The Sports As Life Super Bowl Correspondent

Since Sports As Life has neither the monetary resources, nor the wherewithal, to actually send one of it's regular contributors to the Super Bowl we've had to take alternative measures. What does that mean you ask? Well I'm glad you brought it up - it means that we've found someone who was going to be travelling around over the next two weeks anyway. So after some mild coaxing we were able to convince him to send the occasional story to Sports As Life.

What follows is the inaugural posting by Sports As Life's newest contributor - Earnest Jonathan Soupcan, hobo.

Now before ya bleeding-heart, up in arms, PC half-wits start to feeling sorry for me, let me get one thing clear - I ain't no homeless person. I choose to live free, steal bowling shoes, sleep in movie theatres and ride the rails. I ain't no down on my luck junkie neither - I used to be an investment banker but there was an incident, maybe I'll tell ya about it sometime. So now I hobo.

Got the name Soupcan from an ol' Hobo nam'a Dirtpatch Jones - gave it to me on accounta' my taste for the glue that holds labels on soup cans. When a man's on the road, that's just about the best thing going - fills him up and it's good and binding. Some folks'll swear by Styrofoam but for ol' Soupcan, it's label glue or nothing.

Might be asking yourself how a hobo got mixed up in all this Innernest business?

Well this young kid comes by the 'yard the other day and is askin' around at the boys, seein' if any of them know about usin' a computer. Finally, I gets curious and pipes up and says - been nearly 20 years, but I used to know my way around a Wang. So he asks if I might be headin' down south over the next couple weeks - and I tell him that my schedule is usually pretty flexible.

After a few cold days on those Canadian rails, I'm in a public library in Buffalo - tellin' everyone the first part of this story. Then on my way to Boston and to New York. And then it's the long haul across the heartland - the real reason I signed up (although getting paid in peanut butter sandwiches is no raw deal either). Ain't seen the south in a long time. Should be arrivin' in Arizona just in time for this big game next week.

And as usually happens after a hobo's been in the library for more than 10 minutes - here come the police to throw ol' Soupcan out onto the bricks...