Watts Witit

ORLANDO, Fla., Jan. 19 (UPI) — President Barack Obama, in a visit Thursday to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., joked it was nice to meet a world leader who has bigger ears than me.

It was Obamas first trip to the Florida theme park, press secretary Jay Carney said of the visit.

With Cinderellas castle as a backdrop, Obama spoke to an audience of about 150 people, including Disney employees, members of several unions and local politicians on Disneys Main Street.

Its always nice to meet a world leader who has bigger ears than me, said Obama, of a planned meeting with Mickey Mouse.

He added it was rare for him to do something that would make his daughters jealous.

Obama spoke about tourism and travel initiatives he planned to implement by executive order to make the United States the top tourist destination in the world and to signal America is open for business.

For the first time, the Greater Phoenix area will have its own Birthright Israel trip, with all 40 spots given to local young adults.

Birthright is a national nonprofit that sponsors men and women ages 18-26 to go on a free, educational 10-day tour of Israel.

In the past, spots reserved for Valley residents on a Birthright trip had to be shared with another city, such as Las Vegas, according to Tamar Farber, manager of the Israel Center in Scottsdale.

You can never guarantee anything … but the chances of getting on (our trip) are much better than the general pool, said Farber. Nationwide, the acceptance rate of applicants is about one in three, she said.

Farber said trip organizers are targeting people who are post-college who plan to stay in the Phoenix community. She said the goal is to have them return home passionate about Israel and to keep them connected to the Jewish community and the friends they make on the trip, through involvement in a range of pro-Israel, Jewish and young-adult activities.

In the past, it was very hard to do any kind of Birthright follow-up activities because we didnt have the names of the (Phoenix) alumni and they didnt necessarily know each other because they had gone on … different trips, said Farber.

Hillel and Chabad, both at Arizona State University, also organize Birthright trips for ASU students, with students typically sharing a tour bus with another universitys group, according to Jennifer Williams, administrative assistant at ASU Hillel. In May 2011, an ASU Hillel Birthright group shared a bus with students from the University of Pittsburgh.

A Valley-based delegation will allow the trip to be tailored to visit areas that are particularly significant to the Phoenix area, Farber said.

For example, stops could be made in the town of Kiryat Malachi and in the region of Hof Ashkelon, both areas of Israel that receive support from the Jewish Community Associations TIPS (Tucson, Israel, Phoenix, Seattle) partnership.

Farber said that a Birthright trip exclusive to the Valley was made possible by significant fundraising, as well as a grant from the Jewish Community Association of Greater Phoenix.

For now, she said, its a one-time opportunity. It was something we were able to get thanks to a lot of peoples hard (work), and well see if its going to be ongoing or not.

Details

• The trip is scheduled for June 10-21 and will depart from Los Angeles. Those accepted must provide their own transportation to and from Los Angeles.

• Registration opens Feb. 15 for first-time applicants, or Feb. 14 for anyone who has previously applied.

• Registration must be done via the Internet. Visit birthrightisrael.com and select the Phoenix Awesome Israel trip option.

• Upon acceptance, applicants must place a $250 deposit. The money will be refunded upon their return from Israel.

• For more information or to sign up for a registration reminder, contact Tamar Farber, tamarf@vosjcc.org, or Erin Searle, erins@vosjcc.org.
  

Thursday night a group of local doctors, nurses and volunteers were packing up suitcases with medical supplies, medicine and clothes. The group is headed to Grand Goave Haiti for a medical mission trip.

Organizers say this is the groups seventh time going to Haiti to help those in need. Seventeen people, including four doctors and several nurses, will help with everything from infections and broken bones to helping with dental needs. The group says it expects to help 1,200 to 1,500 people during the week.

My first thought is I get anxious, I still have that Midwestern mentality where I want to be busy I dont want to have to have people wait. I am always apologizing because people do have to wait and yet they dont really have anything else to do. So yes, its a great sense of sadness these people have to wait, they have nothing, and they come from long distances to see a doctor and they will wait long hours in the hot sun if they have to, just to see a doctor, says Kathy Kivlin, who is a Foreign Travel Nurse with Marshfield Clinic.

