Year S Super

GET SMART THIS YEAR. DON'T LET THE football fans get you down. Make the Super Bowl party super easy.Sure, you can knock yourself out and make a ton of expertly seasoned food that only gourmets will appreciate. And, as usual, your crowd will ignore the culinary effort as they go into a trance watching the battle of Super Bowl XXV scheduled for Jan. 27. These die-hards might as well be eating mothballs.So, this year as the fans sit on the edges of their chairs hunched over in their players-on-the-bench posture waiting to be called in by the coach, give them what they want.

Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco apologized Tuesday for what he called a bad choice of words when responding to a question about cold-weather cities hosting Super Bowls. Flacco was asked by a columnist from Denver if he had an opinion on the decision to hold next year's Super Bowl in New York and the possibility of the city of Denver convincing the NFL to deliver the big game to Sports Authority Field at Mile High sometime in the next decade. “Yeah, I think it's retarded," he said.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell opened up his annual Super Bowl news conference with a tribute to former Ravens owner Art Modell and NFL Films creative force Steve Sabol, both of whom passed away since last year's Super Bowl. “There are two important people who are not here, but very much on our minds," Goodell said. "Art Modell, the legendary former owner of the Ravens, who passed away in September. Art's spirit is certainly here this week, and his name will be on the Ravens jersey on Sunday, as it has all season.

Terrell Suggs was quite outspoken in his displeasure with the Ravens' performance in Sunday's 22-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks - a setback that prevented the team from assuming control of the AFC North and the overall conference. But the outside linebacker was equally insistent that the Ravens' third loss of the season would not cripple the team's objective of reaching the postseason for the fourth consecutive season. And he cited last year's Super Bowl champion, the Green Bay Packers, as an example of his confidence.

If the Ravens are the media darlings of Super Bowl XXXV - and the Couch Potato, gutting out a bad case of clicker-thumb tendinitis, has observed this to be true - then the most "darling" of the team's loquacious players are Tony Siragusa and Shannon Sharpe. The Goose, this week's Sports Illustrated cover boy along with the Giants' Michael Strahan, was all over the airwaves last night, mugging and joking with the national media in Tampa as only a 342-pound (wink, wink) Jersey wise guy can. But the SSP (Siragusa Saturation Point)

It's now less than two weeks before pitchers and catchers report to Sarasota, Fla., but I still get a sense Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette isn't done compiling his roster. Really, I'm not sure there is ever a time when he stops (he added another veteran outfielder Tuesday with the signing of Chris Dickerson to a minor league deal). Remember, news of the Jeremy Guthrie trade didn't break until the morning after last year's Super Bowl -- and that probably proved to be Duquette's biggest move of 2012 (because it brought the club's top starter, Jason Hammel, and reliever Matt Lindstrom, who eventually was traded in August for Joe Saunders)

LANDOVER // The Washington Redskins were the teamtrying to salvage one last morsel of satisfaction out of their long lost season, and the New York Giants were the team trying to hang on to their quickly unraveling playoff hopes. Playing for the postseason still trumps playing for pride, even to a team in the midst of a tumultuous second-half collapse. Tiki Barber, who has announced that he will likely retire after the season, did his best to extend what could be a Hall of Fame career for at least another game, possibly saved coach Tom Coughlin?

Three short films you're pretty much guaranteed not to be seeing on network TV or at the local multiplex anytime soon:* "It Came From the Backyard," a six-minute horror short, made on an $8.75 budget, described -- with some pride -- using terms not printable in a family newspaper.* "Psychedelic Glue-Sniffing Hillbillies." If the title isn't enough, here's how the film's creator describes it: "It's about American Culture."* "Title 17," a three-minute film, featuring hundreds of FBI warnings against copying videotapes, that raises -- in its creator's own words -- the question, "If it's illegal to copy a videotape, is it illegal to copy the warning that says it's illegal to copy the tape?"