MONDAY Generally a big fan of Air Canada, but fly to Phoenix on Air Canada Rouge. I always thought Rouge meant red, but apparently it means Seats only kittens can fit comfortably in. Need to work on my French. Arrive at hotel and front desk clerk hands me a large warmed delicious chocolate chip cookie with my key. This is brilliant check-in bribery. I could find a dead body in my room now and be hesitant to complain. Walking through downtown Phoenix, a scalper asks us if we want to buy tickets to the Pro Bowl that night. I laugh like hes Louis C.K. I prefer my football with tackling. TUESDAY The last Super Bowl Media Day I covered was in Jacksonville in 2005. My lasting memory is of two Mexican reporters from Azteca Deportes who asked questions with hand puppets. I arrive at Media Day in Phoenix and among the first people I run into are the same two reporters, with different hand puppets. I quietly wonder if the original puppets got a better offer and jumped to Telemundo. The problem with Media Day is that half the reporters dont seem to actually work in the media. There must be radio stations who hand out passes to contest winners. A couple of guys in the Gronkowski scrum are wearing Patriots T-shirts and asking probing questions like, Gronk, why are you so awesome? Though that is actually better than many of the questions real media ask. I am standing with Seattle punter and Canadian boy Jon Ryan when a reporter sticks his mic in and says: Reporter: You are Canadian, right? Ryan: Yes. Reporter: Do you like pontoon? Ryan: What? Reporter: Do you like pontoon? Ryan: Poutine? Reporter: Yes, poutine. Twenty-nine reporters ask Marshawn Lynch questions, all getting the exact same answer, Im only here so I dont get fined. I want to ask the 29th guy if he thought his question was so good, it would make Lynch sit up straight and say, Brilliantly posed sir! This one I must answer, thoroughly and eloquently! I am impressed (confused?) with the fans who buy tickets to sit in the stands during Media Day to watch...scrums. There are a couple of hundred Seahawks faithful who cheer madly every time Russell Wilson has a good answer. Some even scream during the Patriots availability, making me wonder if they are trying to affect Brady and his offences ability to hear the questions. They take this 12th man thing seriously. WEDNESDAY Fourteen more questions without answers for Lynch. Give up the dream people. You are not getting him to open up about his childhood and cry for you. Eat dinner at Lo-Los Chicken and Waffle House in Scottsdale, highly recommended by Deion Sanders. I assume the name means waffles for breakfast, and chicken as a specialty for dinner. I am wrong. It means fried chicken and waffles, together, for every meal. Broccoli is not allowed within 10 miles of the place. It is a bylaw, I believe. I order the Tre-Tre because it sounds like it gives me street cred. It has two drumsticks and one giant waffle with an ice-cream sized scoop of butter. It is delicious. I have no regrets. THURSDAY I have quadruple bypass surgery. FRIDAY NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell holds his annual State of the Union news conference. The union has issues. Goodell sidesteps every question like a Russell Wilson scramble. One reporter asks, roughly, Any other employee who had a year like you did would have been fired or resigned by now. Why havent you been fired or resigned? Boom. I cant see the reporter who asks it because there are about 1,000 people in the room, but I quietly hope it is one of the Mexican hand puppets. Goodell just keeps digging himself a deeper hole. I have had numerous issues with Gary Bettman over the years (cough...TV rights...cough), but he makes himself available much more than once every four months. Plus he answers questions, even if you dont always like the answers. A Roger Goodell interview is the same as a Marshawn Lynch interview, just with more and fancier words. SATURDAY I am standing in the bleachers behind the 16th hole at the Phoenix Open, the craziest golf tournament the planet has ever known. The most fruitless job in sport belongs to the volunteers who ask the crowd for silence before players hit their tee-shots on 16 at Phoenix. They scream, cheer, boo, chant, and mostly drink, through every shot. You hit one tight, its a football stadium celebrating a game-winning touchdown for the home team.You miss the green, its the same crowd after the ref called the touchdown back. PGA Pro Jon Rahm wears an Arizona State football jersey for his tee-shot. The crowd goes nuts. Then he hits it long to the back of the green, and they boo him relentlessly. The 16 Bleacher Creatures chant every chant ever used in American sport. Examples: -USA! USA! for every American player, and some Euros who they believe are American because they have had 17 Budweisers. -The Atlanta Braves Tomahawk Chop chant...for no explicable reason. -Bald spot! Bald spot! As Phil Mickelson strolls towards the green. You need to put 16 bleachers on your bucket list. Just dont bring your kids. This tournament is basically the worlds largest nightclub. Except it opens at 7am. Women show up in heels and cocktail dresses. And leave covered in mud. There are more than 100,000 people on the course the day Im there. I figure about 10,000 are watching golf. I always thought the Phoenix Waste Management Open is a terrible sponsor name. But in my three hours there, I see two fights, a couple of guys throwing up, and one young lady (in heels) passed out in the mud. The sponsor name, in retrospect, is perfect. SUNDAY The Auxiliary Press Box is one of the sections at the top of the stadium. We are in the last row of media, with an entire section of Patriots fans right behind us. Chris Schultz makes a point of telling them he picked the Pats to win. Which he did, though he would have told Seahawks fans the same thing if they were behind us. Avoiding getting beer poured on his head is one of Schultzys many strengths. The game is great, but you all saw that, so Ill skip the details. Im a mile from the stage for the halftime show. In fact, from my vantage point it almost looks like Katy Perry is dancing with sharks! Lol. As if. No choreography would be that drunk. (Unless they were at the golf tournament all weekend.) When you cover