Super Bowl XLVI Coverage: Get Caught Up On The Game-Week News And Notes

Tiquan Underwood was cut by the New England Patriots just 24 hours before the Super Bowl, and the move has caused plenty of uproar. It’s cold, sure, but the move was also a calculated one, as you would probably expect. As the news began to trickle out, I wondered if the timing had something to do with a competitive advantage, and it seems that it did.

In short, releasing Underwood now, and not days ago, ensures the New York Giants cannot claim him, allowing them to gain some kind of perceived advantage. It’s likely the Patriots decided Chad Ochocinco would be active, making Underwood expendable. So instead of keeping the young wide receiver, New England called up a practice squad defensive end for depth.

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The news comes from Shalice Young

But dang, that’s just rough for Underwood. So close, yet so far away.

Screencap via NFL.com

This is great. We actually don’t even need to bother with the Super Bowl on Sunday. The outcome has already been determined, so we can all sit back and watch the commercials, the halftime show and six hours of pregame while ignoring the matchup itself.

The Super Bowl Host Committee reported that the village drew 200,000 visitors on Friday, roughly 50,000 more than had visited the day before. Police will cut off pedestrian traffic to Georgia Street from Pennsylvania and Meridian streets once they determine that the village is at capacity.

For the latest Super Bowl updates, be sure to follow this StoryStream. Also be sure to check out Patriots blog Pats Pulpit and Giants blog Big Blue View.

The most recent prices on TiqIQ, which gathers ticket sales from all leading secondary-market sites, still range from $2,082 in the nosebleeds to a staggering $11,138 in the lowest level, near mid-field. If you’ve got the scratch to burn, hey, why not?

But what else could you get for the same amount of money? Well, I’ll tell you!

We all love prop bets in big time sporting events because they usually delve into the ridiculous category. For Super Bowl XLVI it’s gotten to the point where you can bet on the Super Bowl against athletes in other sports. Here’s two examples of what I’m talking about from Bovada.com:

Which Will Be Higher:

With Super Bowl XLVI just around the corner, it was inevitable that we would start to hear about various politicians making wagers. It is customary for all major sports championships in North America (and is even extending to playoffs now, in many cases) for the mayors of the respective teams’ home towns to place “friendly wagers” on the outcome of the championship game or series, usually themed around each mayor’s respective town.

But the mayors are not the only ones getting into the act. Justin Sink and Alicia M. Cohn of The Hill reported that plenty of congresspersons are placing wagers on the game as well. In addition to a pair of senators placing wagers of local beer on the game -- because that’s all we need, drunk senators -- Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) placed a wager with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani wherein if the Patriots win, Giuliani will have to wear a Red Sox hat to Fenway Park. Let that determine your rooting allegiances, if necessary.

If you’ve watched your favorite team come so close, yet fall short, you know this feeling. With two weeks between the NFL championship games and the Super Bowl, fans of the runner-ups have times to stew, second-guess and try to digest what went wrong. And the Super Bowl itself just isn’t so fun anymore for them.

In the comments, one fan boldly proclaims it’s Puppy Bowl and nothing else. And you know what? Can’t really blame them, either. Knowing that could be, or should be, your team playing on the biggest stage is a painful feeling.

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Since then, the GRANKLE has taken us all on a roller coaster ride of a emotion, with the media diligently answering every question we’ve had, such as, “So is he going to play?,” “He’s still playing, right?,” “Wait, how is this different from yesterday?,” and “Why are we still talking about this?” Let’s re-live every crazy twist and turn with THE DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF ROB GRONKWOSKI’S ANKLE INJURY:

Sunday, January 22nd: Ouch!

For the latest Super Bowl updates, be sure to follow this StoryStream. Also be sure to check out Patriots blog Pats Pulpit and Giants blog Big Blue View.

If Belichick picks up the victory, he will have earned Super Bowl his rings over a longer stretch of time than did Noll. The former Steelers coach only needed a span of six years to earn his four titles, while Belichick’s first came in 2001. Then again, when Noll won his Super Bowls, there was no such thing as free agency.

For the latest Super Bowl updates, be sure to follow this StoryStream. Also be sure to check out Patriots blog Pats Pulpit and Giants blog Big Blue View.

For the latest Super Bowl updates, be sure to follow this StoryStream. Also be sure to check out Patriots blog Pats Pulpit and Giants blog Big Blue View.

