I have to be very honest with you. I hate this time of the football season.

I love the game, don’t get me wrong. I think the NFL has the most dynamic postseason in all of professional sports.

I just hate this week of needless hype and other absurdities that would make Eugene Ionesco proud that lead up to the game.

One piece that floated into my inbox Saturday morning comes from the folks at Snopes.com, a website that details urban legends. In it they detail how the mess that was the movie I Am Legend is predicting today’s Super Bowl winner.

In the beginning of the movie, there’s a newscast scene with a crawl that reads, “Giants lose to Patriots for second time this season 23 to 7.”

Of course the only thing that could register in my foggy mind (thanks to seeing Autolux Friday night) was, “Who the fuck cares?”

This week there was a reporter for TV Azteca from Mexico City wearing a wedding dress who asked Tom Brady if he would marry her. Once rebuffed she went to Eli Manning and asked the same thing with the same result.

Again, who the fuck cares?

On Saturday rumor mills went wild with the story that the Patriots could have videotaped the St. Louis Rams going through their walk-through prior to Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002. Also earlier in the week Senator Arlen Specter had his panties bunched up in a knot because NFL commissioner Roger Goodell destroyed the tapes involved in Spygate. As I said when Spygate first reared its ugly head after Week 1, who the fuck cares?

Seriously this has got to stop. When the game of all games is going to have a red carpet hosted by the FOX nymph incarnate Ryan Seacrest, it’s just gone too far.

I can take the endless analysis by ESPN being bored to death about the minutiae of the three-step drop vs the seven. I can stomach it because at least it’s about football.

Really that’s all I want. I just want to watch a football game that determines who’s #1. That’s why I’m spending most of the time leading up to the game making Korean style dumplings for the party I’ll be at. And watching the Laker’s game against the Washington Wizards in what will hopefully be Pau Gasol’s first game in a Laker uniform.

So fuck I Am Legend (it was a horrible movie anyhow), fuck that Mexican reporter, fuck Spygate and most importantly fuck Ryan Seacrest.

I just want my football.

On a side note, while I still have some hostility left over, fuck the NFL Hall of Fame voters. It took them eight years to induct Washington Redskins wide receiver Art Monk! At least they finally got it right, but you’ve got to be kidding me. He should have been first ballot. Period.

AP Photo by Michael Chow