When we last left fate xeroxer Peter King, he was personally clearing his airplane seat of refuse, which is something that should only happen if you’re living in INDIA. I also put him under legit fire for declaring a carrot he ate to be his first memorable moment of championship weekend. In Peter’s defense, it WAS a big carrot. Thicker than Tebow downstairs. He also rode the cable cars, lamented the lack of Rams home games featuring Tom Brady, and expounding on the wonders of cooking and toxicity.

So what about this week? Did Peter find some other complete idiot who doesn’t like football who Peter thinks has lots of out-of-the-box ideas about the sport? I’m told that Paul Krugman would like to do away with the sport entirely in favor of a series of town hall meetings to discuss the economic effects of raising the capital gains tax. PRETTY HARD HITTING STUFF. And did Peter get to drink more Blue Bottle coffee? READ ON. There’s something about this Fun With Peter King that’s hard to put a finger on, but also very tough to beat.

Lots going on as we draw nearer to The Rematch Bowl of Super Bowl 46.

I prefer to refer to this game as First Grade in Rematchtownology 101.

(That’s right, I’m not a big Roman numeral guy.)

I know! I can tell because you use smiley faces for bullet points.

We need to get one thing straight about Peyton Manning.

His scrotum? GORGEOUS. Very soft. Very symmetrical. It’s as if you’re holding a bag of runes.

The most compelling player in the 2012 draft hits our consciousness.

Not just compelling… INTERESTING. Wait till that interest hits you right in your interesthole.

But we should start with hype week, since that’s why I have been dispatched to central Indiana. But I’ll be brief since we’ll have plenty of other opportunities throughout the week to dissect the game.

Time to start talking about the game… I guess. But let’s not focus on the game TOO MUCH, since I know that bores you. Besides, this 9,000-word column shouldn’t be a spotlight for things like FOOTBALL.

“Do you realize how weird this is?” defensive end Osi Umenyiora said to Tom Coughlin in the mayhem of the Giants’ locker room in San Francisco, after the Giants beat the Niners to get to this game.

Oh, Christ. Look what you’ve done, Peter. NOW PLAYERS ARE GETTING IN ON IT. It’s Weirdmania 2012 thanks to your astonishingly thin vocabulary.

It’s going to be a fun week, particularly in seven states in the upper right-hand corner of your United States map.

Just say the Northeast. You don’t have to gussy it up like that. That doesn’t make it any more INTERESTING. “You know, I think the fate of Peyton Manning will be of particular interesting to folks in that McNugget-shaped state that rides shotgun to Illinois on your North American road map, assuming you use paper maps and not GPS.”

Now, since we’ll get hyped to death all week with the Super Bowl, let’s cover other stuff … like the other story we’ll get clubbed over the head with this week.

What this column won’t be about: where Peyton Manning will play in 2012.

Let’s move on from the Super Bowl so I can talk about how I’m NOT going to talk about Peyton Manning. In fact, let’s just make a list right now if the things this column will NOT be about:

-Football
-Peyton Manning
-Teanerdness
-Recombobulation areas
-Jeremy Schaap’s travel schedule, which is surprisingly light
-Politics, although don’t you think that Newt Gingrich is a shady fellow?

There’s a simple reason. No one knows yet if he’ll play at all. In the last few days, as I said on NBC last night, I’ve heard mixed reports about his physical condition.

Will he play? MAYBE. Could his neck still need an entire year to heal? IT COULD BE. Is it possible that Peyton Manning has a nascent Siamese twin growing inside his upper vertebrae, and that the twin is trying to claw his way out of Peyton’s body so that he can sign a lucrative deal with Miami? WHO KNOWS?!

Or Manning might waffle, which would be the greatest thing ever to happen to Brett Favre.

Oh hey, thanks for bringing up Brett Favre FOR NO FUCKING REASON. Listen guys, I’m not gonna bore you with shit like the Super Bowl or Peyton’s future. Instead, LET’S TALK LAND BARON.

Instead of Mike Florio speculating monthly if some team might take leave of its senses and try to lure Favre out of retirement, ProFootballTalk.com could make a cottage industry of The Race for Manning.

Oh, so it’s only Florio who milked the Favre teat? I seem to remember a certain Nazi coffee-loving hunchback who spent three years endlessly speculating about the fate of his besty best. “Now I spent some time down in Favreville, and I will tell you Favre LOVES TENDING TO HIS HYACINTHS. I could easily see him staying down here forever. But I could ALSO see him being lured out of retirement. Which way will he go? ALAS, I CANNOT SAY. I think these voicemails I saved aren’t conclusive, and that’s because they aren’t.”

