NEW ORLEANS – Ed Reed is 34 now and he hopes that his tendency of late to forget simple things, or get confused about something easy, is just a sign of middle age approaching.

"Who [doesn't] wake up and forget things?" the Baltimore Ravens' future Hall of Fame safety said with a wistful laugh.

Deep down, though, he fears something else is at work. The man plays football for a living and he plays it violently, all those collisions over the middle, all those bone-jarring tackles. He's had just three diagnosed concussions he said, although he acknowledged there "may be more that you don't really know about." Through the aches and pains, Ed Reed has become one of the best safeties of his generation. (USA Today Sports)

And so Reed offers this startling revelation: He isn't just fearful that he may one day suffer from brain injuries caused by football, he thinks he's already dealing with them.

"I think some things I go through [right now] are football related," Reed said Wednesday. "There's been some thing that honestly put up a flag. Just stuff that I know, stuff that I know

NEW ORLEANS – Ray Lewis acknowledged Wednesday that he is "agitated" that his name was again linked in a report concerning performance-enhancing drug use and blasted his accuser as a "coward" who was using the run-up to Super Bowl XLVII to gain attention.

Lewis vehemently denied the claim in Sports Illustrated by Mitch Ross, co-owner of Sports With Alternative to Steroids (S.W.A.T.S.), that Lewis used deer-antler velvet spray to help recover from a torn triceps injury. This came two years after Yahoo! Sports' ThePostGame originally reported on Lewis and other elite athletes' ties to the substance.

Lewis hammered Ross at a Wednesday morning media conference here, calling it "embarrassing" that Ross, whose name Lewis refuses to say out loud, could hijack the media narrative of the week. Ray Lewis isn't happy with where the Super Bowl narrative went on Wednesday. (AP)

"I've said it before, I've said it a million times, the reason I'm smiling because it is so funny and absurd," Lewis said. "I never ever took what he said or whatever I was supposed to.

NEW ORLEANS – The Patron Saint of the Benched, Demoted, Passed By and Screwed Over arrived at Super Bowl XLVII media day and was immediately surrounded by cameras and recorders – reporters five, six deep in a circle around him.

Alex Smith was the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers into November of this season, playing as well as anytime in his NFL career, completing 25 of 27 passes and throwing four touchdowns over a two-game stretch. "I felt the most comfortable I've been on a football field in a long time, maybe ever," Smith said.

Alex Smith is surrounded by journalists during media day. (REUTERS)Then he was concussed in a game against the St. Louis Rams. His backup, Colin Kaepernick, came in, played well and never gave the job back. Even when Smith was medically cleared to return, coach Jim Harbaugh decided to make Kaepernick the team's long-term starter.

Smith hasn't seen the field since as the 49ers have advanced to the Super Bowl where they will play the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday.

It happens, both in

NEW ORLEANS – The Ray Lewis Story, as told [often] by Ray Lewis, has generally been one long on redemption but light on remorse and even remembrance of the darkest night of his life.

The Baltimore Ravens linebacker will speak at length about his faith, about his relationship with God, about his altogether righteous and wonderful life with all its blessings. Yet he hardly acknowledges the night 13 years ago in Atlanta where a fight in the street left two men dead and Lewis eventually turning state's witness and avoiding a murder rap to plead guilty to obstruction of justice. He testified at the trial of two of his friends but neither was convicted.

Ray Lewis answers a question during media day. (USA Today Sports)For a man that embraces a very open and public existence to cling to a private moment of such a major incident is to some fans the proper way to move on from a tragedy, to others the flaunting of a criminal who is getting away with it, and, to the vast majority of everyone else, something in between.

Super Bowl XLVII media

There is a tried and true strategy for most players – or all players – during the media crush of Super Bowl week.

When in doubt say nothing. Or close to nothing. Colin Kaepernick was relatively pedestrian in his comments to reporters on Sunday. (AP)

This would seem to be particularly apt advice for a young quarterback with only half a season of experience under his belt, about to face a defense full of legends that just forced the triumvirate of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck into more interceptions (5) than touchdowns (4).

So Colin Kaepernick, your thoughts on that Baltimore Ravens defensive line?

"They are very physical, very big and take up a lot of space," the San Francisco 49ers quarterback said this week.

No kidding, they are big? Who would've guessed? 

That's all he said on the subject. And perhaps all he will say. Super Bowl week has just begun and Kaepernick appears to have bought into the game plan of making zero waves until kickoff. Not only is he in the process of executing it; he's executing it perfectly.

And that's a

There were mornings as a young child that Nes Andrion yearned for the mother who he says left him behind in the Philippines at the tender age of 8 months old and times his stomach burned with hunger from so many inadequate meals – too often just bread and coffee, even as a toddler. There were days, he says, his feet grew sore from having no shoes and his back ached from sleeping on a hard dirt floor – "just a bed sheet, no pillow," he recalls.

Colin Kaepernick carries the ball on his tattoo-covered right arm against the Packers. (USA Today Images). Through it all, though, a simple dream carried him.

The kid was an artist. The kid could draw. He could create. He reveled in the moment it all came together.

And so, sure, Nes Andrion grew up about as poor as you can in this world – "rock bottom," he says – raised by his aunt and uncle, in a tiny, crowded house on the side of the steep, thick mountains above Olongapo City, the Filipino port town.

He always saw something bigger, though. He saw art. His art, splashed across countries he could hardly fathom, seen by millions of

NCAA president Mark Emmert is having his enforcement division reviewed. (AP)

The NCAA announced Wednesday it "uncovered an issue of improper conduct within its enforcement program that occurred during the University of Miami investigation." While it's a startling specific admission, it isn't necessarily a surprise. This is, after all, just the latest enforcement gaffe.

So the Miami case is on hold while the NCAA, per order of president Mark Emmert, waits out an "external review of the enforcement program."

The NCAA should hire someone to perform an external review of its rulebook instead.

The core issue here isn't which policy or procedure was violated. It's that the NCAA keeps trying to enforce patently one-sided and illogical rules that are supposed to be able to stop the wheels of capitalism.

It doesn't work. It's never worked. It never will work.

Well, except for the NCAA, which conveniently enjoys a valuable tax dodge.

Boil down the Nevin Shapiro case and here's what happened: a wealthy fan of a university's athletic programs sent

Jack Harbaugh, the patriarch of the NFL's reigning first family, was in coaching trouble back in the mid-1990s; his Western Kentucky program was skidding through repeated losing seasons, and Jack's future was tenuous.

That's when his sons, John, then an assistant at the University of Cincinnati, and Jim, then a high-profile starting NFL quarterback, made it their unprecedented mission to moonlight and save him. 

John Harbaugh, left, and his brother, Jim Harbaugh, talk with their father, Jack. (AP)On Feb. 3 the brothers meet with a Super Bowl on the line – John's Baltimore Ravens against Jim's San Francisco 49ers. Not two decades ago they teamed up to help their dad and in the process built the foundation for a championship program – in this case at a lower-division college that neither even officially worked for at the time.

In 1994, WKU suffered its fourth losing season in five years under Jack Harbaugh. No one ever doubted Jack's ability to coach. He clearly needed better players, though.

Enter the Harbaugh brothers, both big-dreaming workaholics