Maybe they had to pass on the really good stuff. And maybe they didn't have enough bottles for every player to call his own.
Those details are lost in a champion's locker room. You make do with what you have. You swig, you spray and you pass it on.
So maybe the championship trophy is less revered. Maybe it doesn't carry a name such as Lombardi. Maybe it has scratches on one side and looks like something you'd win at a local dirt track.
Those annoyances are ignored at a moment such as this. At least that was how it seemed for the players posing beside the trophy with disposable cameras. That was how it looked to David White and Basil Proctor, who were hoisting this monstrous, silver cup to their lips to drink its champagne.
So maybe Sunday's ArenaBowl XVII did not give you the shivers. Maybe it was merely a pleasant diversion on a rainy day and maybe you already have forgotten most of the game's particulars.
That attitude will get you nowhere around here.
"I've spent some time in the NFL. I know what it's like to go after the Super Bowl," said White, the Storm's fullback/linebacker. "This is no different. Winning a championship means something at any level.
"You start at training camp, you work every day and you try to make sure you're playing in the last game of the season. And you come out a winner."
Maybe you remember the Super Bowl, the greatest sports event this community has ever known. Maybe you still smile thinking about it.
No one will ever confuse the Super Bowl with the Arena Football League's championship. Only one is a billion-dollar enterprise. Only one is watched by tens of millions around the world. Only one carries history wherever it goes.
Standing on the field after the Storm's 43-29 victory, McKay smiled as he watched players dance and preen on a makeshift podium nearby. Just as he did five months earlier with his Bucs after Super Bowl XXXVII.
"How many players are in this league? And how many of them wish they had won a ring today?" McKay said. "Any time you have this many teams, go through a season as long as this, work this hard, it's an accomplishment.
"You're darn right this is meaningful."
So maybe they had no seminal slogan. Maybe there wasn't anything quite as pithy as, perhaps, Pound the Rock. Maybe there's nothing to copyright and nothing to chuckle about with Leno or Letterman on any of the late-night shows.
That does not mean they were without inspiration. Even if it wasn't original. Even if it was mimeographed on tiny scraps of paper and taped next to the nameplates in a remarkably cramped locker room.
"I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment that he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious."
Vince Lombardi.
So maybe there was but one man crying.
Maybe everyone else was too happy, too exhausted, too preoccupied to sit on a stool in front of a locker and weep without shame. Maybe, at that moment, Sai Poulivaati best understood the preciousness of life and love.
Nine years he has played this game. From Las Vegas to Anaheim to San Jose to Tampa Bay. He has been on playoff teams and teams that folded. Yet, until Sunday, he had never been on a championship team.
This is a guy who was not even sure he was going to play this season. He's 32, you see, and ready to get on with his life.
Poulivaati, the Storm's center, will leave on a flight today and be in class at 8 a.m. Tuesday at Oregon State. He has a degree in sociology and is returning to graduate school with dreams of becoming a teacher.
Even before the smoke, the fire and the spotlights signaled the start of ArenaBowl XVII, Poulivaati knew it would be his last football game.
He knew it would be emotional. He knew it would be draining. He just didn't know it would leave him like this. With tears filling his eyes just about every time someone walked by to place a hand on his shoulder.
Poulivaati's mother, Mele Maumi, died last month.
They last talked on Mother's Day.
"She told me, "You've got to train well because I have a feeling this is going to be the year for you,"' Poulivaati said. "I think she was watching over me today. I think she was here with me.
"She meant so much to my life. She did everything for me and my sister. She's the reason I'm here today."
