It was the biggest victory in Aaron Rodgers' career, but when he was ready to celebrate with teammates after the Green Bay Packerstoppled the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV, there was more work to do.
Can you say, "I'm going to Disneyland!"?
Rodgers could, but the postgame taping of the traditional Disney television advertisement after February's 31-25 victory in Arlington, Texas, wasn't so simple.
The Packers quarterback, who was the game's MVP after throwing for 304 yards and three touchdowns, told ESPN Radio in Milwaukee that he was ready for the task. It just didn't go as he expected it would.
"I swear I said those words probably 12 times, no joke. I mean, you exaggerate and say 20 times, but it felt like 20 times," Rodgers said. "It was probably 12 times where I said, 'I'm going to Disneyland!' Because they kept coming up to me and saying, 'Oh, we didn't get good audio there.' 'Oh, we need more energy.' ...
"The whole time, I'm thinking to myself -- and Disney people are great -- but I'm thinking to myself, 'I want to celebrate with my teammates.' Every five minutes, you see a huge guy. There's three guys. One huge guy. One guy with a camera and one guy with a sign, like, here's your line ... like I don't know what the lines are? Come on now.
"Every time I saw the real tall guys, I'm like, 'Oh, crap, I gotta say it again.' Finally, seriously, after about the eighth or ninth time, I go, 'Are you telling me you haven't gotten a good line yet?' They go, 'No. No. There's audio interference and whatnot.'Â "
Rodgers hid from the cameras earlier, during pregame -- "I don't like having that camera right in front of my face," he said -- and got to witness from up close the most talked-about moment of the afternoon, Christina Aguilera's national-anthem flub.
"First of all, the chick from 'Glee' (Lea Michele) killed the first song ('America the Beautiful'). She should have sang the anthem, too ...," Rodgers said. "I don't know who I was standing next to, but (Aguilera) starts singing it, and in most of the stadiums they have the words up on the board, kind of up-and-above the singer, so she can tell that she screwed up.
"She screwed up, and I knew it, and something was off. I'm looking around, going, 'Does anyone else realize this?' I don't think they had, (and) I kind of tapped ... I think it was Diyral Briggs next to me, and said, 'Hey, did you hear that?''He was like, 'What?' I'm like, 'She just totally screwed it up.' ... I feel kind of bad for her, but at the same time, come on now?"
And then it's time to focus on the game, right? Think again.
"I have one (story) better than that one," Rodgers said. "We walked out for the coin toss, and at the Super Bowl, there are these long TV timeouts, so we go out for the coin toss. I'm one of the captains. There's five of us. The Steelers' guys are standing over there, and we're standing looking at each other for a good three minutes.
"Well, over to the left, about 10 cameramen have been trying to get in place for the best shot, and two of them are fighting. They're yelling at each other in different languages, flipping each other off, and one guy is flipping him off, and the other guy below him is just taking all of these pictures of him. ... They're both screaming at other and taking pictures of each other for a good minute and a half, and I'm tapping A.J. (Hawk), like, look at that over there! Look at those guys! It was unbelievable."
Rodgers says he hasn't watched a replay of the game -- he saw a little of the Packers' championship DVD at his parents' house -- but he's looking forward to receiving his Super Bowl ring. Will he tuck it away to keep it safe?
"Nah, I'll wear it," he said. "Not often, but I will wear it."
