Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Mark Spector has landed in Miami and he is about to see all the city has to offer (and maybe a football game as well.)

After his first Super Bowl in Tampa, Spec is looking to take advantage of all Miami has to offer.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- "I'm not sure you're going to be OK with this…"

When it's your wife on the other end of the phone, you know you're not going to be, "OK with this."

But when it's the boss, and he's phoning five days before you leave for Super Bowl on the company tab, you don't have much choice but to listen to his pitch.

"I want to try something different in Miami next week," he says, and already I'm thinking: What could entail being "different" at a Super Bowl?

Don't tell me he wants to carry a video camera everywhere, which means none of my sportswriter buddies will come within 100 feet of me.

Is he going to ask me not to drink? To play it straight this year? I'm ready to fire back, "Did O'Doul's ever buy a Super Bowl ad?"

But wait a second. Tampa didn't go that badly last year did it? C'mon Spec, try to remember.

Could he have heard about that boat ride? I only missed two days of practice. Or the night at the Cuban Social Club? That bartender wouldn't have told the bouncers who I worked for, would he? Would Cam Cole have told somebody? I thought I could trust him, but ever since he went to Vancouver, he has gone kinda soft…

The boss continues: "Yeah, I want you to work the atmosphere at Super Bowl. You know, the parties. The people. All the stuff that goes on outside the actual football."

The line goes silent. He thinks I'm not liking his idea, so he keeps selling.

"It's just that, there are hundreds of guys down there writing football every day. The wires will be full of stories on Peyton Manning. I'm thinking you can try to make people laugh. Go to the parties. Write about the kind of people who take off from their jobs and go to a Super Bowl. What's the scene like down there…"

He stops, waiting for some affirmation that I'm on side. The line is still quiet.

I'm halfway to the drug store. Better stock up on Advil gels.

I've got to say, my first Super Bowl last year was a bit of a rip-off. First off, we were in Tampa, a city whose corporate slogan is, "We're Tampa - the place to go if you can't afford Miami."

Tampa is Hamilton to Toronto. The Edmonton to Calgary. It's like Regina, but its name doesn't rhyme with anything we like.

Then the economy falls through the floor. My first Super Bowl, and that damned Wall Street hands out so many bad mortgages that oil prices fall through the floor.

"There is going to be austerity at this Super Bowl," they're saying, as I land in Tampa expecting full-on debauchery. "No Playboy party this year. No Maxim Party. Corporate America is on the low down."

A low key Super Bowl? It takes me 20 years in the business to get to a Super Bowl, and I get the one Super Bowl week put on by the same guy who does Stephen Harper's hair.

How to say it? OK - a Super Bowl without excess is like a fully-clothed stripper.

Why do you think the best ones are in New Orleans?

A down-low Super Bowl is an oxymoron - like a wine bar. You shouldn't be allowed to call yourself a bar if all you serve is wine, and you shouldn't be able to say you're putting on a Super Bowl if it's 2 a.m. Thursday night and there isn't any lingerie on the floor of the hotel elevator.

A little while later the phone rings again. "Hey Spec. It's Lawless."

Now, Gary Lawless is one of those guys who God must have had a hand in naming, 'cause the name's a perfect fit.

You know him. He's one of those "buddy of a buddy's" who shows up whenever the boys put together a golf or ski trip.

He's the fat guy in The Hangover, only without the ecstasy; a sportswriter's sportswriter, who never met a shaver - or a treadmill - he saw eye-to-eye with.

Lawless works for the Winnipeg Free Press, which means when they send him out into the real world he tries to make up for 40 years spent covering baseball teams named after lake fish, and hockey teams named after the best looking thing in Flin Flon.

The guy ain't pretty, not by a long stretch. But he can get the girl and match you drink for drink at the same time. Ziggy's - Montreal. I've seen it.

So he is of course, the perfect Super Bowl companion.

"So I've got this buddy from Labatt's," he says. He always has some buddy from some liquor outfit. "He says he can get us tickets for the Budweiser party in Miami. You interested?"

Am I interested…!?!