Helping with the Times' Super Bowl coverage this week has overlapped with my usual USF coverage, as the Steelers are practicing on USF's practice fields and using the Bulls' athletic facility for meetings in preparation for Sunday's big game against Arizona.

It's a zoo around the building, with security everywhere and Steelers fans lining up hoping to get pictures and autographs. Got to see USF's two practice fields just before Pittsburgh's first practice Wednesday, and they've gotten quite a makeover. The NFL put new sod in on 80 percent of the practice area, and the fields are newly painted, marked and lined, with a huge Steelers logo in the entry area to the fields.

Presiding over the makeover is legendary NFL groundskeeper George Toma, known as the "God of sod" or even the "Marquis de Sod" as the caretaker of turf for every Super Bowl since the start. A spot of paint here, a little manicuring there, all to make the practice fields as ideal as possible for the Steelers -- the Cardinals are using the Bucs' new facility, closer to Raymond James Stadium.

Pittsburgh's interviews on Wednesday and Thursday were in the Sun Dome -- and you thought there wouldn't be a day when hundreds of media members gathered for an event there -- with the upper level stands pushed in and players lined up at podiums and tables to talk about the game. Wild to see Troy Polamalu getting escorted from the Dome to the athletic facility via golf cart, or to know that Mike Tomlin and Ben Roethlisberger were doing their one-on-one interviews with John Madden and Al Michaels in the meeting room next to Doug Woolard's office.

It's a circus at USF, but a well-timed one for the Bulls' football recruiting -- it's one thing to sell a recruit on the chance to play in an NFL stadium, another to show him he'll be playing on the same field as the biggest game in all of football. We'll get more up on USF's final recruiting push later in the day ...