Do you know what would make this week and all of its waiting for the Super Bowl better? A little dose of Ray Lewis. Or Brian Billick instructing his players to relieve themselves at midfield. Or even Tom Brady. Because, to put it mildly, this week is a little boring.

Of course I am excited that on Sunday evening, I will see something for only the second time in my life – a Steelers Super Bowl appearance. I just feel that without someone to hate, all of the Super Bowl buildup gets stale. By now, all of the storylines have been beaten to death – Bettis coming home, the triumphant sixth seed, the Seahawks finally gaining some national ‘respect’ – and the only way to liven things up is for a player to get on TV, say something completely ridiculous, and give me a reason to hate them.

Honestly, there is more bulletin-board material for the WPIAL basketball playoffs.

I wish that somebody, Seahawk or Steeler, would drop an absolute verbal bomb to the beat writer from the Ann Arbor News. Maybe Joey Porter could tell a no-name reporter from Michiana that he is going to splatter Shaun Alexander like a bug, or Matt Hasselbeck could go on public access and talk smack on Big Ben. Anything would be better than the current situation – complete silence from both sides.

A big part of the problem is that, with the possible exception of Porter, neither team has any of those players that people love to hate. There’s no bad guy like Ray-Ray, no Jimmy Hart-esque coach like Billick, and not even one of those “I’m so nice in a completely smarmy and smug way” guys like Brady or Peyton. Both teams are full of ‘nice guys’ and ‘good stories.’

That Matt Hasselbeck is so polite!

Troy Polamalu talks like Confucius!

Shaun Alexander smiles so much!

The Bus’s mommy loves his games!

On some level, I should be happy about this situation. If Super Bowl XL pitted the 2000 Ravens against the 1976 Raiders, extra security would be required along the sidelines, and the media would have a field day with the combined criminal records of the two teams. The over/under on the number players arrested the week before the game would be at least 7, maybe 8. We would be guaranteed of at least one comment that could be construed as a death threat directed at the opposite team.

So...at least this game is free from felons.

But so much of the culture of being an NFL fan is that we can polarize every match up - it’s good versus bad, our guys versus theirs. The Steelers are the knights in shining armor, out to fight Chad Johnson and the evil candy corn dragons. Everything about them is good. Even the resident bad guy, Porter, is viewed through rose-colored glasses by Steelers fans. On the flip side, everything about the other team is bad. Their players will do evil things – rob homeless people, stab people at a Super Bowl party (oh wait, that one actually happened), eat babies – and someone has to go stop them. It’s almost as if the game takes place in a fantasyland of good versus evil.

The problem this week, however, is that the whole ‘black hat, white hat’ angle vanishes when the other team is so, well, nice.

Can you think of anything bad to say about someone on the Seahawks? Anything? Every time I see one of them on TV, they are giving it the old ‘Aw shucks, we’re just happy to be here’ speech. It’s almost like someone sucked them out of Leave it to Beaver.

Consider this my official plea: Please, please, please, will someone on either team say something asinine about the other team? I don’t care what you have to do, just try to start something. It doesn’t have to be special; any of the typical quotes will work great. Just start something. Otherwise, we’re all stuck here waiting for Sunday.

And we all know that’s no fun.

----Dr. Burgher

Back to the Ex-'Burgher.