch the actual game.

It’s no wonder. Football lacks the artful, accessible flow of soccer or basketball; it’s an inscrutable sport of attrition, hampered by jagged game action that’s comically brief (according to the Wall Street Journal, there’s only about 11 minutes of actual football being played during a football game, while a full 67 minutes of air time is devoted to the players standing around). The constant work stoppages, arcane terminology, and baffling penalties (e.g., “unabated to the quarterback”) make this game a pain in the ass to watch for anyone who hasn’t already been doing so for years.

This year, pay attention to the game because of the players. These guys have stories.

Sure, there’s Pittsburgh defensive end Brett Keisel, whose giant beard has its own Facebook page and Twitter feed, and Green Bay defensive back Jarrett Bush, who’s proficient at drums, tuba, and trombone in addition to being a crack snowboarder. In this game, however, it’s the marquee players who will surprise you.

TROY POLAMALU is a safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers. You may know him from his Head & Shoulders commercials, starring his long curly black hair that he hasn’t cut in eight years. Yes, he’s been tackled by the hair before, and yes, it hurts. He plays on defense, however, so he’s usually the one doing the tackling, which is wonderful to watch, because Troy is to tackling what Iggy Pop is to stage antics. He is lightning and butter and crack pipes, on fire.

When not beating the shit out of people, Troy is an on-the-ground advocate for the homeless of Pittsburgh. A while back, the G20 summit was held there, and the city leaders wanted to beautify the place for the fancy-ass visitors. They had this clever idea to shake the homeless people out from sensitive locales like the 9^th street bridge, by telling the charities and services in the area not to help them as usual. One assumes the city hoped the huddled masses would move out on their own, so their P.R. department could avoid an ugly Bonus March-style smoke-out.

Troy found out about this and began regularly driving down to the 9^th street bridge, distributing food, clothes, and money. Few people joined him and there was very little attention paid to this, but he probably did more to simultaneously fly in the face of the G20 and actually help people than a hundred fly-by-night anarchists do in a lifetime.

Troy is also an advocate for his ancestral homeland of Samoa, has helped with that island’s hurricane relief efforts, and arranged for several hundred thousand dollars worth of football equipment, enough for an entire generation of kids, to be donated to the schools of that country.

During the game, watch Troy as he darts around, trying to trick Aaron Rodgers into thinking that he’s coming for him. Sometimes he will be. Your spine will hurt just watching it.

AARON RODGERS, the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, has memorized every line of “The Princess Bride.” The fact that he can quote Miracle Max on cue makes him probably my fourth favorite football player ever, but this dude is equally surprising off the field.

Never mind the hype from a few weeks back, when Aaron was caught on camera, apparently snubbing an autograph-seeking cancer patient. The cancer patient herself didn’t mind – he’s autographed a ton of stuff for her already. In fact, Aaron’s main cause is the MACC (Midwest Athletes against Childhood Cancer) for which he has donated and raised a ton of money. He also took a hundred kids from the Boys & Girls club on a surprise outing this Christmas with fifteen other Green Bay Packer players, and gave each of the kids $100 to buy presents for their families.

Aaron is from Chico, California and played superb college ball close to home at UC Berkeley. In the days leading to the 2005 NFL draft—where NFL teams pick the players they want from the college teams—he was considered, along with a guy named Alex Smith, to be one of the top two quarterbacks in the country.

However, nobody wanted him. Team after team picked other guys and passed Aaron by. Imagine you were waiting to be picked for dodgeball in gym class and with each person who got picked before you, you lost millions of dollars. That’s what Aaron went through. Alex Smith was picked first overall and got a six-year deal for $49.5 million. Aaron fell all the way to 24^th, and got one-seventh of that. And then when he gets to the NFL he has to wait behind a guy named Brett Favre for three years while Brett constantly retires and un-retires. Aaron didn’t complain about any of this. He waited for his turn.

Now he’s in the damn Super Bowl for the first time, facing Troy Polamalu and a Pittsburgh front line that features Brett Keisel’s amazing beard, a 300-lb. man named Ziggy, and a fellow named James Harrison, who, even after the NFL started issuing fines for tackles that could cause concussions, has said that he doesn’t care how much he’s fined—and he’s been fined a lot—he’s going to hurt people. James Harrison has knocked people out of games before, and because Aaron Rodgers is the single most important man on the Green Bay Packers, he will try to knock Aaron out of the Super Bowl as quickly as possible.

For three hours, Aaron is going to have to look across the line of scrimmage at James Harrison up to 60 times, gunning full-steam for his face, his head, his career. Have fun storming the castle.

HINES WARD is a wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers. You will notice him because he always seems to be smiling, even when he’s tackled. The joy this man gets from adrenaline and violence is so pure and awesome that if football didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it to prevent Hines Ward from breaking into zoos and biting polar bears in half.

Born in South Korea to a Korean mom and an African-American father, Ward is one of the few players of Asian descent in the NFL, and is also an active advocate and spokesman for bi-racial youth in South Korea. He donated $1 million to create the Hines Ward Helping Hands Foundation, to help mixed-race children overcome the discrimination they often experience in that country.

