Stevens, Porter ‘Bring it On’ with silly barbs

DETROIT – Is so.

Is not.

Watch your back.

Bring it on.

Chump.

Sucker.

Dead meat.

Old news.

Yo ma… wait, better leave mothers out of it. I’m already in enough trouble with lawyers.

But isn’t this more like it?

Super Bowl XL had been turning into Super Bowl ZZZZzzzzz up until Wednesday. Then Pittsburgh linebacker Joey Porter got wind of something Seattle tight end Jerramy Stevens said, pumped it up into something it may or may not have been and then tried to spike it in Stevens’ face.

This is why upward of 3,000 members of the media – newspapers, TV, radio, Internet and 11-year-old Adam O. from “Weekly Reader” – swoop in on the Super Bowl each year. Sure, CBN stops by to probe the depths of the star quarterback’s faith and alleged comedians show up to contrive some cable yuks, but what everyone really wants is some he said/he said.

Smack. Mess. Even if it’s manufactured and ridiculous.

Especially if it’s manufactured and ridiculous.

Turns out some players want it, too.

Really, there couldn’t have been any other reason for Stevens to take a softball question about Steelers running back Jerome Bettis’ return to Detroit and say, “It’s a heartwarming story and all that, but it will be a sad day when he leaves without that trophy.”

That’s all it took for the Porter – a hair-trigger, semiautomatic trash talker – to go all nuclear on his microphone.

He called Stevens “a first-round bust who barely made some plays this season.”

He said Stevens is “too soft to say something like that.”

He said Seattle is a sorry-ass city, that Washington apples cause gastric distress, that Kurt Cobain was tone deaf and that Adam Morrison isn’t even the next Big Bird, much less the next Larry Bird.

OK, so I made up those last ones. Just trying to capture the spirit of the thing.

Now, Stevens insisted Wednesday that he wasn’t going all Joe Namath on XL by guaranteeing victory, although there’s really no other way to parse his remarks.

“I’m not even sure what I said,” Stevens offered. “I didn’t say anything to (Porter) or about him. I can understand how he took it as a disrespectful comment because (it’s) assuming I’m going to win, but we’re not going out there to lose.”

Uh-huh. Well, let’s rewind the tape on old Jerr.

“He had a huge game in the AFC championship game coming off the edge on the blitz,” Stevens said of Porter on Tuesday. “I don’t think he is going to have such an easy day against Walt (Jones), though.”

See? Nothing about Porter. Not really. Nah.

“I’ve been asleep all week, but now I got woke up,” said Porter, a one-time All-Pro and many time All-Mouth, who suggested that a bad ruling in Pittsburgh’s playoff win over Indianapolis was evidence that the entire NFL had entered into a conspiracy to get the Colts to the Super Bowl.

“I’ve got my first taste of blood and now I’m thirsty for more. Until now it was ‘Watch what I say – I can’t say this, I can’t say that, don’t do anything silly.’ But I’m ready now.”

About time. Silly wasn’t getting any respect here in Detroit.

And surely these two can bring it into vogue.

Stevens has been one of the lesser-heralded elements to Seattle’s long-awaited rise to prominence, forging a breakout season after three years haunted by injury and inconsistency.

But he’s also had an unfortunate history with off-the-field brain cramps both in college and the pros, the last of which – a reckless driving conviction in 2003 – prompted the Seahawks to dock him $300,000 from his original $2.8 million signing bonus.

Oh, and for good measure, Stevens’ fiancée is from … Pittsburgh.

Porter, in addition to his verbal incontinence, is also well known for a wrong-place-wrong-time shooting episode outside a Denver sports bar in 2003, when he took a bullet in the buttocks. After he felt he was hit, Porter ran back into the bar, dropped his pants and asked a woman if he’d been shot.

No, he didn’t ask another woman for a second opinion.

Then in 2004, Porter was ejected in Cleveland for a fight with Browns running back William Green – before the game. It led to a tweaking of an NFL rule that now requires a 10-yard DMZ between opposing teams during warm-ups.

“When a guy says something who lines up in front of me on every play, I have to like that,” Porter said. “He has to see me. There’s no way he can hide from me. We have to meet – over and over and over. I’ll remind him every time I put him on his back.”

Stevens shrugged.

“I heard he said he was looking for someone to say something,” he said. “So if he was looking, he found it. Oh, well. That’s the type of players he is. That’s what makes him exciting to watch and why fans like to see him play. He has the same attitude Troy (Polamalu), flying around making plays and telling people about it when they do make plays.

“He said I’ll be on my back?”

Did so.