By BERNIE LINCICOME, Scripps Howard News Service

I didn't read the Rocky Mountain News today. Oh, boy.
Nor tomorrow and tomorrow.
What comes to mind is poetry, how absurd. Lines that were committed to memory for a college grade back when the written word had value, a B-minus as I recall.
Stop all the clocks, shut off the telephone . . . let the mourners come.

Working just from memory, this must be at least the fourth edition of Tiger Woods, the consistent theme being that in each he has been terrific.
The young Tiger, the revamped Tiger, the Tiger Slam Tiger, the married Tiger, the post-funeral Tiger, the new father Tiger, the limping Tiger. So many Tigers.

The term "dumb jock" has lasted as long as there have been jocks, dumb or otherwise. Age has never been a qualifier until Alex Rodriguez made it one. To be young and dumb, or young and stupid, cannot be an excuse for anything after the age of consent, speaking legally.

The money made him do it. Money is the second-oldest motive in the world, after all. Willie Sutton famously said he robbed banks because that's where the money is. The Menendez brothers. The Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Bonnie and Clyde. Wall Street.
All about money.
We understand. People do awful things for money. Heroic things. Careless things.

Nevertheless, the Steelers of Pittsburgh will keep this Super Bowl trophy. They can put it with the other five, and tell lies later about how this one was a cinch.
It was not. This one was all thumbscrews and root canals, shock and awesome, slap and smack, a duel in the cool tropical night.

Nothing much at stake in this Super Bowl, just the Hall of Fame for one of the quarterbacks and perpetual free drinks for everyone else, of course.
But it is for Kurt Warner and for Ben Roethlisberger the clearest of rewards, because one of them will have won two Super Bowls, not that Roethlisberger had much to do with the first one. And Warner did lose his second chance.

Some teams are great, some teams achieve greatness and some teams are the Arizona Cardinals.
This also could be true of towns, I suppose, and this one has all the required attributes of a Super Bowl city; it is warm, it has palm trees out the window and a grouper sandwich on the menu.

The new president has joked that he is going to replace the White House bowling alley with a basketball court, that being his game of preference. Figuring if Barack Obama does for basketball what his predecessor did for cycling, nothing much is going to change.

New rallying cry for the NFL: Nine is enough.
Or, if the Arizona Cardinals can do it, any team can.

Give me your tired, your weak, your huddled underdogs. . . .
Well, at least the 8-8 San Diego Mediocres are no longer playing for a trip to the Super Bowl. That would have been too much, a team that was Denver's proxy -- oh, pick any little thing that would have put the Broncos in the Chargers' place.