Inside Out

Before Frank Supovitz replaced Jim Steeg three years ago as the NFL’s “Mr. Super Bowl,” he was the NHL’s top events guy, sewing up a deal to bring hockey’s All-Star Game to Glendale. After he switched leagues, “I literally moved my focus across the street to the new stadium and Super Bowl XLII. I’ve known the Cardinals’ neighbors — the arena, the resident hockey team and the owners of Westgate, the retail and entertainment development across Maryland Avenue — for years, which made it easy to incorporate them into the Super Bowl master plan. The Super Bowl Accreditation Center is at Westgate and both the Pepsi Smash Super Bowl Concert Series and the game-day Touchdown Club events are at Jobing.com Arena.” Supovitz is on top of every detail, trying to expect the unexpected. This year has been unseasonably cold in Arizona, “so we’ve had to roll the turf into the stadium every night to keep it warm and out again every morning. Nothing can happen during the hour it takes the tray to travel in each direction, but we’re adjusting.” … Jim Mora is the frontman for Ticketmaster’s Ultimate Super Bowl Experience, a fan package that includes tickets, hotel accommodations, parties with players and lots of VIP frills. “It’s a heck of a deal.” He can pitch Ticketmaster and Coors Light now that coaching is in his past. “I have a sense of freedom now. Coaching is stressful and I’m a worrywart. My day was never done.” He plays golf near his Palm Desert, Calif., home and talks daily to sons Jim, a Seahawks coach, Stephen, a mortgage broker, and Michael, a Seattle architect who designed a 4,600-square-foot home for his father and mother, Connie. “I’m so proud. I can’t tell you how great it is to be building a home with my son.” … Pivoting business and pleasure around adventure travel is a specialty for Yanik Silver, whose Maverick Business Adventures has put together the “Ultimate Baja Experience,” on which West Coast Choppers’ Jesse James and business leaders will surf, watch whales and drive Baja’s dirt roads while discussing business and watching the Super Bowl with sports celebrities. … Michael Landsman, owner of Miggle Toys, knows that he’s fighting the high-tech revolution, but his Electric Football championship drew more than 1,000 people last year in Jacksonville and he is expecting even more this week in Detroit. His company, which owns Tudor, the original maker of Electric Football, schedules its largest promotional event for the weekend before the Super Bowl. “Computer games are anti-social,” he said, “but Electric Football gets people involved with each other.”

Patti Smith was among the celebs who
turned outfor Jim Irsay’s night saluting
Jack Kerouac.

Despite the success of his “Evening to Remember and Celebrate Jack Kerouac” at the New York Public Library, one could read the disappointment in Jim Irsay’s eyes. “Yes, this is a wonderful night,” he said, “but it would have been better if the Colts had won.” Irsay hosted the event for the New York literati, aging beatniks, celebrities — like Deborah Harry, John (“Artie Bucco”) Ventimiglia and Patti Smith — a scattered few from the sports world like the NFL’s Joe Browne and Greg Aiello and many whose lives had been influenced by “On the Road.” The Irsay-owned scroll, Kerouac’s original 119-foot manuscript, with the author’s edits, was on display along with artifacts of Kerouac’s life. One was his handwritten list of sexual conquests: “No. 31, Joan H., 150 times, N.Y;” “No. 21, 194?, Horrors, once, Boston.”

John Turturro (left) as Billy Martin and
Oliver Platt as George Steinbrenner in
ESPN’s “The Bronx Is Burning.” Both
were SAG best actor nominees.

It took an Andy Roddick gift of two business-class plane tickets to get Ken Meyerson and wife Claudia on a plane to South Africa for the SFX tennis chief’s “first real vacation in 21 years.” They went to Cape Town and wine country and spent four days on nonhunting safari. “We saw lions, rhinos, giraffes and wildebeests.” Meyerson said he couldn’t get BlackBerry or cell reception in the bush, and “by the second-to-the-last day, for a full hour and a half, I felt completely relaxed.” … Doing his imitation of the “agony of defeat,” NASCAR’s Andrew Giangola did an unintended cartwheel on Killington’s “Superstar” run and broke his collarbone. Daughter Gaby had warned: “Papa, stay away from the black diamond trails,” but she was in ski school at the time. Belgian wife Viviane, however, a smoother skier, was an eyewitness.

ESPN content development SVP Keith Clinkscales said, “It’s a shame they can’t all win” last night’s SAG best actor award. Oliver Platt, who played George Steinbrenner, and John Turturro, who played Billy Martin, were nominated for their roles in “The Bronx Is Burning” and Sam Shepard for his role in “Ruffian.” ESPN is proud, Clinkscales said, that “our efforts at expanding the sports-entertainment experience for fans across our platforms have been recognized.”

John Genzale can be reached at johngenzale@gmail.com.