I spent a few days over the weekend covering Super Bowl LI. Loyal Scaiaholics know I have a rich history in Houston and, if we’re being honest with each other, this visit wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

Covering a Super Bowl is a lot of work, though. I didn’t stay at the official media hotel (I believe I exclaimed, “I ain’t payin’ 250 bucks a night to stay at a Double Tree!” to the NFL’s public relations department), and by the time I had bothered to scream at the NFL, the closest hotel I could find was in Atascocita.

If you’re not familiar with Houston-area geography, Atascocita is a bit farther from the stadium than my house in Ft. Worth.

So off I went to talk to fans. Patriots fans were striding confidently through the streets, doing weirdly stereotypical interviews where they don’t pronounce the letter, R.

I also settled in to find interesting story angles to talk about during interviews with stations.

The betting line predicted the Patriots would win by about three points, so I checked to see what other “prop bets” casinos were offering.

Among them was the over-under on how many times Donald Trump would tweet during the game. He only tweeted once, so the under bet would have been the winner. I suspect the casino cleaned up on that one.

At the game, the NFL played a tutorial on how to take a good selfie.

Earlier in the day, I saw a bunch of people sitting at a table at a hotel selfie-sticking the tar out of their luncheon, so I tweeted a picture of it. Upon reading it was my first time seeing a selfie-stick in action, one loyal Scaiaholic gently encouraged me to get out more.

By the end of the game, though, I had become well acquainted with the selfie-stick. The reporter sitting next to me had one and brought it out several times.

And when I wanted a picture of myself with the field in the background, I had to ask someone for help like a caveman.

Also before the game, Pope Francis had a message for football fans. I had previously seen the pope when he was in Juarez last year. I’m not sure why, but whenever the pope has something he wants to get off his chest, he shows up where I’m going to be.

That wasn’t all, though. In addition to the selfie-tutorial and the message from Pope Francis, we also got a tutorial on how to shine our cell phone flashlights during the half-time show. I suspect Lady Gaga had to put more effort into her preparation, but in our defense, she didn’t even bring a selfie-stick with her when she jumped off the roof.

After the game, you probably heard that Tom Brady’s jersey was stolen from the locker room.

Earlier in the week, ICE did a press conference where they trucked out a bunch of counterfeit sports memorabilia for the reporters to take pictures of.

They said they’ve confiscated 260,000 items since they launched Hashtag: Operation Team Player.

During their press conference, they said people are getting more sophisticated but said people still buy stuff at a discount without noticing things like misspelled words.

Bloomberg says Tom Brady’s jersey could bring in $500,000, but I feel like advertising a jersey worn by Tom Brady in the Super Bowl is giving yourself away.

I bought a jersey, too, where the seller swore it was authentic. It said, “Blady,” on the back, and I thought it might be phony, but it only cost $250,000, so I’m already a quarter of a million dollars ahead.

My week was busy, but not nearly as busy as the people running the media center at the George R. Brown Convention Center. They had four different rooms just for press conferences. The day after the Super Bowl, they brought in Matt Brady (who asked us to let him know if we see his jersey on eBay). Then the reporters sat there as they changed the background so they could bring out the Minnesota host committee to receive a ceremonial hand-off for next year.

Obviously, you wouldn’t want the host committee for Superbowl 52 standing in front of the Roman numerals for Super Bowl 51. That’d be crazy!