Heading on the trip with the medical team are two parents who arent strangers to helping out in Haiti. They adopted a daughter about a year ago after the devastating earthquake in the country. Now the couple is in the process of bringing home three more children.

Little Mazie Grace is right at home here in the Chippewa Valley now. However a little over a year ago she was still in Haiti, waiting for this new life to start.

It was just a few weeks in and we noticed a huge change for her and shes adjusted great. Shes darling and wonderful and determined and she loves life and shes excited about every aspect of her life, shes got zest, says Sandi Polzin.

It was a long process to bring Mazie to the states, but adoptions were sped up after the earthquake. John and Sandi Polzin, who already have two sons in their 20s, cant believe how much their family will be growing. Theyre trying to bring home three more children from Haiti.

It was a huge shock when we got matched with the two older siblings, we said yes to them, then a few weeks later they said by the way we didnt know but theres a baby. Would you be interested or will you consider taking their baby sister, says Sandi.

She and John are headed to Haiti with the medical mission. Along with medicine and a new water filtration system the couple will take some time to see their new children. However it will be at least two years before Schneider, Mila Rose, and Merci will be home in Wisconsin.

Waiting will be difficult but weve done this before so we know what it will take, even though its agonizing we understand now that weve been through it. The cost will be an issue for us because we didnt expect to pay for three adoptions so we were financially surprised but god can help take care of that too, says Sandi.

She says waiting is hard and mission trips can be stressful but says when you see the great need of the people there, you cant help but try to make a difference.

Were excited its an intense trip when you take that many but its so worth it and you see lives changing all around you, says Sandi.

The mission trip starts early Wednesday morning. This will be the second time the Polzins have seen their new children. They took a trip this past fall to Haiti to see them. Sandi says if you want to help with the effort or learn more about Haiti adoptions you can get a hold of her through her store Down to Earth Gardens on Highway 93 in Eau Claire.

Click here for contact information

ESTERO –
The Florida Everblades play three road games in three nights over the weekend and have a chance to return to Southwest Florida in sole possession of first place in the South Division. Unfortunately, if the team stumbles on the trip, they could also return in last place.

Despite losing only once in regulation over their past 11 games, the Everblades (21-14-1-2, 45 points) sit just one point ahead of Greenville (21-15-1-1, 44 points) and South Carolina (21-16-1-1), which are tied for last place in the South Division. Florida trails Gwinnett (19-11-6-3, 47 points) by just two points. Florida plays at Gwinnett on Friday before playing at South Carolina on Saturday and Sunday.

“Our division has all the teams we need to beat in order to move up,” Florida coach Greg Poss said. “And they’re probably some of the best teams in the league, but that’s a good thing because we’re used to seeing that tough competition.”

In addition to loading up on division foes, Florida’s season schedule continues to be unbalanced. With the season more than halfway gone, Florida has spent more time on the road than at home this season. The good news is that after the three-game trip, Everblades will have just 13 road games remaining on the season, compared to 18 at Germain Arena.

Despite the heavy travel schedule, fatigue shouldn’t be a problem, at least this weekend. Florida is coming off a league-mandated three-day “all-star” break, even though the league didn’t have an all-star game this season.

“It was a good time for a break,” Poss said. “Our guys really used the rest, and now we’re refreshed and it’s good because we’re going to need everyone.”

After an influx of players last week, this week has been the opposite. Defensemen Ryan Donald, Charles Landry and Kevin Quick were all recalled to the AHL this week. Florida received forward Cedric McNicoll, who played with Florida each of the last two seasons, from AHL Charlotte on Thursday.

“It just shows the importance of having guys that are versatile,” said Poss, who plans to move Deron Cousens from offense back to defense for the weekend. “We have a lot of all-around players, and we’re going to need everyone to be on the same page because we have no safety net.”

