With the buildup to Sunday's Super Bowl XLI in full throttle, here are some random thoughts from a media participant of three of the previous big games.

Much has been made of the major milestone achieved by Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy and Chicago coach Lovie Smith. Until this year, no black coach had ever guided his team to the Super Bowl. Now we have two. It's a big step not only for the NFL, but for our society, as well.

The success of Dungy and Smith brought another Super Bowl hero back into the limelight - Doug Williams, who became the first black quarterback to play in the Super Bowl and led the Washington Redskins to a 42-10 victory over the Denver Broncos.

I happened to be in the gaggle of reporters who talked to Williams before Super Bowl XXII when a reporter allegedly posed the question: How long have you been a black quarterback?

In reality, Williams wasn't asked how long he'd been a black quarterback. But a reporter stumbled over the syntax in his question, and many of us - me included - thought that was what he'd asked. It wasn't one of the media's finest hours.

But it was for Williams.

He handled that awkward question and hundreds of others he was asked throughout the week with class and dignity. I came away from that game with a newfound respect for Williams as a person and as a quarterback, simply because of the way he handled himself. The fact that he won the game and was named the game's MVP was a bonus.

Williams' performance was in stark contrast to other players during that week. On the final media day before the game, a group of reporters gathered around Redskins' defensive lineman Dexter Manley, who was in a surly mood. He announced through a media representative that he would only take questions in written form. So we dutifully wrote down our questions on notebook paper and handed them to the rep.

The rep handed Manley one of the scraps of paper with a question on it. Manley looked at it for a while, crumpled it up, thrust it to the ground and stalked off, uttering a profanity as he exited.

It wasn't until a few years later that Manley admitted he'd never learned to read. Manley's attitude and actions were in stark contrast to his teammate Williams, who probably was laboring under a much greater burden.

Sometimes, the players' actions during the week remain lodged in one's memory for other reasons.

One of those moments occurred when the Broncos played the Giants in Super Bowl XXI. A Denver offensive lineman, who shall remain nameless, got the munchies the day before the game and raided the mini-bar in his hotel room. He already had eaten the entire contents of a jar of pistachios when he saw the price tag and recoiled in horror - $15.

He rushed over to one of Denver's team officials demanding to borrow a car and spent the next two hours frantically driving around, trying to find a store that sold pistachios so he could refill the jar in the mini-bar and avoid paying the $15 - this from a player who stood to make thousands from his appearance in the Super Bowl the next day, not to mention the six- or seven-figure salary he was paid that year by the Broncos.

The nut finally found his nuts and saved a dollar or two, but I always wondered if the stress he felt that afternoon while trying to locate a bag of pistachios affected his performance in the game - one the Broncos lost 39-20.

Mike Spence is a sports writer for The Pueblo Chieftain. He may be reached at 719-544-3520 or at mspence@chieftain.com.