ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Tom Brady sat at a podium in the middle of a hockey arena. He was wearing a gray New England Patriots hoodie, a chunky black knit cap and strangely, considering this was indoors, a pair of black winter gloves. His face was being shown on a giant screen. Thousands of fans sat hundreds of feet away, his voice beamed into special radios they had attached to their ear. Dozens of cameras and hundreds of reporters formed a half-moon around the greatest quarterback of all time, peppering him with questions in perhaps the most absurd media event on the sports calendar.

Standing at the back of the press scrum at Super Bowl LII Opening Night on Monday was Brandon King, incognito. King is Brady's teammate, a 24-year-old safety for the Patriots, and someone who, as he told me, "just likes to simmer in the back." For some players, like the Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins, who used the event to speak eloquently and thoughtfully about his social justice work in Philadelphia, media night is an opportunity to shine for the cameras and speak their mind on whatever they choose. For others like King, it was a pain, a distraction, a big fat annoyance in the middle of the biggest professional week of their lives.

Super Bowl media night worked like this: A couple thousand reporters crammed onto the floor of the arena. Ten thousand or so fans waited in the seats. Out came the Patriots, the entire roster and coaches too; eight of them had individual podiums, and the rest of them stood among the media. For an hour, the Patriots answered questions. Then they left, and in came the Eagles. For the first 15 minutes of the Patriots time, King hid in a corner. Only two people came by to talk to him. He was happy. He left the corner, and things got hectic. One reporter asked King to feel his microphone cover and describe it. King decided he should hide in plain sight: In the back of Brady's press scrum. "I'm trying a new strategy," he said. "People don't look at me here. They come over here to talk to Tom."

For the players and coaches of these two teams, Super Bowl week is life in a fishbowl. As King told me, "You don't have any 'me time.' No matter where you go, you're being hit regardless." Players I spoke to on Monday night all were certain to show their gratitude for being here; guys on the other 30 teams would happily trade places with the guys on these two teams.

But the reality of being on a Super Bowl team is that you have to put up with a lot of dumb stuff in the lead-up to the big game, and it's perfectly distilled in the circus that is media night. Guillermo Rodriguez from "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" was walking around with a sombrero. He got Danny Amendola to pose in it. Then Amendola answered a question about his pregame superstitions: "A peanut butter and Nutella sandwich." One reporter from TYT Sports was dressed as a shark; he repeated some of the perceived flaws of Patriots running back James White when he came into the league (small hands, short arms), then asked him what sort of advice he'd give to a shark with the same problems.

A television reporter from Mexico kept asking players to define the Super Bowl in one word, and got mostly quizzical faces in response. Confused faces were a common response to the dumbest questions. When Patriots lineman Joe Thuney was asked who he'd prefer to be stuck with on a desert island for a year, Tom Brady or Bill Belichick, the response was a confused face. When Patriots lineman Lawrence Guy was asked what was the biggest animal he could take down with his bare hands, the response was a confused face. When Patriots linebacker James Harrison was asked which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle was his favorite, the response was … well, the response was Raphael. Harrison likes Raphael's preferred weapon, the twin sai swords.

Harrison seemed in an especially salty mood. He's a no-bull kind of guy, and media night is mostly just bull. I asked him what he thought of the Super Bowl media obligations.

"It's unnecessary," he said. "It's useless. You're asking me questions that don't even matter, that won't have any consequence, nothing about the game. I'm just blocking this out. In my head, I'm running through defenses right now. I'm not really listening to what you're saying."

I asked him what was the dumbest question he'd been asked all night.

"That one," he said. "That's it. Anybody asks me the dumbest question? That's the dumbest question."

In the back of the Brady press conference, King smiled. An announcer had just said the Patriots' media availability was about to end.

"What did he just say?" King said. "One more minute? Oh yeah!"