Also gone from the team is goalie John Muse, who won two games against Chicago last weekend. Muse is expected to remain with AHL Charlotte for the foreseeable future, and Poss said giving Pat Nagle an extended rest was important.

“It was really helpful to give him a full week off,” Poss said. “He was playing a lot of games and he probably will coming up so he needed that break.”

The team also activated goalie Billy Sauer from the injured reserve on Thursday, and Poss said he expects Sauer to play this weekend. Since signing with the Everblades in December, Sauer has made just one start.

“He’s improved his rebound control and really looked good in practice,” Poss said. “We want to give him an opportunity to see how he performs in a game.”

Stanford opens a three-game road trip tonight, and if all goes well in the state of Washington, the Cardinal will return for a game at Cal to determine sole possession of first place in the Pac-12.

Because of a scheduling quirk, the Bay Area schools face the Washington schools just once this season. Stanford (15-3, 5-1) starts the trip at Washington State riding a three-game winning streak that kept the Cardinal in a first-place tie with the Golden Bears (15-4, 5-1).

The Cougars (9-8, 1-4) are struggling offensively after the departure of Klay Thompson. They are led by junior forward Brock Motums 15.4 points per game.

A stop in Seattle on Saturday could be the Cardinals biggest road test of the season outside of Haas Pavilion. The Huskies (11-6, 4-1) thrive at home with an up-tempo style and multiple scoring options.

They are led by freshman point guard Tony Wroten, who is averaging 16.8 points per game but shoots just 54 percent from the free-throw line and has committed more than four turnovers a game.

Washingtons biggest threat might be sophomore guard Terrence Ross, coming off a 30-point game against Washington State.

Stanford – the best in the conference in rebounding margin – has had only two 20-point scorers all season.

The Ottawa Senators are riding a hot streak, due in part to their play on the road.

If recent history is any indication, a visit to the surging San Jose Sharks is sure to threaten that run.

Ottawa looks to avoid a sixth straight loss to Pacific Division-leading San Jose and earn a point in a franchise-record 11th consecutive road game when the teams meet Thursday night.

The Senators (26-16-6) improved to 12-2-2 in their last 16 with a 3-2 victory at Toronto on Tuesday to open a six-game trip. They fell behind 2-0 in the first period, but began the comeback with a goal by captain Daniel Alfredsson. Kyle Turris scored the game-winner early in the third and Craig Anderson made 37 saves for Ottawa.

Alfredsson also had an assist while breaking a string of four games without a point and Jason Spezza scored to give him seven goals and three assists in his last nine games.

I think its just the character of what we have in the room, Anderson said. Our leadership, our guys that find ways to bring it every day.

You know, I think its a credit to our captain, Alfie, and how he comes to the rink every day, battles hard. That guy never takes a day off and hes just a great role model for everybody else.

Ottawa has earned at least one point in 10 straight road games (6-0-4) to match a club record set March 4-April 7, 2007.

The Senators, though, have been outscored 16-5 while losing their last five meetings with the Sharks (26-12-5), who improved to 7-1-1 in their last nine with a 2-1 shootout win at home over Calgary on Tuesday.

Michal Handzus and Brent Burns scored in the tiebreaker and Antti Niemi followed up a 27-save night by stopping both Flames attempts.

Fourteen of San Joses last 18 games have been decided by one goal, including the last three. The Sharks have gone 7-3-4 in those contests.

These one-goal games, hopefully, down the road, will help us in the playoffs, said Sharks forward Torrey Mitchell, who scored Tuesdays game-tying goal midway through the third period.

It seems like we cant find a game where we score five or six goals. Every game has been tight. Our team, were resilient.

Logan Couture, the Sharks leader with 18 goals this season, scored twice the last time these teams met, a 4-0 San Jose road victory Dec. 2, 2010. Niemi made 28 saves to earn the shutout

Patrick Marleau added a goal in that contest and has scored in each of the Sharks five straight wins over Ottawa. Hes also earned a point in 10 of the last 11 meetings between the clubs, with nine goals and five assists in that span.