On the field, he’s less sensitive. NFL players have twice voted Hines Ward to be the dirtiest player in the league. He has been fined multiple times for excessive hits. In October 2008, he hit Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Keith Rivers so hard he broke Rivers’ jaw. Not surprisingly, Ward loves to block downfield for his fellow receivers as much as he loves to catch the ball, and he’s considered to be the best in the game at that brutal and unglamorous duty.

When any Pittsburgh Steeler other than Hines Ward catches the ball, watch for Hines’s number, 86, and pay attention. It is, at that moment, the most violent and televised live thing in the world.

Even though some may prefer otherwise, we cannot ignore BEN ROETHLISBERGER, quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers. While he’s one of the best signal-callers in the game, for many fans, he’s going to be the black hat to Aaron Rodgers’ white hat this year. Ben has been, off the field, pretty much everything that gives a bad name to professional athletes.

In 2006, he got into a motorcycle accident without a helmet on. He apparently was thrown over the handlebars of his Suzuki Hayabusa and shattered a car’s windshield with his head. He did not have a valid driver’s license at the time, and later on, lied about the kind of motorcycle he was driving and other circumstances of the accident.

The effects of severe cranial trauma cannot completely explain away the civil suit that was filed against Ben in July 2009 for sexually assaulting a hotel clerk in Lake Tahoe, or the alleged sexual assault of a 20-year old coed in March 2010. After the second offense, the NFL finally decided to slap Ben on the wrist and give him a six-game suspension, which was reduced to four after he met with the commissioner and agreed to enter counseling.

Despite missing the first four games of this season, he’s helped lead the Pittsburgh Steelers to their seventh Super Bowl. The TV won’t show the signs reading “Ben Rapelisberger,” but they’ll be in the crowd, as will be legions of Steeler fans, some of whom love him unconditionally and some of whom have long since switched to wearing Ward or Polamalu jerseys while waving their Terrible Towel. For a Steeler fan, voting a straight party line is no longer required.

Conversely, the story of DONALD DRIVER, wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers, is one of the most impressive in all of sports. Growing up in abject poverty in Houston, Texas, Donald, his mother, and brother lived, at various times, in a U-Haul, out of a car, and on the streets.

As a young teen, Donald used his intelligence, natural dexterity and quick hands to become an extremely effective car thief. He sold the cars to buy drugs, which he then turned around and sold for more money.

He believes he stole up to thirty cars, and was only caught once. He had outrun the police before, but this time, he smashed into the car of an old woman as she was backing out of her driveway. He burst from the car and sprinted away, but after a few blocks he stopped, and ran back to the old woman to make sure she was okay.

She was all right, but his concern for this old woman, who he’d never seen before, cost him his lead on the police. The old woman heard them coming and told Donald to sit on her porch.

Moments later, when the cops arrived, she said that the man who hit her car had run off, and when they asked about the kid on her porch, she told them it was her grandson. When the police left, she ordered Donald into her house and she gave him the talking-to of his life.

The message he got from the old woman—that a young man with his skills and heart could be doing so much more—got through to him. Within a year, Donald had begun playing football and moved to live with his grandmother in order to attend a high school with a strong program. He went on to play at Alcorn State in Mississippi and in 1999, was drafted in the final round of the draft by the Green Bay Packers. Because of his low draft status, he was signed for a pittance by NFL standards and had virtually no chance of making the team. The Green Bay Packers already had seven other people who could play receiver on their roster. Many teams have five, total.

Also, the Packers drafted Dee Miller, a hotshot receiver from Ohio State, a much bigger school, ahead of Donald in the draft that year. Donald would have to beat Dee Miller out and a couple of veterans besides, just to wear an NFL uniform for longer than one month of his life.

Eleven years later, Donald is the Green Bay Packers all-time leader in receptions. He has been one of the most charitably active athletes in any sport, doing most of his work with Goodwill and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.  His Donald Driver Foundation has directly put homeless families into furnished homes and paid hospital bills for children of poor parents.

Donald is 35 years old now, and this may be the last game of his life. The Steelers may win, and end his rags-to-riches journey with a loss, and that is how football works. Still, when you see him lift his hands, catch the ball, and run for the end zone, know that this man is here because of something he once ran back to.

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Remember bare-footed place kicking? In this article for ESPN, Chuck Klosterman suggests that this 1980′s fad can be attributed to the NFL’s futuristic brand of conservatism, and its obsession with futuristic technology. This might also explain why, in this video from Super Bowl XIX, Ronald Regan performs the game’s ceremonial coin toss at the White House, and has the video beamed to the stadium in California via his notorious Star Wars Satellites. Klosterman’s article does not explain why Lil Wayne also writes for ESPN.

Artist Tim Laun‘s project “Hang Time” involves an NFL punt-machine. He also hopes to build the Brett Favre Cyclorama: a circular panorama made from hundreds of television monitors simultaneously screening every game Favre played for the Green Bay Packers.

Why do Super Bowls produce so many awful/hilarious music videos? Everyone’s familiar with the Chicago Bears’ Super Bowl Shuffle, but there is also the video Diamond Rap sung by Scotland’s American football team the Glasgow Diamonds, and these bizarre videos about Super Bowl XLII’s starting quarterbacks, Tom Brady and Eli Manning. Perhaps this is an issue Ralph Nader can tackle as part of his new Sports Reform Project.

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• Error Correction or Information Control?