To understand the absurdity of those implications, as Fitzgerald puts it, one needs only to study the crowd at Media Day. The National Football League's definition of "media" is an inclusive one. Last year, there were lingerie models. This year, there's a fat guy in drag. It's as if someone in charge is telling us that old-fashioned sportswriting is unnecessary. Journalism, it seems, is a task best performed by the likes of Hooters girls and Deion Sanders, who brandished a microphone and interrupted the proceedings to inquire of Fitzgerald — get this! — "Larry, are you excited about being in the game?"

Nothing makes you a hater quite like Media Day. Nothing so effectively delineates the gap between Us and Them. Ballplayers like Larry Fitzgerald are young and heroic and close to perfect. He's 6-3, 215 pounds, and willing, if not eager, to risk great physical harm catching a ball over the middle. The reporters, by contrast, only get fatter and grayer and more decrepit with each passing year. Now more than ever, they're worried about their jobs, so many sportswriters trying to figure a way to outlive the newspaper business.

Media Day is inevitably described as "surreal," which means dreamlike. It is not. Like all rituals, it soon becomes predictable and demystified. That's not to say Tuesday at the Super Bowl lacked for a fantastic moment. For me, it came watching the sports editor of the weekly Minneapolis Spokesman-Recorder make his way down onto the field.

Larry Fitzgerald Sr., who has been attending Super Bowls since 1981, is a thick-armed man with glasses. He wore a blue polo shirt and carried a bag with his notebooks and his tape recorder.

"I'm trying to get my work done," he said, dabbing at the perspiration that had gathered across his forehead.

By now a crowd had gathered around him. Larry Fitzgerald Sr., whose namesake son was up on that podium maybe thirty feet away, had crossed the divide between Us and Them in a way that's never been done, certainly not at Media Day.

Someone asked if he had dreamed about this, covering his own son at the Super Bowl.

"I never dreamed about it," he said. "... I never really thought about it."

Next question: Your son said he's living his dream. Is this your dream?

"My dream was to do exactly what Larry's doing," he said. "To play in the National Football League and be a star. Unfortunately, I lost my desire to play my senior year."

His senior year at Indiana State. The coach had him play offensive tackle. The elder Fitzgerald thought of himself as a defensive tackle. "I was aggressive," he said. "I liked to hit people."

"Your son is sort of the anti-diva."

"My wife and I never believed in celebrating and showboating," he said.

His wife, Carol, died in 2003, seven years after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Speaking of her still causes him to weep.

"She meant everything to me," he said. "And to Larry."

Last question: "If your son pulled any typical wide receiver shenanigans, would you rip him?"

"He wouldn't do it," said the father. "It's just not in him."

In a moment, he ambled over to his son's interview podium. It's a wonder he could walk, I thought. I'd be too swollen with pride.

Larry Fitzgerald Sr. stood on the aluminum bleacher. He took out his tape machine and held it to a speaker. It was best to record the moment as it was, lest anyone tell him it was a dream.