It is unclear who will start in net for either side, though Anderson is 2-6-0 with an unimpressive 3.42 goals-against average in his career versus the Sharks.

Ottawa has lost two straight in San Jose, last winning there 4-1 on Oct. 18, 2003.

Sharks forward Ryane Clowe will miss his second straight game while recovering from facial injuries suffered when he crashed hard into the boards Jan. 10 in Minnesota.

Bob Hope would be happy.

The old Bob Hope Desert Classic has had its struggles the past couple of years after Chrysler backed away from title sponsorship and the field became watered down after many of the top players skippped the tournament.

This year, things have changed, and with a new format, new sponsorship and renewed vigor, the tournament with the celebrities and the amateurs appears to be headed back in the right direction.

The Humana Challenge, in partnership with the Clinton Foundation, has committed eight years to the tournament and Act 1 started in La Quinta where the professional field of 144 players will be playing three centrally located courses and 72-holes, down from the forme four-course, 90-hole format.

Thats what the PGA Tour players told the folks who run the tournament that they would like to see changed and those folks listened. And they have been rewarded with a nice field that includes the likes of Phil Mickelson, Greg Norman, Anthony Kim, Dustin Johnson, Zack Johnson, Matt Kuchar and the last two years winners — Bill Haas in 2010 and Jhonattan Vegas last year.

Yes, there will be celebrities, but the focus is on the golf tournament and after all it is a PGA Tour event and that is really what people want to see, top notch golf with a quality field.

We are delighted and privileged to host such an accomplished field of players and personalities this year, said Tournament Chairman Larry Thiel in a press release. The format changes have certainly sparked interest among the PGA Tour players and our spectators are in for a real treat.

Each of the 144 players will be paired with a different amateur for each of the first three rounds that will determine the amateur winner. The pros will then play by themselves in the final round after a cut for the top-70 and ties after 54 holes.

On Saturday, former President Bill Clinton will be playing in the field on the Palmer Private Course at PGW West. He will team with Greg Norman, while the other pairing will be La Quinta resident and 3-time tour winner Scott McCarron and Humana Chairman and CEO Mike McCallister. The other two courses in the rota include the Nicklaus Private Course at PGA West and the La Quinta Country Club.

The $5.6 million dollar purse will award $1.008 million to the winner, both the largest in the tournaments history. The field includes 20 tour rookies, eight of whom made it through the grueling 108-round Q-School finals in La Quinta late last year.

The only thing left to do now is plan your trip to the desert this weekend to check out the tournament. You can get a daily pass at the gate to any of the three courses, or you can get a tournament pass that will allow you access to all the courses for all of the days. You can still get tickets online at humanachallenge.com. The proceeds benefit the charities of the Coachella Valley and the Eisenhower Medical Center. Enjoy your trip!

The Mental Approach

Sports in general involve a tough mental approach to be successful, but more so in the game of golf where you dont have anything moving in the environment, crowd distractions and no teammate(s).

Tee to Green received an e-mail recently from StayInTheZone, a concept of relaxed aggression by sports pyschotherapist Dr. Jay Granat. Granat has developed many tools, strategies and techniques to help not only golfers but all forms of sports.

Granat uses self-hypnosis, visualization and other mental techniques to get them into the right frame of mind as they stand over their ball.

One of those is the relaxed aggression technique. Some golfers are too tense. Some are too aggressive. But if you can get into a relaxed aggressive state you can hit the ball with conviction and authority!

You see this in many swings that look smooth, like Fred Couples, Ernie Els and Sam Snead, yet they are powerful.

Garant has used his techniques since 1978 for athletes in all sports, including pool! Visit stayinthezone.com, and perhaps find something that will help your golf game!

Locally, Mark Garibaldi has helped many local athletes, including top amateur golfers, with their mental approach using The Garo Method. You can find out more about this at mark@thegaromethod.com.