the game, you always watch the end from the bowels of the building, in a Disney ride-like line-up to get on the field. I have never seen a group of media gasp the way they did when the Seahawks threw on that last play. Even the hand puppets said, Holy S***! (In Spanish) We interview Patriots corner Brandon Browner, who says...what we all are saying, What were those guys thinking? When my alarm goes off at 4am for my flight home, I ask the same thing of myself. By the way, I have now covered three Super Bowls. All Patriot victories. I should really get a ring. Cheap Replica Shoes China .55 million euros (US$18.6 million) to Spanish tax authorities on Monday to cover any potential irregularities in its signing of Neymar, all the while maintaining its innocence of the fraud charges levied against it. Replica Shoes Wholesale . Goins is the early favourite to win the starting job at second base. Pillar is an outsider to secure a role off the bench, which becomes an even more difficult spot to win if the number of back up jobs is reduced by one. That happens if the Blue Jays decide to start the season with an eight man bullpen. http://www.wholesaleshoes.us.org/. -- Louisville backup quarterback Reggie Bonnafon ran for two touchdowns and passed for another and the No. Shoes Wholesale China Market . He will just have to wait a little longer. Bester grabbed an early lead before Scotlands Darren Burnett took over and ran away with the mens singles lawn bowling final 21-9 on Friday. Cheap Shoes China Wholesale . - Their offence is underperforming. CALGARY -- Dane Dobbie stands 5-foot-8, but the Roughnecks forward has been a big contributor to Calgarys offence all season. Saturday night was no different. Dobbie scored three goals and assisted on another to lead Calgary to a 10-7 victory over the Rochester Knighthawks in the opening game of the National Lacrosse Leagues Champions Cup final. "Youve got people that are probably a foot-and-a-half taller than him just trying to break his wrists," said Roughnecks coach Curt Malawsky. "Theyre not trying to dislodge the ball, theyre trying to break his wrist and break his arm. You see at the end, the guy tried to take his head off. But all that does is fuel Dobs fire." The NLLs leading goal scorer during the regular season with 51, Dobbie has a penchant for scoring the clutch goal. His third goal of the night Saturday, scored 2:07 into the fourth quarter, was his biggest of the game. It came after Rochester had reduced a 7-3 second quarter deficit to 7-6 entering the final 15 minutes. Dobbie neatly finished off a tic-tac-toe passing sequence with Karsen Leung and Mike Carnegie to give Calgary a much needed cushion and fire up the 16,541 raucous fans at Scotiabank Saddledome. "In the third quarter, we just tried to wear them down," Dobbie said. "The breaks werent going our way, but I think we took a bite out of them. We worked hard, we got to the dirty errors and made their defence run a lot." Three minutes later, Dobbie rang a shot off the post that was knocked in on the rebound by Carnegie. "Weve got to be better, moving our feet and moving the ball, I dont think we did that all that well tonight," said Rochester coach Mike Hasen. "But give them credit, they put us in spots where we werent able to do that and (Mike) Poulin made those easy saves. Full value to them, they were good tonight." Poulin said the game was an example of every player in the line-up contributing. He was especially proud of how the team played defensively. "I gave up eight goals in a quarter against Edmonton a week ago so seven in a game -- Ill take it," said Poulin, who had 36 stops. "We did a fantastic job as a unit and it made my job a lot easier. When it was a one-goal game, I havent seen us more calm out there than we were tonight. "We kept our composure and we focused on the next shift." Curtis Dickson and Scott Ranger had two goals each for Calgary, annd Shawn Evans and Jeff Shattler also scored.ddddddddddddEvans added four assists for a game-high five points. Rochester, which has won the Champions Cup the last two years, got two goals from Craig Point and one apiece from Joe Walters, Cory Vitarelli, Stephen Keogh, Cody Jamieson and Johnny Powless. Game 2 goes next Saturday in Rochester with a 10-minute mini game to follow immediately after if the Knighthawks win to even up the series. "By finishing in first place, we earned this opportunity to go back now to our home barn where its a tough place to play," said Point. "We play good there, fans are nice and loud, just like it was tonight. Its our opportunity to go back and give it our all." Both teams required the mini game to win their respective division semifinals. After losing the opener to Buffalo, Rochester -- first in the East Division at 14-4 -- rallied at home to take Game 2 and also capture the mini-game 2-1 in overtime. Calgary -- second in the West during the regular season at 12-6 -- opened with a win at home, lost the second game in Edmonton, and rebounded to win the mini game 2-1. Trailing 4-1 in the second quarter, Rochester got back into the game on goals 1:17 apart from Powless and Point. However, despite multiple chances, they were unable to push one more past Poulin to square it up. Then, on a shift that fired up the crowd, Dobbie scored goals 34 seconds apart to restore a three-goal cushion at 6-3. "What a game our defence played. They won us this game and our offence will pick up the pace for next game and hopefully win that game for us," said Dobbie, the Roughnecks new leader with 62 career playoff points, passing Tracey Kelusky (60). While he looks forward to next weekend, he knows it isnt going to be easy. "Its a real tough buiding to play in, theyre first place for a reason," Dobbie said. "Its going to be a tough game but weve got to bring it, plain and simple. Weve got to be better next weekend than this weekend and that was our goal all season is to improve every game." Notes: Geoff Snider (knee) was unable to suit up for the Roughnecks. He was hurt three weeks ago in the opening game of the playoffs... Missing for Rochester was veteran Dan Dawson, who was shaken up on a heavy hit last Saturday... It was the first ever playoff meeting between the two teams... Rochester has won four NLL titles while Calgary has won two. ' ' '