This offseason has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for Blackhawks fans. Woohoo! The Hawks have signed Marian Hossa! Nooooo! Hossa’s gonna miss months after shoulder surgery for a pre-existing injury. Woohoo! The Hawks have found a way to re-sign all their valuable free agents! Nooooo! The Hawks overpaid for their players because of an administrative error. Woohoo! Patrick Kane is likely to be among the stars of the US Olympic Orientation Camp! Nooooo! Kaner (aka Twenty Cent) is a little too aware of the value of a dollar.

When the 2009-10 season begins on Oct. 2, most Hawks fans will feel like they’ve just stepped off 20 consecutive rides on the Gravitron. (Which is, in my estimation, the most terrifying ride ever invented.) Stumbling off a bad ride, that sick-to-your-stomach, world-spinning-around-you haze is simply the worst. It’s like that feeling you get in your gut when a bad case of food poisoning is just kicking in. It’s a feeling the fine people of Detroit may be getting more and more accustomed to.

See, times have been tough in Detroit — even tougher there than for the rest of the country. And when the economy is bad, unemployment is at a high and people are struggling to put food on the table, the quality of that food just isn’t as important anymore. Enter, The Coon Man.

Charlie LeDuff of The Detroit News and Glemie Beasley, a.k.a. The Coon Man, have the secret to helping Detroit natives survive the ups and downs of deindustrialization: coon meat.

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Sarah Spain is in Tampa for the Super Bowl. When she’s not chestbumping players, she’s been all over the place attending parties and media events. View all MPS’ video coverage down in Tampa. Here’s what Ms. Spain has been up to today.

Another day, another picture of Joe Theismann standing on a chair to see eye-to-eye with 6′9″ Jonathan Ogden.

The term “circus” is not hyperbole when it comes to Super Bowl radio row.The newly crowned Miss America poses for pictures with Joe Montana while Justin Tuck does an interview in 3-D glasses:

Rod Woodson and Shannon Sharpe  — both first-year candidates for the Hall of Fame — are trailed by a swarm of reporters wherever they go. Derrick Ward has his own cameraman and reporter with him to document the behind-the-scenes action at radio row.

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Sarah Spain is in Tampa for the Super Bowl. When she’s not chestbumping players, she’s been all over the place attending parties and media events. View all MPS’ video coverage down in Tampa. Here’s what Ms. Spain has been up to today.

Boy, that escalated quickly.

The slowly growing media swarm has exploded into a full-blown clusterf–k as Super Bowl Sunday grows ever closer. The Tampa Convention Center is packed wall-to-wall with radio booths holding interviews with A-listers like Joe Theismann, Deion Sanders, Ryan Howard and dozens more.

Photographers and reporters are stuffed into conference rooms to see Joe Flacco win Rookie of the Year awards and hear Bruce Springsteen talk about his upcoming halftime performance.

Right now Chicago boy Matt Forte is being interviewed by Sporting News radio, while Drew Brees, sporting a navy ballcap, strolls by and returns my smile. A female reporter, clad in a leopard print top, is conducting interviews with a mic shaped like a rubber ducky.

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One day after replacing Denis Savard as the Blackhawks head coach, Joel Quenneville has made the first change to his staff. Marc Bergevin (or is it?), most recently the team’s director of professional scouting, has been made an assistant coach. When questioned about the new hire, Blackhawks players and personnel could only note that they had never seen Bergevin and Goldblum in the same room.