Fort Lauderdale, Fla. ? Jimmy Cefalo remembers when he realized two weeks was too much.

It was 1985, and the Dolphins had just arrived in California after beating the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC championship game. Cefalo, tired after the cross-country flight, hustled to the room he would share with his record-setting quarterback, Dan Marino. But not yet into the room.

“Fans had sent so many baskets to Marino, we couldn’t open the door,” said Cefalo, now a sports anchor on a South Florida ABC affiliate. “I finally wedged my way in. Dan called down to the front desk, and told them to ‘get this (stuff).’ It was extraordinary. But that is what the build-up does. They had a week to do that.”

This will be one of 31 times that fans, players, coaches, sponsors, reporters and host-city officials have had that extra week to prepare, hype and stress out. Some like that week. Others note that the games generally have been more competitive in the seven other situations, when the Super Bowl immediately followed the championship games.

Ideally, most coaches and players would split the difference. Ten days would give each team time to take care of peripheral issues, and then get into preparation. Since playing a Super Bowl on a Wednesday is inconceivable, NFL people are split.

‘It doesn’t feel right’

Some, like Cefalo, preferred the one-week plan in 1983 (when the Dolphins played the Redskins) to the two-week arrangement he experienced in 1985.

“Two weeks got you out of your normal rhythm,” he explained. “You’re used to playing on Sunday, getting a day off, and going right to work for the next week. It’s a cycle you get used to. When you break that cycle, it becomes a distraction. It doesn’t feel right.”

Others, like Cefalo’s coach, Don Shula, are proponents of the extra week off.

“It’s just not another game,” Shula said. “This is the Super Bowl. And a game of that magnitude, you want to have most time to prepare.”

Two weeks is the default scenario, preferred by the NFL and its television partners. CBS president Sean McManus, whose network is broadcasting Sunday’s game, told the Associated Press that the extra week gave fans a chance to get acquainted with unfamiliar Carolina players and gave his own people a chance to get a seven-hour pregame show together.

The NFL has espoused the two-week hiatus, straying only when necessary. Sometimes, it couldn’t move a fixed date for Super Bowl availability after avoiding starting the season on Labor Day weekend (Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003). On two occasions, its season was unexpectedly altered by an unforeseen event (the terrorist attacks of 2001 or the players’ strike of 1982).

While three of the last four Super Bowls have occurred just one week after the championship games, league officials and owners overwhelmingly have decided against making that permanent.

“The original thinking was to make it separate from the season, and it’s still that way,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said. “In terms of planning, moving teams, and giving the game a buildup, it’s always been two weeks.”

Less layoff, closer games

Critics will note that the result has been a less competitive ultimate game, with an average margin of victory of 17.3, compared to 11.6 when there was no break. Consider the compelling Super Bowls:

• Kevin Dyson one yard short of victory? One week.
• Scott Norwood kicking it wide? One week.
• Adam Vinatieri, dead center perfect? One week.

When Aiello says “there’s no conclusive proof it gives you a better chance for a competitive game,” he can cite last season. Tampa Bay trounced the Raiders by 27, after the shorter one-week break.

CBS analyst Phil Simms, who will call Sunday’s game, was on two championship teams, though he was still injured during Super Bowl XXV in 1991. That game, after a one-week break, was decided by one point. Super Bowl XXI, in which Simms played flawlessly after a two-week break, was decided by 19.

“What it does, I think, it guarantees team a greater chance of winning the game because now they can’t be fooled,” Simms said. “Both sides are rested physically and emotionally. It gives everybody enough time to prepare where you’re not going to give up a trick play, you’re not going to have something turn the game where you might be the better team and the lesser team can’t beat you because of that trick play.”

More time to prepare

Here’s what else the two-week break does, other than give Carolina’s Stephen Davis and New England’s Tedy Bruschi more days to heal and give Britney Spears more time to get re-married and steal the show: It gives the staffs of each team a little more time to breathe.

Before Super Bowl XXXI, the Patriots had two weeks. Five years later, they had one, winning in Pittsburgh, flying back to Foxboro that Sunday, forced to fly out to New Orleans the next morning.

Panthers coach John Fox put in 75 percent of his game plan back in Charlotte, before flying to Houston, where he will tweak it.

Even though he lost the game, former Buffalo Bills coach Marv Levy was a fan of the one-week format.

“That said, I didn’t give a darn as long as I was in the game,” said Levy, who had two experiences in each scenario.

“And by the middle of the second week, you sense the players are thinking, ‘Let’s get the game on with, come on, we’re ready.'”

Fans ready for some football may already be thinking it.