* It’s now official. Derrick Brooks is now a first-ballot NFL Hall of Famer. Along with the late LeRoy Selmon, he becomes the second ex-Buc in the Hall who was also a Hall of Fame person. The other Buc Hall of Famer is Warren Sapp.
* Weather, $4 million TV ads and Peyton Manning’s legacy weren’t the only subjects given a good airing before Super Bowl XLVIII. Another hot topic: the economic impact of this biggest of big games. One New York politician estimated that revelers would generate between $550 million and $600 million for the local economy. A lot of locals nodded assent.
Critics called such numbers myopic, insane or fraudulent. Among the more experienced naysayers, our own Philip Porter, the outspoken economist from USF. Porter wasn’t buying any part of that half-billion-dollar, economic-impact projection. His estimate: “zero.”
“The people who come to these events,” he told the New York Times, “aren’t buying what the local economy sells.”