The other day, Manning family friend Gil Brandt, the longtime NFL personnel guru, was dubious about Manning’s future when he appeared on my podcast. “My gut feeling,” said Brandt, “is that we’ve probably seen the last of Peyton.”

Strong statement, and he wouldn’t have said it unless he felt pretty good about it. Now, he did follow that by saying he doesn’t think anyone knows the answer to the question for sure… yet.

Indeed. Let’s leave all the BASELESS SPECULATION to Florio over at his website. As for me, I just talked to Gil Brandt and he totally says Peyton is retiring… I THINK. But I’m not in the business of hyping this story up. I’d prefer to sit back and let the story unfol… OMG BRETT FAVRE JUST SAID HE THINKS PEYTON MIGHT RETIRE TO HIS MILK FARM POSSIBLY!

(Butch) Davis hasn’t coached in the NFL since he was dismissed by the Browns after the 2004 season. He’d be a good sounding board for (Greg) Schiano.

SCHIANO: Butch, what do you think of this alignment?

BUTCH: Well, I think that maybe we could…

SCHIANO: Just kidding. I’m not taking advice from Butch fucking Davis. Go get me some Gatorade, Bitch Boy.

I like the Schiano hire.

I can’t imagine why.

Not to ignore the others, but having lived in New Jersey when Schiano took over one of the worst teams in any sport in the country (that’s no exaggeration), I witnessed the job he did making Rutgers competitive nationally.

MONTCLAIR PRIDE!

In the last few days, I’ve heard people say, “Well, he never won the Big East at Rutgers. Dumb hire.” Time will tell.

I like the hire. Was it retarded? YOU NEVER KNOW. All I know is that he will make the Bucs wear sports coats and that will help.

I’ve been tracking (Steve) Gleason, the former Saints special-teams ace, diagnosed with ALS last January, for a story that will run on NBC’s Super Bowl pregame show Sunday… I won’t tell the story here.

Of course you won’t. Hey guys, here’s a bunch of interesting shit! But I’m not gonna talk about it HERE! That would be WEIRD. This space is for bitching about the Marco Scutaro trade and sending out RSVPs for wedding invites. Can’t wait for your wedding, Donna Whiteley!

Michel, his wife, is tremendously real and emotional.

Pretty real for someone in the middle of something emotional.

It’s impossible to experience the Gleason story and not be touched, and not get choked up. Impossible, unless you’re a totally unfeeling person.

It’s impossible to not be moved by this story. Unless you aren’t moved by this story, in which case I suppose I could make an exception. But that would make you WEIRD.

And so last week, when I was in New Orleans, I spoke with Steve and Michel about the story.

“Did you guys go to Dr. Kata? Tell him Peter sent ya and your ALS will be cured FOR FREE!”

I am a TV story neophyte.

“What do you mean, I can’t drink a latte during this live remote?”

I’m one of the 44 Hall of Fame voters, and it’s hard not to see how eerie the numbers are when you compare Levy (Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2001) to Coughlin.

WEIRD. They’re so valid, it’s SCARY. It’s like an Eli Roth movie: “Statistical Similarities IV”. Really disturbing stuff.

Great note purloined from John Altavilla of the Hartford Courant:

Great nugget, John! But why not save those good nuggets for a later date?

Two days after the UConn women won the national championship in 2004, coach Geno Auriemma began coaching his 15-year-old son Michael’s AAU team, Connecticut Nike Elite. On the team with Michael was a 15-year-old athletic forward from Bristol, Aaron Hernandez.

WEIRD! I think that will be of great interest to a certain segment of the American population that lives on the Atlantic Coast above New Jersey but NOT below it.

Do the timeline on this: Auriemma began coaching the team in 2004, two months after Tom Brady led the Patriots to their second Super Bowl.

Which brings us to the most important question: Why has Tom Brady never played a road game at UConn? Do you realize what a glaring mistake the NFL schedulemaker has made?

Mike Mayock will find a beer and a beach today in Hawaii. And he’ll try to think about something other than football for a few minutes.

I’d just like to note that reader Ross Eberhart totally called this. He’s our Josh Bickford.

@drewmagary There’s 110 percent chance that Mike Mayock traveling from Mobile to Honolulu in one day shows up in MMQB tomorrow. Maybe.