I’m sure by now you realize that no football game ever truly hinges on a single facet. To illustrate that point, this year’s Super Bowl appears to have no shortage of intriguing matchups to chew on.

For the latest Super Bowl updates, be sure to follow this StoryStream. Also be sure to check out Patriots blog Pats Pulpit and Giants blog Big Blue View.

WALL, N.J. -- It’s only been four months, but there are still times when Gary Grimes’ memory fails him, when the words quite aren’t there. It’s not only his mind, but his gait is slower now, too, since he’s still relearning how to walk. That’s what happens when you’ve been in a coma, when a car accident on a football Sunday back in October nearly kills you.

“He’s lucky to be alive,” says his sister, Helen Heal.

Christopher Price of WEEI in Boston reports that retirement doesn’t appear to be on Belichick’s mind at the moment. Belichick addressed the media on Friday morning in Indianapolis and was asked about whether he would walk away if the Patriots won their fourth Super Bowl title under his watch on Sunday.

For the latest Super Bowl updates, be sure to follow this StoryStream. Also be sure to check out Patriots blog Pats Pulpit and Giants blog Big Blue View.

Face value for tickets to Super Bowl range from $800 to $1,200. The highest-priced ticket to to Super Bowl I topped out at $12 and did not crack the $100 barrier until the late 1980s. The $1,000 face value ticket price was surpassed during Super Bowl XLIII in 2009.

Citing data from www.tiqiq.com, which tracks listings from top online ticket resellers StubHub, TicketsNow, TicketNetwork and e-Bay, Levinson reports that seats at Lucas Oil Stadium are selling for $3,664 after peaking at $4,311 on January 27. The cheapest available ticket on the secondary market is going for $2,000.

The MVP is almost always won by a QB although wide receivers have won three of the past seven after not claiming one since Jerry Rice way back in Super Bowl 23. (We aren’t counting Desmond Howard’s MVP performance as a combined WR/return man since he did most of his damage in Super Bowl 31 as a returner).

Four of the past five winners were QBs, hence the low odds on them. If you are wondering why no mention of running backs, it’s because they almost never win.

They seemed like the saddest men on the planet: showing off buttons, holding up frames of men with lacy autographs tossed over a corner in silver marker. They were the men of the Never Miss A Super Bowl club, and you knew about them because Visa, a Super Bowl sponsor, wanted you to know about them.

I really tried to figure out why this seemed so profoundly sad. Hobbies are always a little sad: they’re this thing you do by yourself, and that in itself is kind of sad to outsiders because there you sit, painting away at a model airplane or chipping solitary balls onto a practice green out of a bunker. Taken alone without context, to an outsider a hobby looks like the way you choose to twiddle your thumbs until death. That by itself is sad.

For the latest Super Bowl updates, be sure to follow this StoryStream. Also be sure to check out Patriots blog Pats Pulpit and Giants blog Big Blue View.

The Super Bowl itself is something like New Years -- endless hype, weeks-long preparation, everybody calls in sick the next day, etc -- but for the people who bet on sports, the Super Bowl is more like Gambling Christmas. And nothing marks the occasion better than the prop bets.

NOTE: You can make good money on some of these, but that’s not really the point. If someone wants to make money betting, they’ve already lost. Unless you put an insane amount of money on one bet and spend the game chainsmoking and twitching like a crack addict, nobody really beats the house. There are experts, sure, but we’re not them. (My name is Sharp, and I’ll never be a Sharp.)

Madonna once made a name for herself for pushing the envelope. At 53 years old, she’s clearly mellowed. How much? Well, she’s at least promising to keep it clean during her Super Bowl XLVI halftime performance.

Ever since then, halftime shows have taken on, shall we say, an “older” vibe. Prior to last year’s performance that included the Black Eyed Peas, 53-year-old Prince had been the youngest performer. Among the acts were the Rolling Stones, The Who and Tom Petty.

It would be an absolute misstatement of fact to suggest that tickets for Super Bowl XLVI are “cheap.” That said, prices have been heading downward ever since they peaked on Jan. 27, according to secondary-market information gathered by SB Nation ticketing partner TiqIQ.

On the high end, the most expensive ticket is currently going for $12,633, which would put you in Sec. 113, Row 1. There’s also a suite going for $445,000. According to a report in Bloomberg News, a ticket on NFL.com’s ticket exchange sold for $16,480.