This is a Super Bowl Free zone

Not really.

I'll have a column for you Monday night on Jim Caldwell, who was on a couple of rotten University of Iowa football teams three-plus decades ago, but now is a win from a Super Bowl title as a rookie head coach with Indianapolis.

But otherwise, I'll try not to inflict much Super Bowl on you after this rant. Because ... it's ... just ... too ... much.

I'm not going to listen to Super Bowl chatter on the radio or TV, and I'm not going to read about it unless some player in the game gets arrested or has an affiliation with John Edwards.

I've been guilty of contributing to Super Bowl blather in the past. I was at last year's Super Bowl for the whole week leading up to the game in Tampa. That's a lot of, uh, time to write.

On Tuesday morning, you go to the stadium, where each team's players are available for 90 minutes. Or 60. Maybe it just felt like 90. Or 180.

By available, the stars sit behind podiums and address dozens, and in some cases, hundreds of sports media and entertainment media people. The scrubs sit in stadium seats and talk to each other.

On Wednesday and Thursday mornings, the sports media (the entertainment media does its shtick on Tuesday and cuts out) is bussed to the teams' hotels. In ballrooms or tents, stars get their own lectern or table, while the lesser-known players and the assistant coaches share tables. The head coaches speak to everyone before the players show up.

By Thursday morning, there's not much left to ask the players. Last year someone (not me) asked Kurt Warner if he was a Bruce Springsteen fan.

I wonder if the two would be friends. Warner said he plans on doing some ministry work, while Springsteen often tells audiences he's bringing them a ministry of rock 'n roll.

On Friday morning, it's just the two head coaches. They don't tell you anything.

On Saturday, everyone on both teams enter seclusion. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell gives his State of the League address to the press. I think that's the official name.

The best part of the week often is the Thursday press conference held by the Super Bowl halftime act. Those tend to be irreverent more than informational, but at least they're fun. I can only imagine the nonsense The Who's Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey will spew this year.

Covering a Super Bowl can be depressing, because few reporters have access to the best things going on in the site of the city. Those are the parties on the Friday and Saturday nights before the game. Everybody who is anybody in show biz and sports is in town to make money somehow, and you have to be a very important person to gain admittance to their bashes.

What we do experience later in Super Bowl Week, though, is having to wait almost anywhere just to get a meal because the teams' fans have arrived to clog things. Last year in downtown Tampa, it took me until 11 p.m. when I could walk right into a restaurant and get something to eat. The only thing I hate more than waiting in line is starving.

On Sunday, most media mopes go to the stadium four or five hours before kickoff just because you're so sick of your hotel by then and don't want to hand around the room any more. Our equipment and our bags get the twice-over by bomb-sniffing dogs. Then, we go to the press box (usually an auxiliary press box for most of us, which means bad upper deck seats with electrical outlets and makeshift tables) and send e-mail to friends or something.

The game is played, you hope it doesn't go overtime, then you write about it. You eat a late, late dinner if you're fortunate, then you go to a very crowded airport the next day and hope the weather at home allows you to get there without overnighting in Detroit or somewhere equally lovely.

I've intentionally tried to portray this as a dull and possibly miserable experience. I've covered four Super Bowls. The weeks leading up to the games I covered in Minneapolis, Atlanta and Tampa were dull and possibly miserable experiences. The other one was in New Orleans.

Hey, NFL, let's go there again. The script is a little different for that site. It isn't dull and it isn't particularly miserable.

But next year's Super Bowl is in Indianapolis. That is so wrong on so many levels, that I have to stop thinking about right now.