NEW ORLEANS – The "press conference" of the deer antler spray salesman had dragged on for over an hour.

Mitch Ross, fresh off a plane from Alabama, stood on the sidewalk outside the New Orleans convention center, home to the Super Bowl XLVII media center, and despite claiming he would "clear the air" about everything, managed to only further confuse things.

Mitch Ross holds up The Ultimate Spray at his "press conference" in New Orleans. (Yahoo! Sports)Ross, 45, wore a tight, sleeveless T-shirt after taking off his tight, sleeveless black vest, so eventually when the media became exhausted and baffled enough – eyes spinning at all the empty allegations, bold defenses and strange promises – they just turned the thing from confrontational to comical.

[Related: Super Bowl XLVII: When and where to watch the big game]

"Mitch, Mitch, do you have any shirts with sleeves?"

"Mitch, Mitch, have you met Bambi?"

Everyone laughed, even Ross at times, which made the entire thing more surreal, a real-life turn out of "Alice in Wonderland," perhaps the perfect cap to one of the

NEW ORLEANS – Just hours after San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver was surrounded by microphones and forced into an apology for anti-gay remarks, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was on television acknowledging he was gay. He spoke of his desire to have a relationship with what he says was an unwitting Manti Te'o, driving him to impersonate a female online and over the phone.

Te'o maintains he is "far from" gay, a question no less than Katie Couric asked him. His answer is worth accepting if only because it's not anyone's business who someone chooses to love.

The real issue is even if Te'o, or another athlete, were homosexual, how in the world would they summon the fortitude and accept the risk to come out while seeking a professional life in an NFL locker room? Clearly, at least in some number, locker rooms are still populated by bigots who agree with Culliver.

"It's going to take a very courageous person," said Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brandon Ayanbadejo, who is straight

NEW ORLEANS – Ed Reed is 34 now and he hopes that his tendency of late to forget simple things, or get confused about something easy, is just a sign of middle age approaching.

"Who [doesn't] wake up and forget things?" the Baltimore Ravens' future Hall of Fame safety said with a wistful laugh.

Deep down, though, he fears something else is at work. The man plays football for a living and he plays it violently, all those collisions over the middle, all those bone-jarring tackles. He's had just three diagnosed concussions he said, although he acknowledged there "may be more that you don't really know about." Through the aches and pains, Ed Reed has become one of the best safeties of his generation. (USA Today Sports)

And so Reed offers this startling revelation: He isn't just fearful that he may one day suffer from brain injuries caused by football, he thinks he's already dealing with them.

"I think some things I go through [right now] are football related," Reed said Wednesday. "There's been some thing that honestly put up a flag. Just stuff that I know, stuff that I know

NEW ORLEANS – Ray Lewis acknowledged Wednesday that he is "agitated" that his name was again linked in a report concerning performance-enhancing drug use and blasted his accuser as a "coward" who was using the run-up to Super Bowl XLVII to gain attention.

Lewis vehemently denied the claim in Sports Illustrated by Mitch Ross, co-owner of Sports With Alternative to Steroids (S.W.A.T.S.), that Lewis used deer-antler velvet spray to help recover from a torn triceps injury. This came two years after Yahoo! Sports' ThePostGame originally reported on Lewis and other elite athletes' ties to the substance.

Lewis hammered Ross at a Wednesday morning media conference here, calling it "embarrassing" that Ross, whose name Lewis refuses to say out loud, could hijack the media narrative of the week. Ray Lewis isn't happy with where the Super Bowl narrative went on Wednesday. (AP)

"I've said it before, I've said it a million times, the reason I'm smiling because it is so funny and absurd," Lewis said. "I never ever took what he said or whatever I was supposed to.

NEW ORLEANS – The Patron Saint of the Benched, Demoted, Passed By and Screwed Over arrived at Super Bowl XLVII media day and was immediately surrounded by cameras and recorders – reporters five, six deep in a circle around him.

Alex Smith was the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers into November of this season, playing as well as anytime in his NFL career, completing 25 of 27 passes and throwing four touchdowns over a two-game stretch. "I felt the most comfortable I've been on a football field in a long time, maybe ever," Smith said.

Alex Smith is surrounded by journalists during media day. (REUTERS)Then he was concussed in a game against the St. Louis Rams. His backup, Colin Kaepernick, came in, played well and never gave the job back. Even when Smith was medically cleared to return, coach Jim Harbaugh decided to make Kaepernick the team's long-term starter.

Smith hasn't seen the field since as the 49ers have advanced to the Super Bowl where they will play the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday.

It happens, both in

NEW ORLEANS – The Ray Lewis Story, as told [often] by Ray Lewis, has generally been one long on redemption but light on remorse and even remembrance of the darkest night of his life.

The Baltimore Ravens linebacker will speak at length about his faith, about his relationship with God, about his altogether righteous and wonderful life with all its blessings. Yet he hardly acknowledges the night 13 years ago in Atlanta where a fight in the street left two men dead and Lewis eventually turning state's witness and avoiding a murder rap to plead guilty to obstruction of justice. He testified at the trial of two of his friends but neither was convicted.

Ray Lewis answers a question during media day. (USA Today Sports)For a man that embraces a very open and public existence to cling to a private moment of such a major incident is to some fans the proper way to move on from a tragedy, to others the flaunting of a criminal who is getting away with it, and, to the vast majority of everyone else, something in between.

Super Bowl XLVII media

There is a tried and true strategy for most players – or all players – during the media crush of Super Bowl week.

When in doubt say nothing. Or close to nothing. Colin Kaepernick was relatively pedestrian in his comments to reporters on Sunday. (AP)

This would seem to be particularly apt advice for a young quarterback with only half a season of experience under his belt, about to face a defense full of legends that just forced the triumvirate of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck into more interceptions (5) than touchdowns (4).

So Colin Kaepernick, your thoughts on that Baltimore Ravens defensive line?

"They are very physical, very big and take up a lot of space," the San Francisco 49ers quarterback said this week.

No kidding, they are big? Who would've guessed? 

That's all he said on the subject. And perhaps all he will say. Super Bowl week has just begun and Kaepernick appears to have bought into the game plan of making zero waves until kickoff. Not only is he in the process of executing it; he's executing it perfectly.

And that's a

There were mornings as a young child that Nes Andrion yearned for the mother who he says left him behind in the Philippines at the tender age of 8 months old and times his stomach burned with hunger from so many inadequate meals – too often just bread and coffee, even as a toddler. There were days, he says, his feet grew sore from having no shoes and his back ached from sleeping on a hard dirt floor – "just a bed sheet, no pillow," he recalls.

Colin Kaepernick carries the ball on his tattoo-covered right arm against the Packers. (USA Today Images). Through it all, though, a simple dream carried him.

The kid was an artist. The kid could draw. He could create. He reveled in the moment it all came together.

And so, sure, Nes Andrion grew up about as poor as you can in this world – "rock bottom," he says – raised by his aunt and uncle, in a tiny, crowded house on the side of the steep, thick mountains above Olongapo City, the Filipino port town.

He always saw something bigger, though. He saw art. His art, splashed across countries he could hardly fathom, seen by millions of