01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, February 1, 2005

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- While Bill Belichick has spent the past week trying to figure out how to beat the Philadelphia Eagles, I've spent the week since the conference championship games trying to figure out why in the name of Pete Rozelle the National Football League would hold a Super Bowl in Jacksonville.

It's finally dawned on me.

They're trying to make Detroit look good.

They're playing the Big Game here so that next year, when the media shows up in Motown for the first time since Super Bowl XVI, instead of complaining, they'll say: "Well, at least we're not in Jacksonville."

The Patriots are saying they're happy to be here, delighted to be here, thrilled to be here. But the odds of finding any members of the media saying they're excited about being in Jacksonville are even higher than the odds that Janet Jackson will be joining Paul McCartney for a duet at halftime.

What the Pats -- and Eagles, too, (except for T.O., who feels whatever town he's in should be happy, delighted and thrilled to have him there, rather than the other way around) -- are really saying is that they're pleased as punch to be at Super Bowl XXXIX.

And, come kickoff time on Sunday, so will everybody else gathered at historic (as historic, anyway, as anything else in Jacksonville) ALLTEL Stadium.

But before the thrill of championship football comes the agony of six days in Jacksonville, Fla.

The "Fla.," by the way, goes a long way toward explaining why this isn't the best place to hold a Super Bowl. The biggest sporting event in the U.S. of A. should never be held in a town where the newspaper dateline includes the state abbreviation.

There's no need, for example, of "Fla." after Miami, or "La." after New Orleans, or even "Calif." after Pasadena, back in the good old days when the NFL had a team in L.A. and the Super Bowl was held in the Rose Bowl -- still the best setting ever for the game.

The worst, of course, was Detroit.

I attended Super Bowl XVI, for which Detroit was nominally the host city. Not that anyone actually ever set foot in Detroit. Does anyone who has a choice ever actually set foot in Detroit?

When, after all, was the last time a friend said to you: "Yeah, I'd been thinking about vacationing in San Francisco, or New Orleans, or Miami, or Las Vegas, or maybe spending a long weekend in Manhattan. But then I said: 'Whoa! What am I thinking? I could go to Detroit!' "

No, when Super Bowl XVI was held in January, 1982 -- and space does not permit me to tell you just how lovely a decaying industrial city in lower Michigan is at that time of year -- the game was played in the Silverdome in Pontiac, and the media stayed in Dearborn. Although it seemed more like the middle of nowhere than in the heart (or was it the armpit?) of suburban Detroit.

The media was holed up in a hotel surrounded by mostly-empty parking lots, where the big attraction was to board the monorail that stopped outside the front door and ride it about a half-mile -- walking would have invited frostbite -- to the shopping mall at the other end of the line.

Strolling through Motown's answer to Warwick Mall is not exactly on a par with rollicking down Bourbon Street.

The most exciting entertainment the week of Super Bowl XVI was a party at the Henry Ford Museum, where those exotic dancers from Up With People, singing songs that would make Pat Boone seem edgy, cavorted between vintage coupes and cabriolets.

Which, in retrospect, was considerably better than the jacked-up pickup trucks with rifle racks on the back, crossing three lanes on the congested highways around Jacksonville, with a country music station blasting from the radio.

Going to Jacksonville to play a Super Bowl is like going to Des Moines to celebrate New Year's Eve.

It's a good thing the Giants didn't get to the Super Bowl this year. Eli Manning would have refused to play here.

One of the flight attendants -- she told me she preferred the term "Air Goddess" -- on my flight down was a former member of the Liberty Belles (the Eagles' cheerleading squad) who grew up in south Jersey rooting for the Eagles, but has lived in Jacksonville the last 10 years.

"Any good places to eat?" I asked.

"Hooters," she said without cracking a smile. "Order the possum stew."

They love their football here in Jacksonville, but mostly college football. Which is understandable, given the brand of ball played by the Jaguars.

That said, when they talk about "double-wides" here, they're not referring to an offensive formation, they're talking about house trailers.

And "red zone" refers to the area on the back of your neck.

I should be grateful, I suppose, not to be staying in a trailer park, considering the dire shortage of hotel rooms in Jacksonville. A shortage that shouldn't be surprising, since it's hard to figure why anyone would want to stay downtown if there wasn't a Super Bowl going on.

In order to accommodate all the out-of-town guests, a flotilla of cruise ships has been brought in and docked along the St. John's River, which runs through the city, and beside ALLTEL Stadium.

Well, yee-hah, darlin', we got us a floatin' Motel 6! Have a nice stay. And we'll leave the stern light on for you.

Although Houston, where the Super Bowl was held last year, is sprawling, it seems like a small town, area-wise, compared to Jacksonville, which, at 840 square miles, is roughly 10 times the size of Rhode Island.

New Orleans is much smaller, and a whole lot more fun.

In an ideal world, the week before the Super Bowl would be spent in the Big Easy, where fans (and sportswriters) could enjoy the considerable charms and delights of the French Quarter and the Garden District. Then, sometime in the wee hours of Sunday morning, hangovers could be slept off on a chartered flight to L.A., where the game would be played on the green grass of the Rose Bowl under a warm California sun.

But this is the real world, with six long days ahead in Jacksonville, where the only way it could get worse would be to have tapes of Freddie Mitchell interviews playing in the hotel elevator.

Detroit is looking better all the time.