Chip Shots

– The SCGA tournament season doesnt start for another few weeks but you can start to plan your entry into the plethora of events that the SCGA offers. Up first on the schedule will be the 10th SCGA Foursomes Championship at North Ranch CC in Thousand Oaks on March 26-27. There is no qualifying for this event…The 78th SCGA Amateur Net Championship will be April 9-10 at Industry Hills GC. To get there you must qualify at one of 10 sites from March 12-29 and the entry deadline is Feb.29….The 28th SCGA Mid-Amateur will be April 16-17 at Ranch Santa Fe GC and qualifying will take place at five sites from Mar.15-22. To find out more on these three events and others, simply go the SCGA website at SCGA.org

Tee to Green appears weekly at Bakersfield.com/sports. You can reach Gautney at rgautney@bak.rr.com.

BEFORE GIS, before GPS, before Google Earth, there was the milestone. These heavy markers, inscribed with distances to City Hall or other locations, went up in series as early as 1769, and once numbered 40 or 50 in all. About two dozen now survive, mostly in museums. Even at several feet high and weighing 200 pounds, the markers have proved remarkably difficult to track.

Enlarge This Image

Museum of the City of New York

In 1910, a milestone dating to 1741 still stood at 82nd Street and 18th Avenue in Brooklyn. It is now at the Brooklyn Historical Society. New York once had as many as 50 milestones; today most have vanished.

Related

• More Streetscapes Columns

Connect With Us on Twitter

For news and features on real estate, follow @nytrealestate.

In 1769 the city’s Common Council found it prudent to erect 14 milestones leading away from City Hall (then at Wall and Nassau Streets), up Broadway and over the Kingsbridge crossing of what is now the Harlem River. Alexander Hamilton would have looked for the ninth milestone, near what is now 133rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, when he was driving downtown from Hamilton Grange, the house he built in 1802 near 143rd Street. This stone stood until the 1990s, reading “1769 9 Miles from N York.”

The Common Council ordered additional markers in 1801 and again in 1812: the improvements were necessary when the present City Hall opened in 1811. These and other changes render milestone identification challenging; the ninth milestone of 1769 was relocated to 151st Street in 1813, but others may have been replaced and old ones ignored. The closest thing to an authoritative list is the series of papers prepared by Richard J. Koke, a curator at the New-York Historical Society, in 1950, 1958 and 1964, and even his tallies have many lacunae. A final series went up in Manhattan in 1823, running mostly along the line of Third Avenue.

Milestones were not unique to Manhattan. The Bronx had several, along the Boston and Albany Post Roads. Queens had at least one series, along Northern Boulevard, marking the distances from the 34th Street ferry at the East River to the bridge across Flushing Creek. Staten Island had at least two. Brooklyn’s milestones rivaled Manhattan’s in their variety. The New Utrecht milestone, which stood at 18th Avenue near 82nd Street, was dated by Mr. Koke as around 1741, well before the earliest known in Manhattan, and bearing a striking graphic of pointing fingers. It is at the Brooklyn Historical Society.

After Mr. Koke published his original article, another staff member at the historical society, Betty Ezequelle, identified a hitherto unknown series of 11 milestones on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, apparently dating from the construction of the road in the 1870s.

The whole milestone enterprise was rendered questionable in 1811, when the grid plan was adopted, with one corner of each block marked by a four-inch square marble post carved with the names of intersecting streets; the exhibition “The Greatest Grid,” now at the Museum of the City of New York, has one of these, marked 4 and 26, for Fourth Avenue and 26th Street.

Once the island was covered by a Cartesian grid, the number of miles to any given point faded in significance. And when travelers began arriving in Manhattan by train in the 1830s, minutes, not miles, became the currency.

Quickly the milestones became like old-fashioned adding machines, crucial one day, junk the next. That did not stop “Knickerbocker” from writing “with horror and indignation” in 1844 to The New York Evening Post to report that someone had stolen the first milestone, at Broadway and Houston Street, even though it was “one of most interesting and cherished antiques in New York.” The writer demanded: “Who could have been so fiendish as to demolish this time-honored citizen? Will not the Mayor vindicate the rights of the ancients” by recovering and reinstalling it?

