Yay! Super Bowl Big Game edition!

STRIKE ONE

Sorry. I got a little carried away there and almost slipped. As you've probably noticed - on TV, radio, even online - it's that time of year again; the "Big Game" is around the corner, and the NFL and its many, many lawyers are hard at work cracking down on unauthorized usages of the name "Super Bowl."

Luckily, the Weekly Volcano is considered a "news organization," which, while laughable, allows us to say Super Bowl as many times as we want without fear of white guys with expensive law degrees and sharp suits swooping down on us with lawsuits and scowls of disapproval on behalf of the NFL.

Others, like your ubiquitous small town electronics stores, furniture depots and even local radio stations aren't as lucky. Unless these businesses ante up the kind of dough that it takes to become an "official sponsor" of the NFL - according to the Wall Street Journal Anheuser-Busch laid down $1.2 million over the next six years to become the NFL's "official" beer -  they're shit out of luck ... forced to build marketing campaigns around vague generalizations like "The Big Game Sale" or "The Championship Game Blowout" or "Dilly in the Morning's Championship Sunday Big Game After-Party at Chili's by the Mall."

Which, of course, is just dumb. But money runs the world, and this is the world we live in. Unless you're financially in bed with the NFL, the trademarked phrases "Super Bowl" and "Super Sunday" are off-limits.

Why does the league spend so much time and effort trying to stop other people from directly promoting their product?

That's a question for another day. Right now it's almost time for the Gargantuan Football Contest.

STRIKE TWO

Here's a prop bet I'd like to wager on: When interviewing a victorious Ben Roethlisberger after the Super Bowl - on that big hokey stage they erect for the crowning of Super Bowl champions - how long with it take the skilled Fox broadcaster (be it Joe Buck or even the insufferable Terry Bradshaw) to ask Big Ben how he's managed to "handle all the adversity he's dealt with this year"?

I'll put the over under at third question ... place your wager now.

By "adversity," of course, the man behind the microphone will be referring to "all that rape stuff" in Roethlisberger's recent past. Seriously. Give the man a medal.

It really has been remarkable to see how Roethlisberger has "dealt with it," hasn't it? I mean, with everything swirling around him - all the negativity and crankiness and boos and suspensions and chants of "no means no" that come with being an NFL-level rapist - Roethlisberger has still managed to lead his team to the Super Bowl - while simultaneously growing a skuzzy beard and gaining weight all season long ... probably only to rub it in the faces of his haters.

How many drunk college girls has he raped in that entire time?  Zero (that we know of). It's literally been MONTHS, people!

Put Roethlisberger's bust in Canton right now. Big Ben "deals with adversity" better than anyone in the history of the game.

STRIKE THREE

Brrrr. That chill you feel is probably coming straight through your TVs from Dallas-Fort Worth, the ill-suited home of this year's Super Bowl.

Traditionally, the Super Bowl is held in warm and temperate regions of our country - the Miamis, Pasadenas, and San Diegos of the world - places nearly certain to boast picturesque weather come kickoff. This has been how the Super Bowl has always operated, going (we assume) off the obvious logic, "Cold and snow kind of suck. Shitty weather make games less fun, and generally less appealing to fans. Lets us hold the Super Bowl somewhere nice!"

Naturally, the Jerry Joneses of the world had to come into the picture and blow common sense out of the water by building multi-gazillion dollar stadiums with plasma screen jumbo-trons the size of Rhode Island.

Those things are nice, but do they really make up for the ice storms, temperatures in the teens and subzero wind chills that have marked the early part of Super Bowl week?

Even dicier, how bad will it get when the Super Bowl is held in New Jersey (in the New Meadowlands Stadium) in 2014?

While you're contemplating, maybe you can find someone on Craigslist to buy those super-cheap $200 tickets you bought to watch the game on the special screens outside the stadium. That was a good purchase. ...

DUMB JOCK OF THE WEEK

Arena football's Tampa Bay Storm were forced to place head coach Tim Marcum  - the most successful coach in Arena League history - on paid administrative leave this week.

Marcum, who according to reports WTSP 10 News in Tampa Bay has been arrested for DUI and insurance fraud in the past, was recently found to be storing and passing along hardcore pornography and racists e-mails using his work computer. According to WTSP's report, one of the videos depicts, "two naked women using a funnel and fish to commit an unnatural sex act."

The racist e-mails (some forwarded to Marcum by former NFL quarterback Steve DeBerg according to the same story) depict things like Air Force One as "Watermelon One," and a comparison between Michelle Obama and a chimpanzee.

Marcum claims to have done nothing wrong, saying the videos and e-mails fall into the "boys will be boys" category.

That would be true, if the saying was, "Boys who like to look at and share blatantly racist e-mails and bizarre pornography involving bestiality will be boys who. ..."

You get the idea.