It’s Tough to Steal the Spotlight

Super Bowl XL is so awash in big numbers -- the 100,000 visitors spending an estimated $300 million on everything from $32 caps to $25,000 books -- that it’s easy to overlook the little details. Such as, say, the Seattle Seahawks.

The Seahawks clearly come way down the list here, taking their turn after the Pittsburgh Steelers and the city of Detroit itself.

The Steelers have taken over Motown. Every other person has a Ben Roethlisberger No. 7 jersey or Jerome Bettis No. 36, with the occasional Mean Joe Greene No. 75 throwback in the mix. Detroit has embraced everything black and gold.

And meanwhile the city is asking everyone else to give it a big hug back. It seeks approval like an “American Idol” contestant. The city committed $10 million to prepping downtown into a worthy host. You almost sense the desperation, as if this is Detroit’s last chance to get it right, maybe even recapture some of the million-plus people who have fled the city limits in the last two decades.

The locals feel honored to have the Super Bowl in town. With New Orleans ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, the big game has officially surpassed Mardi Gras as our country’s biggest party.

“The Super Bowl now takes on a magnitude that almost defies the imagination,” NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said.

A publisher tried to capture it in print and it took 500,000 words and 2,000 images to produce something. “XL: Forty Years of the Super Bowl” is a coffee table book. By that I mean you could use it as a coffee table. It’s 950 pages, measures 20 inches by 20 inches and weighs 85 pounds. It costs $4,000, or $25,000 if you want the edition signed by all of the living Super Bowl most valuable players.

Even a book that size can’t describe all of the sideshows that go along with the game, the fan festivals, the banquets, the charity events and the parties. Can’t forget about the parties.

Some people ask $300 for a ticket. And they get it. In Detroit, abandoned buildings have been renovated to be used as party spots for the week. A giant tent with a neoclassic facade and a giant “Diddy” etched above the entry (wonder whose party that is) sits in a parking lot.

ESPN’s party Friday night tried to put the sports back into the festivities, with people dressed as soccer players, cross-country runners, a boxer and a ring card girl mingling through the crowd. A gymnast found a clear space and performed a quick routine.

Of course, if you said you were going to the ESPN set you could literally mean the ESPN set. There are two of them in the Renaissance Center activity hub here, with people consistently lined up against the barricades. This is true even when the sets are dark. People are drawn to cameras, no matter whether they’re on or off. So they’ll just stand around and stare at where Dan Patrick or Stuart Scott were sitting.

Traffic came to a standstill Friday night. This was mostly because of a new phenomenon: people going into downtown Detroit at night. A local paper ran a front-page story about a special type of visitor to Detroit, a species called “suburban Detroiters.” Seriously, some of the folks who wouldn’t be caught dead on this side of 15 Mile Road (for fear that would literally come true) used the Super Bowl events as an excuse to rediscover the city.

Perhaps its yet another tribute to the power of the Super Bowl.

The NFL has become so big that apparently Tagliabue felt the need to remind people, “We don’t, on the other hand, run everything in America.” Just in case there were any misconceptions.

But the NFL can get certain cities to jump, speak, heel or roll over to subsidize cash-generating stadiums for the league. And that doggy treat Tagliabue holds in his hand is the Super Bowl.

“We are going to move the game around to a large number of cities in a realistic way to help give back and to thank those communities that partner with the NFL, support the teams for many, many decades and also work with us to get stadiums built,” Tagliabue said.

It’s seemed as if every other question asked of Tagliabue at his news conference was, when can our town get a Super Bowl? (L.A.’s Rob Fukuzaki asked when are we going to get another NFL team ... Which, of course, would lead to our getting another Super Bowl).

We will get a team and a Super Bowl. I think our chances get better with every snowflake that blows past my hotel window as I write this. But I doubt it will be such a defining, take-over-the-front-page event as it is here.

Perhaps we’ve become spoiled in L.A., where the Rose Bowl runs into the Golden Globes which run into the Grammys which run into the Oscars and on and on. No one big event will make or break the town’s image. The only question we ask our visitors upon departure is, “When are you coming back?”

Here, every day, you get, “What do you think of Detroit?”

It got the job done. Now stop asking.

The funny thing is, Seattle would never care so much. Back when the city was hot in the early ‘90s, the locals actively tried to discourage people -- especially Californians -- from moving there.

Like their hometown, the Seahawks aren’t too obsessed with their perception.

They’re not bemoaning the insufficient attention paid to the regular-season and playoff conference champions. They’re not fighting this foolish notion that they lack grit.

The Seahawks ran for more yards than the Steelers, despite 30 fewer attempts. They ran for more touchdowns -- 29, with 27 of them scored by Shaun Alexander.

As John Madden said Saturday, “Usually offensive toughness comes from offensive linemen.” And Seattle has what many consider to be the best left side of an offensive line in the league with tackle Walter Jones and guard Steve Hutchinson.

But the way people talk up the Steelers, you’d think the Seahawks wear linen jerseys while the Steelers brush their teeth with sledgehammers.

“You really can’t blame people for thinking that,” Hutchinson said.

“Up until this year, the Seahawks haven’t really gotten much media attention. People don’t really know what they’re about and where we come from. But I don’t think we can have much success in this league if you’re not a physical team.”

And you can’t win 15 of the 17 games that mattered if you’re not a good team. No one will deny the Seahawks are a good team. They have the league’s most valuable player (Alexander), a Pro Bowl quarterback (Matt Hasselbeck) a tough defense, a strong offensive line and a coach who has won a Super Bowl (Mike Holmgren).

But all of the love and most of the money is headed toward the Steelers.

I’ve seen enough of these traps to be wary whenever a worthy opponent is given no shot. For two L.A. examples, see the Lakers against the Detroit Pistons in the 2004 NBA Finals and USC against Texas in last month’s Rose Bowl.

That’s why I like the Seahawks. And, if it will make the remaining 900,000 residents of this city happy, I’m fine with Detroit.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adandeblog.