But Mr. Koke’s articles run cold with the blood of cruel public indifference. A milestone on Bowery near Rivington “was struck and broken by a coal wagon drawn by a runaway horse.” A Staten Island milestone was turned into a doorstep. “All traces have disappeared” is a frequent description.

Even so, there was a countertrend. The nine-mile marker — Alexander Hamilton’s — knocked around the neighborhood until around 1905, when Henry Steers, a retired police officer, moved it to a yard near his house on West 152nd Street. Others were given to institutions like the Brooklyn Historical Society and the New-York Historical Society, which has one in its main entry hall and more in a study collection upstairs.

And the teeter-totter is still on the move. According to Willie Kathryn Suggs, a real estate broker, the nine-mile marker was standing on 152nd Street in 1991, disappearing after an article about it was published in The New York Times. Kevin Walsh, who runs the Web site Forgotten New York, and Joseph Ditta, a librarian at the New-York Historical Society, agree that the five-mile marker on Ocean Parkway near Neptune Avenue vanished within the last several years, probably in relation to work by the Department of Transportation. Only one Ocean Parkway stone now survives, between Avenue P and Quentin Road, according to an article by Ned Berke on the blog SheepsheadBites.

What this city needs is a certified milestone obsessive, someone who would go through all the milestones in all the collections, noting similarities of material, carving and form to establish series and sequences, and then fabricate modern counterfeits, installing them at the correct locations, to bring the milestone back into city life. Just possibly, there might be an app for that.

Email: streetscapes@nytimes.com

After the Prime Minister’s Office loudly trumpeted that Benjamin Netanyahu would embark at the end of February on an historic visit to Kenya and Uganda, it seems that this endeavor has been buried with barely a whimper.

According to a top government official, the Prime Minister’s Office has informed the foreign ministry that Netanyahu cannot take the trip. Foreign ministry officials are now scratching their heads, wondering how to avoid a diplomatic incident with two African states that had been preparing for the visit.

Netanyahu personally initiated the idea of visiting Africa. In mid-November 2011, the prime minister of Kenya and the president of Uganda visited Israel. Netanyahu met with the two dignitaries, and he told them that he would like to take a trip to their countries in early 2012. The two were enthusiastic, and told Netanyahu that they would be happy to host him.

Having some experience with Netanyahu’s declarations during diplomatic meetings, foreign ministry officials estimated that several months would pass before the Prime Minister’s Office might take a serious look at the possibility of an African visit.

Surprisingly, just a few days after the meetings with the Ugandan president and Kenyan prime minister, the Prime Minister’s Officer announced that Netanyahu was interested in making the visit in February 2012.

Israel’s embassies in Kenya and Uganda initiated contacts with top officials in these two countries, to set dates for the trip. The officials settled on the last week of February. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was poised to join the prime minister on this visit to Africa.

The Prime Minister’s Office disseminated word of the visit in media outlets, stressing the trip’s historical character, it being 40 years since an Israeli prime minister has visited Africa; Levi Eshkol, they noted, visited Africa. This history lesson was not entirely accurate since in the 1980s, then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir visited Cameroon.

Some media reports about the anticipated visit went as far as to say that Netanyahu would reach the airport in Entebbe, Uganda, to take part in a memorial service for his brother Yoni, who died while commanding the famous Israeli rescue operation there in July 1976.

In speeches, Netanyahu started to mention the need to strengthen ties with African states, both to promote Israeli exports and also to recruit diplomatic support for showdowns in international forums. In a recent government meeting, Netanyahu stated that he would go to Africa to probe possible solutions to the issue of foreign workers who cross into Israel via the Sinai Peninsula.

Yet in recent days, the winds have been blowing in other directions in Netanyahu’s office, and the foreign ministry was informed that the Prime Minister has decided not to embark on the trip.

