Tom Talks

Sorry, missed that extra point

I feel as if I’ve let readers down. I predicted a 13-point Indianapolis victory, and the Colts won Super Bowl XLI by 12. I hadn’t anticipated that Indianapolis would miss an extra point. Sorry.

I finished the season by picking nine of the final 12 games against the spread.

Look, I know the rain was unpleasant. But tickets to the Super Bowl go for $600 and $700. Why do you pay that much for a ticket and walk out of Dolphin Stadium early in the third quarter?

How about because the ticket was provided by a client or an employer and the folks back home won’t know you took off early when you enthrall them with tales of the game and the scene.

It's raining caddies and dogs

One of the comments you’re most likely to hear in a Miami Beach clothing store this week: "Is XXXL the biggest you have?" Football players can’t get everything they want. The store didn’t stock his size.

Guy gets out of a Cadillac Escalade, the SUV the NFL issues players and officials that come to Miami this week. The Cadillac has stopped at the red light on a street that intersects Lincoln Road. When the light turns green, the vehicle doesn’t move. The first guy to get out plays football, and I’ve seen him but can’t remember his name. Then a second guy, bigger than the first guy, gets out.

The second guy takes his time getting out. The car behind him honks. The big guy looks back disdainfully. The light turns red again. Then back to green. The Escalade has yet to move. Now a woman deigns to get out of the back seat, oblivious to the honking behind her.

They held up traffic for two light changes. You’d like to think the folks in that Escalade would feel guilty, if not immediately, then later. You’d like to think that. You’d really like to.

Dogs are revered in Miami Beach. Saw a guy walk six Italian greyhounds simultaneously. They were so small he could have juggled them. Juggling would have been less difficult, but he successfully walked all six.

Two women sit at an outdoor table on Lincoln Road. Their dogs, one a mutt, one a dachshund, sit on the other two chairs. The waitress serves the women while the dogs patiently wait.

Miami Beach dogs are patient. In front of me in line at the coffee shop is a woman. With her is Artie, a boxer who is stoic and loves to be petted. Later I saw a little furball dog walk out of a CVS store.

Where do you find dogs such as these? I couldn’t bring my dog into a coffee shop or drug store, and I sure couldn’t seat it at an outdoor table. But if I found the right bar ...

Black coaches a popular topic at Super Bowl

  Many of us have been been writing and talking about black head coaches making the Super Bowl, and we will continue to up to and even after the game.

   The media likes to celebrate the new, and since this is the first time a black coach has led his team to the Super Bowl, the issue is new.

   I remember attending an NFL game in the 1980s in which both quarterbacks were black, and I talked to the quarterbacks about it afterward. It struck them as a big deal and it also struck me. It wasn't so long ago, after all, that great black college quarterbacks became NFL defensive backs and receivers.

   Rush Limbaugh had every right to rip Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb during his brief stint as a football commentator. If he believes McNabb is overrated, he ought to say so.

   But when he said the media was "desirous" that a black quarterback succeed, he was wrong. Black quarterbacks had by then become entrenched, and we had stopped thinking about the color of a quarterback at least a  decade earlier.

   The more success black head football coaches attain, the less we will think and talk and write about them, too.

Lifestyles of the rich and famous on display

   The limousine line at Miami International Airport is longer than the line for taxi cabs. There are as almost as many limo drivers holding up signs as there are passengers stepping off the plane to get in the the limos.

    Limos are the vehicles of choice in south Florida this week. But Cadillac Escalades are right behind them. If you see somebody step out of an Escalade, he usually is an NFL executive or player.

    The best scenes, of course, are those you can best appreciate not from a limo or a Cadillac but on foot.

   Along Ocean Drive in South Beach Thursday night, a man wearing a baseball cap and riding a bike talked loudly about Jesus, while a much younger man walked next to him holding what looked like a giant cue card, or teleprompter.

   A woman walked down the street with a herd of chiuauas, one of which was the size of a large hand. About 90% of the dogs were white. In some Charlotte neighborhoods, only white lights are encouraged at Christmas. In South Beach, perhaps only white dogs are.

   Despite temperatures in the mid-70s Thursday night, one man wore a silver suit, a fur cap and a long fur coat.

   A guy walking past him in the other direction turned and yelled: "Hey, you stole my bathrobe."

Notes from the Super Bowl swirl

   Tank Johnson, the Army of One defensive tackle for Chicago, is 6-3 and weighs 300 pounds. If you're 6-3 and weigh 300 pounds, why do you need a gun? Does he get picked on? I can see how people would fear you when you walk around carrying a warhead, but doesn't it get in the way?
Maybe if you walk into a restaurant with an uzi, you get the good table. ...

   I don't like sterotypes. But what can you do? On Thursday morning, I get away from the Super Bowl swirl and grab a cup of coffee in Miami Beach. I'm at a table on Lincoln Road and as soon as I sit down, a man and woman walk by. The man is about 75, dressed in a colorful shirt, and smiling. The woman is wearing shorts the length of a Bic pen and high heels, which makes her about 6-feet tall. She's probably 40. Did I say she was blonde? She's blonde. In other words, they look exactly like a Miami Beach couple is supposed to. ...

   You know what would be fun? To walk down Lincoln Road with a megaphone and yell, "Hang up!" In the line in front of me at the coffee shop are three people, each of them on the phone. One looks offended when the man behind the counter offers to take his order. Can't you see I'm on the phone! On Wednesday a guy talked on a cell phone for at least 20 of the 30 minutes he was on the treadmill next to me. You know what you get when you talk while you work out? A conversation. I think the guy weighed more when he left the gym than when he entered.

Hey, could that be Jim McMahon?

I see people in and around the Miami Beach Convention Center who might be famous, but I can't tell if they are. I also can't tell if the fault is mine for not knowing who they are or if the fault is theirs for acting as if they should be famous when they aren't.

Some folks desperately want to be noticed. Many women dress as if they should be dancing on a stage near a pole. In real life, they would stand out. But so many women dress this way that they no longer stand out.

It's like when guys smoke cigars to assert their individuality, and you see 20 of them puffing in the same room. Wives won't let you smoke at home, right?

If a woman shows up at the Convention Center - where a news conference attracts many genuinely well-known people such as Prince, Gloria Estefan and Billy Joel - in a pants suit, she'd stand out.

The way I see it, if you have an entourage you're probably famous. If you're asked for an autograph, you're probably famous. If you're a woman, and heads turn when you walk past, you're probably famous or are wearing a pants suit.

A guy steps out of a fancy car with tinted windows late Thursday morning and walks into the Convention Center. The guy looks unfriendly and familiar. I know; it's Jim McMahon, the quarterback of the last Chicago Bears team to play in the Super Bowl.

Is it him, is it not him and does it matter? As he walks past me, I see the back of his T-shirt, which is incribed with the words, PARTY LIKE A ROCK STAR.

It is him. And it still doesn't matter.