If I wasn’t still on dial-up at the in-laws, this would almost feel like the normal beginning to a week getting ready for a football game. It’s Monday, the game’s on Saturday and the articles are finally beginning to focus on the teams and the game.

It starts with the warm reception each team’s official flight received at the airport:

They could see the party from the plane, the huge tent with the welcome banner stretched across the top, the scores of bowl organizers in pastel yellow jackets waving congratulatory placards, and the red carpet being rolled out across the tarmac and right up to the steps leading from the plane.

“It’s unreal,” junior linebacker Grady Marshall said. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

That stands to reason, considering the Fiesta Bowl is like nothing the Utah football team has ever attended.

Their historic undefeated season made the No. 5 Utes the first mid-major team to break into a Bowl Championship Series game like the one against No. 19 Pittsburgh on New Year’s Day, and many of the players and coaches arrived at Sky Harbor International Airport on a chartered flight Sunday every bit as awed by the welcome reception as they expected to be.

Then there is the reality:

I’m not sure exactly what I expected to see as we rolled into Sky Harbor International Airport on a sunny, but cool Phoenix afternoon, but I surely did not expect to see Fiesta Bowl volunteers donned in yellow jackets literally roll out a red carpet for Stanford coach Walt Harris as he descended a portable stairway tethered to a U.S. Airways aircraft (one of the few in recent days that actually had all of the passengers’ luggage on board).

Florida coach Urban Meyer got the same treatment.
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You never would have suspected that the “fans” who helped to line each side of the red carpet — along with many Fiesta Bowl Committee members — actually were props who’d been invited to party under a canopy the size of a couple of end zones on the understanding they would welcome the participating teams (Pitt and Utah) on the tarmac.

It seemed like a good deal. Many of the adults spent their time sucking down Coors Light, eating turkey and roast beef fresh off the bone and dipping into that fondue fountain.

A few minutes before Pitt’s plane landed, the revelers emerged from the canopy with signs that said things like, “Welcome Coach Harris” and “Welcome Big East Champions.”
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Another man was a lifelong Penn State fan who said, “I can’t believe I’m holding up a Pitt Panther sign right now.”
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Utah arrived an hour later. And wasn’t it cute that the crowd was supplied with placards welcoming each of the team’s head coaches, the outgoing Meyer and his soon-to-be successor Kyle Whittingham.

They stood there and cheered just for free Coors Light?

Vince Crochunis has an account of his commercial flight from Philly to Tempe.

The game is officially a sell-out, though you can expect Utah fans to outnumber Pitt fans nearly 2-1.

Both teams are talking about how they came here to win the game. As opposed to the “we’re just happy to be here,” stuff. Well, there was some use of the cliche:

“It’s great,” [Utah] senior running back Marty Johnson said. “You pull in and see all this stuff, and you realize the kind of game we’re at. You know, playing Pitt? That was a downer, at first. . . . But now, it doesn’t matter who we play, it’s just about the game, the Fiesta Bowl. We’re happy to be here, and I know Pitt’s happy to be here. Now, we just have to come out and play.”

Actually, both teams are out to prove they belong in the BCS game.

Both coaches insist that their impending departures are not a distraction. Utah, may have the additional distraction of wondering how soon after the game whether their QB will announce his decision to go into the 2005 NFL draft.

A puff piece on Darrelle Revis, on his progression from planning on a future in basketball to being a starting CB on Pitt. The Utah paper indicates that defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads wants to stay with Pitt. Then, let’s hope the defense performs in a way suggesting they want to keep playing for him.

Finally, from the selective transcript of Walt Harris’ press conference in Tempe:

On coaching the last game for the University of Pittsburgh:

“We came to the University of Pittsburgh in 1997. There’s not a lot of coaches that can say they were head coaches for eight years. (Pitt) had won 15 games in (the prior) five years and hadn’t gone to a bowl in nine years. Since then, we’ve gone to six bowl games in eight years, we’ve graduated players… we’ve had a Heisman Trophy runner-up that you are all getting a chance to enjoy for those of you who follow the Cardinals, we’ve had all-conference players, we’ve had the most Big East Academic players for four years in a row. We’re proud of what’s been accomplished with the tremendous help and support of the university. Our players find a way to get it done and now we’re going to play in the arena that we wanted to play in, which is the Bowl Championship Series.”

Expect a couple extra stories this week on Larry Fitzgerald’s first year with the Arizona Cardinals. I also think we can put the chance of a sideline interview with Fitzgerald during the Fiesta Bowl at better than 90% since Arizona ends the season at home.