According to the source, Netanyahu has decided to attend the AIPAC conference in Washington in early March, in lieu of the African journey. The guest of honor at the AIPAC event will be Shimon Peres, and the simultaneous presence of Israel’s president and prime minister in America’s capital will be an unusual occurrence.

For more, go to Haaretz.com

At the end of his morning commute, Houston quarterback Jake Delhomme is treated to a familiar sight: the hulking Reliant Stadium, which towers over the adjacent Astrodome, known as the 8th Wonder of the World when it opened in 1965.

Delhomme signed with the Texans two weeks ago as a backup to rookie TJ Yates following injuries to Matt Schaub and Matt Leinart. But Delhomme cant help thinking of Carolina when he comes to work each day at Reliant, where he and the Panthers fell to New England 32-29 in Super Bowl XXXVIII on Feb. 1, 2004.

Those memories are still very vivid and they are great memories, Delhomme said Thursday. I do think about it, because we drive in here every day.

The Panthers (4-9) make their first trip to Houston since the Super Bowl this weekend when they face the Texans (10-3), who earned their first postseason berth last week when they clinched the AFC South title.

After kicker John Kasay was released in July, only two players remain from the 2003 team – receiver Steve Smith and left tackle Jordan Gross.

Smith caught four passes for 80 yards, including a 39-yard touchdown, against the Patriots. Gross, a rookie in 03, was the starter at right tackle.

Panthers assistant wide receivers coach Ricky Proehl also was a member of the 03 team and played in the Super Bowl. Proehl caught a 12-yard touchdown from Delhomme that tied the score at 29 with 1:08 remaining.

It appeared the game was headed to overtime. But Kasays kickoff sailed out of bounds, allowing the Patriots to start at their 40-yard line and giving Tom Brady a short field.

Brady hit Deion Branch for 17 yards on third-and-3 to set up Adam Vinatieris game-winning, 41-yard field goal with four seconds left.

Smith was initially reluctant to talk much about the Super Bowl, saying the game has no bearing on this weeks contest. Nor is this Smiths first trip back to Reliant Stadium: He took his son to the Final Four there last spring.

Theres nothing that can compare to going to the Super Bowl – the media atmosphere, the media questions, media day. The appearances that you make, Smith said. Everything around it is so much more intensified. Theres so many more people.

Smith said hell always remember seeing former Houston Oilers running back Earl Campbell struggle to get around on the field before the game.

He needed help getting off the cart. He was a bruiser of a back. And to see the impact that it took on his body, it was pretty sad, Smith said. Even as a young guy, I remember I was, Man, I hope I dont end up like that.

The team practiced at the University of Houston and stayed at a hotel outside of town. Panthers coach John Fox took the team even farther out the night before the game – to a golf resort an hour and a half away – to minimize the distractions.

We went in the boondocks, Smith said. We were out in the sticks.

The next day, the Panthers and Patriots played one of the more competitive and entertaining Super Bowls – although the day might be remembered most for Janet Jacksons infamous wardrobe malfunction during a halftime performance with Justin Timberlake.

Trailing 21-10 early in the fourth quarter, the Panthers rallied for 19 points in the final quarter against the favored Patriots. Smith said he could feel momentum shifting – in the crowd, as well.

I think one of the neat things about that game, at the end of the game when we thought we were going to win, there was a shift in the stadium, Smith said. That was probably one of the most even playing fields for a championship game that Ive ever experienced. When we played in Philly (in the NFC Championship Game), that was an away game and they let you know.

Though the Panthers fell just short, Smith said the fourth-quarter performance was a microcosm of a season when the Panthers tied an NFL record with three overtime victories.

We were rolling pretty good. How we ended the fourth quarter was kind of how we cemented how we played, and how the fourth quarter was our time. There was never any doubt, Smith said.

In the fourth quarter of every game we went into, it was like this is an opportunity. If were down by 7, down by 6, down by 4, whether were on the 2 or the 22, we knew we had an opportunity to win the game. And we went through it that way all year.

Staff writer Ron Green Jr. contributed.