Definitely!

He spent a week in Tampa, beginning two weeks ago, for the East-West college all-star game, doing the game telecast for NFL Network. Last week, he was in Mobile for the Senior Bowl, on NFL Network Saturday afternoon. Right after the game Saturday, he buzzed to the Mobile airport and flew to Los Angeles, getting in before midnight and checking into an airport hotel. He had a 5 a.m. wakeup call and 7:30 a.m. flight to Honolulu. By 12:30 Honolulu time, Mayock was on the field for warmups prior to the Pro Bowl. “Didn’t we just see you on TV in Mobile?” one of the Houston assistants (Texans coaches were the AFC coaching staff for the Pro Bowl) said to Mayock.

He did the Pro Bowl game on NBC, then went back to his hotel. He said he was tired, but happy.

THIS MAN IS A TRAVEL GOD. For him to traverse the land and seas in such a NinersPapaesque manner, while performing a job and getting paid for it, is the stuff COURAGE is made of. How was he able to be in two faraway places within a realtively short time span? HE MUST BE A WITCH.

I think the NFL should put San Diego in the Super Bowl rotation.

I know! It’s never in San Diego, except for the three times when it was.

Best Super Bowl city in the world.

Because it’s warm and it feels like a vacation for me, and isn’t that the most important thing?

I don’t care how mediocre Qualcomm is. I’ve never heard a soul — fan, visitor, media type — complain about the site. But I have heard scores of people ask, “When’s the Super Bowl going back to San Diego?”

And how can Roger Goodell sleep at night putting a Super Bowl in New Jersey? Doesn’t he understand that people will DIE?!

I think I’ll start here with full disclosure: Tony Grossi and I went to Ohio University together and worked at the school paper, The Post, side by side for three years. We have mostly lost touch over the years, but I still consider him a good friend. So if you want to dismiss my opinion on this, that’s fair.

There’s one of these in every MMQB. “Let me start by disclosing that I love this person. So if you find me to be biased with regard to the following item, that’s totally fair. That probably means I should avoid the topic altogether. Oh well. Here’s me supporting my friend!”

By the way, King goes on to tell a story about Grossi accidentally sending out a tweet denigrating Brown owner Randy Lerner and getting removed from his beat for it. Peter thought that was a lame move by the paper, and he’s right. But since he prefaced that opinion by telling you how utterly unreliable he is for everything, the point gets lost. I THINK.

I think that was a great job on the Irsay story, Judy Battista.

Great job, person covering a story that I have deemed overhyped and am apparently too good to cover!

Opening Day, Thursday, April 5, Sox at Tigers: Beckett against a 3-4-5 of Cabrera, Fielder, Ordonez, with Verlander going for Detroit. Yikes.

AH! Now THERE’S a story. Why bother speculating about football when we can speculate about a fucking baseball game that will account for 1/162nd of an entire regular season? That’s important! I know that Lawrence Ferlinghetti agrees!

Not proud to say I caught a half-hour of the Kardashian show Sunday.

EVEN BETTER! Why spend time talking about how this column WON’T be about Peyton Manning when you can spend it talking about how unimportant you find the Kardashians to be?

Early reviews on Indianapolis are very good. Nice touch by having Indiana schoolchildren put little drawings in everyone’s hotel room downtown.

A CHILD BROKE INTO EVERY HOTEL ROOM?! Hope you like the stomach flu.

Yes, I plan to hit St. Elmo’s.

ORDER THE CARROT!

Coffeenerdness: “Hey, hope I make ‘Coffeenerdness!’ ” Marc, my barista at the Starbucks Canal Place in New Orleans, said to me the other morning.

Set better goals for yourself, Marc.

Well, let’s just see how you made my latte first…

I suppose I could deign to include you. BUT FIRST! I must make sure there is no bitterness to be found in here.

Hmmmm.

Ah!

Yes.

Oh!

Very good.

The foam is dripping off my sixth chin!

Marc, you are quite worthy of Coffeenerdness.

HUZZAH!

Seattle, give this man a raise!

Don’t know how you do that, Seattle.

NOTE: There’s a reading in Chapel Hill tomorrow night (1/31) at 7pm at Flyleaf books. The after party is gonna be at Linda’s. And then, Wednesday night (2/1), there’s gonna be a reading in Durham at the Regulator at 7pm, with drinks at either Charlie’s or Dain’s Place afterward. Come on down and we’ll have some fun. MAYBE.