Every year I think there is no freakin' way the NFL can possibly top itself in expensive, boring, cheesy, laughable lunacy.

And then Styx hit the stage (well that's the wrong word, since one of them, I think, was using a walker) for the pre-game "show" and 100 grown men with giant silk sails sewn onto their backsides marched across the field as a visual addendum to the timelessly terrible Come Sail Away. What followed was supposed to be a giant sword fight, and 1,000 women dressed up as Mons Venus employees marching to Sting's classic hooker anthem Roxanne.

Hmm ... sword fights and hookers, violence and misogyny. Was this some kind of preview of the NFL's offseason?

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Forgive me. When I first arrived in Tampa I was nearly run down by a giant nostril.

You know those silly nasal strips players wear across their noses? Well, the company that makes them thought it would be a good marketing idea to have someone dress up as a giant nostril and run around town. And so before I even picked up my media credential this snot-nosed, snotty nose nearly ran me over, trying to catch a glimpse of Jerry Rice. "That had to be an illegal pick," I shouted.

That was Wednesday. On Sunday afternoon I was again nearly trampled, this time by Joe Piscopo doing pre-game interviews for, I think, some cable access show in Tampa. As far as celebrity sightings go, in my book that giant, nasty, bloated schnozz ... and the nasal strip clown are pretty much a dead heat -- and the perfect bookends for yet another triple-X Super Bowl.

Whose thimble of pride is more empty today? Piscopo's or Steven Tyler's, after he voluntarily shared a mic with the not-so-N*SYNC boys? (Talk about creepy, later one of the in-stadium TV monitors was replaying the halftime show and I reached up and pressed the power button, trying to rid myself of a replay of that horrible spectacle and nothing happened, as if the HAL-like NFL hype machine had completely taken over.)

Fortunately, the post-game scene was way better than the so-called "entertainment" that preceded it. The first person I ran into in the Ravens locker room was director of player personnel Ozzie Newsome, one of the truly good guys in the league. "You know what I am when I wake up tomorrow?" he shouted. "A world champion! Now who would've believed this?"

Nearby, OT Jonathan Ogden held up a Wheaties box with the Ravens on it. (Maybe they should share those bran flakes with Kerry Collins, who was having trouble passing anything on Sunday.)

Later, in the tunnel, head coach Brian Billick was walking out as QB Trent Dilfer was riding in on a golf cart. They stretched to high-five as each posse passed and just barely managed to touch fingers, like some surreal gridiron version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Visiting with fullback Sam Gash, I noticed that his right ring finger was grotesquely disfigured. The middle knuckle was swollen to the size of a golf ball and the rest of the digit was as crooked as Hillary Clinton.

He had to be experiencing white-hot pain (you know, like what you felt after reading my column about nothing) yet Gash had a smile on his face that seemed to melt away all the Super Bowl crap, leaving only what mattered: a team that had become a family, a defense for the ages and a quarterback who has twice as much class as he does talent.

"Dude, you will never get a Super Bowl ring onto that finger," I said.

Gash just shook his head and laughed. "Oh I'll find a way to get it on there," he replied. "Trust me, I'll find a way."

David Fleming, a senior writer for The Magazine, shares his off-center perspective each Tuesday on ESPNMAG.com. E-mail flemfile@aol.com.