These were taken before, during, and after. Hope you enjoy. All photos were taken with the <plug> Spint Pal Pre phone. </plug>

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We just got to our seats. Here is the view.

Consider this a quick pre-game open thread.

Tom Moore has no regrets.

That's what he told us at a media press event a few days ago. Listening to Moore speaks about his days coaching football in the Army, his brief career in the World Football League, and his time at the University of Dayton is kind of like imagining what Hemingway would sound like if he talked about hunting in Africa. Tom Moore, with his deep, "Fargo-like" accent, is like your granddad; full of stories and funny phrases that captivate you. The man has a strong passion for football and coaching, and it is pretty cool to see someone with such passion talk about their craft.

For example, I had no idea Tom Moore was, pretty much, flat broken in and around 1974 after his job in the World Football League didn't work out. He was coaching in New York City for the New York Stars at the time.

"You know how they say that if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere?" He told a group of us. "We didn’t make it."

Moore and his wife left NYC with only enough gas to make it back to Minneapolis. He had to borrow money after that to make ends meet until he got a job. The job he would get would be with the University of Minnesota as their offensive coordinator in 1975. That job was a homecoming, of sorts, for Moore. He'd coached at Minnesota before from 1972-1973, and he is a native of Owatonna, MN. In 1975, when Moore was getting his feet wet as the coordinator in Minnesota, he began working with his starting QB at the time. That starting QB was a young kid from Jackson, MI.

His name was Tony Dungy.

Dungy would later work with Moore to build one of the greatest offenses in NFL history with the Indianapolis Colts. Tony Dungy is now retired, but Tom Moore most certainly is not.

"I lost everything I had. I don’t regret it. I'd do everything again. And, that’s the way it is. I'm not money motivated. It’s a tough life if youre money motivated, I think. You gotta love what you do, and whatever happens, happens. As long as you thoroughly love what you do."

I don't begrudge Moore for fighting for his NFL pension last off-season. If I were someone who had lost everything, gotten it all back, and the was told that I'd lose my pension, yeah, I'd fight for it. Coach Moore was kind enough to answer some questions from Stampede Blue. You can see our interview with him after the jump.

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I've got a few stories lined up between now and 2pm, but I just wanted to remind everyone that I will be in transit part of the day today. My destination is Sun Life-Landshark-Dolphins-Joe Robbie Stadium. Tonight's game threads will have me there, live, during the Super Bowl. I'll be in one of the press areas along with Joel Thorman of SBNation.com and Arrowhead Pride, and Dave from Canal Street Chronicles, the Saints blog. This will be an entirely new experience for me and my colleagues. I mean, it's not every day that you get to, you know, LIVE BLOG YOUR TEAM AT THE SUPER BOWL!

But, then again, this whole week has been a gaggle of new experiences.

I am working with Joel and Dave on setting up a live podcast from the stadium sometime after 2pm. They let media into the place at 2pm, and we still need to find out where they are putting us so we can set up shop. Dave and I will likely run around and take all kinds of pictures. I took several on Media Day, like the one below.

I have all the tools to do a podcast, which we would run through Blog Talk Radio. However, until I get more details on where we are sitting and setting up shop, I can't lock down a specific time. I'll update when I get those details because I VERY much want to podcast from the stadium.

We're counting down the hours to the big game. In the meantime, enjoy this outstanding poem from peytonsurdaddy, which has about 14 billion recs in our FanPost area. I especially enjoyed this part:

"Twas the night before the Super Bowl, when all through the house,
     Not a bleacher was stirring and peytonsurdaddy was sauced.
The uni’s were hung in their lockers with care,
     Indy Lori thought, "Peyton’s glute must be bare…"

Bloggers all wrestled with their doubts and their dreads,
     While Marked Hoosier’s LOLcats spelled poorly in their threads.
And 805 in his boxers and  TheAngelsColts in his  Colts’ cap,
     Had commented 10,000 times and they’re grammer wuz stil crap.

When in week 15 there arose such a clatter,
     One million trolls screaming, "16-0 DOES MATTER!"
Tempers flared like a tire fire with a great and mighty "WHOOSH!"
     And with BBS calling  everyone but my grandmother a douche.

In South Florida, the site of Super Bowl 44, Stampede Blue caught up with the man who received the brunt of Colts fans anger in Week Sixteen: Curtis Painter. Curtis was kind enough to talk about what happened in Week Sixteen and how he has developed as a quarterback.

BBS: I want to talk about Week Sixteen, which is what everybody else has talked to you about. One of the sentiments Colts fans wanted to convey to you was that, I had posts that said that if you find Curtis Painter, let him know that we weren’t booing him. We were booing the decision [to bench starters].

Curtis Painter: Yeah.

BBS: It seemed like that was just an impossible situation to walk into. Fans are angry, the situation is bad. What were you thinking when you walked into a situation where you’re going to play quarterback against the Jets and fans are booing at that moment?

CP: Well, I mean, tough situation or not, that’s kind of what you’re here for. You know, sometimes you go into good situations, sometimes you go into bad. That’s kind of the position you're in. I didn’t look at it as anything other than that. I have one goal when I go in and that’s to do the best I can and try to win. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. But, I really… so much is going through my mind as far as plays that I didn’t have too much time to think of anything outside of the huddle and the line of scrimmage.

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For the past week, Joel Thorman and I have lived at the NFL Media Center in Fort Lauderdale, FL. We've been two little fish in a sea of newspaper, radio, television, and online media whales and sharks. We've worked 20 feet from ESPN Radio personalities pontificating on their radio shows. We've worked within arms reach of Paul Kuharsky, Bob Kravitz, Gregg Doyel, and Mike Florio. The experience, or the adventure (what you will) has been inspiring.  

Today is our last day here. Already, the NFL Network set is getting broken down. No Deion. No Rich. No Marshall. They're all out at Sun Life-Landshark-Pro Player-Joe Robbie-Dolphins Stadium getting ready for the game.

So, before everything was broken apart and taken down, I took some last minute pictures. You can view them as well as many of the pictures I took earlier this week, after the jump.

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There's more press running around the media center today due in large part to Jim Caldwell holding his final pre-game press conference here as opposed to the Colts hotel, where all previous press events have occurred since the team arrived.

For me, yesterday was 14 hours of interviews, photos, writing, and transcribing. I spoke with John Oehser, who has been a great friend during this whole media slam dance, and I told him I was overwhelmed by all the work. "It's like that for everyone here."

Our interview with SI's Peter King will get posted sometime around noon Eastern. Other than the press conferences, today is a pretty slow news day. So, I have time to sit down and transcribe the interview. For those of you wondering "How did it go?" I'll just state very simply that it is now very hard for me to dislike Peter King. Listening to him talk, seeing him pontificate on subjects I care about, it was pretty cool. Rather unfairly, we bloggers have lumped King in with some of the other rather obvious jerk-offs in the media world. And trust me, some of the same people we rag on here at Stampede Blue are indeed here in South Florida. Most of them are, at this very moment, sitting less than 20 feet from me! And yes, many are indeed major league scmhucks in person.

Peter King is not one of them.

Hopefully, after you read our interview with him, where he discusses blogs, NFL fans, the names people call him, new media, his opinions on the Colts, and his favorite beer, you'll see Peter in a different light; one free of "coffee-nerdness" and "loveletters" to Brett Favre. In the two hours I spoke to Peter yesterday (about an hour in the morning, and an hour last night in his hotel's bar), I talked to an unpretentious, honest, good-natured guy who is most certainly not the incompetent, entitled fool I, and many others, have painted him as.