The interview sessions with the players ended today, and I don’t think anyone regrets that, players or media. If you’ve been here since Sunday, you’re tired of talking to players by Thursday, and most of the players are tired of talking by Monday afternoon.

Actually, the players usually are cooperative. You run into an occasional stonewall. I heard a colleague talking about a less than pleasant encounter with Patriots punter Chris Hanson. Giants guard Chris Snee, who is married to the daughter of Giants head coach Tom Coughlin, declined to answer my question today (Thursday) about playing for his father-in-law. He said he’d answered that on Tuesday and Wednesday and wasn’t talking about it anymore. Fair enough.

If the players are at the Super Bowl, they’re generally pretty happy, so they can endure the mandatory media sessions. Some of the best people to talk to during these sessions are the assistant coaches. They’re really happy to be at the Super Bowl. Assistant coaches often are some of the most cooperative, friendly members of the team. I had a long talk with Dave Merritt, the coach of the Giants safeties, today. He used to coach at VMI. He loves the place. Said he wants his three sons to go there.

The geography of Arizona is interesting. Today, on the bus ride between the Patriots session and the Giants session, I was looking at the mountains in the distance. There are a lot of mountains in the distance. There are mountain ranges and individual mountains sitting there. In the early morning haze, some of the individual mountains look like big lumps of coal that have been plopped down in the desert.

I almost typed “dessert” there, perhaps because that’s something I often have too much of. Well, maybe that’s a topic for another time.

Until then, I remain your Phoenix correspondent.