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ESPN’s Mike Golic was in town Thursday requesting support for his latest NFL prediction.

Golic has gone on record — with nary a regular-season game played, mind you, forecasting a Super Bowl win for the Indianapolis Colts.

Golic, who is half of the “Mike and Mike in the Morning” show, makes no secret of his admiration for the team. He has a bona fide Hoosier connection, having played football for Notre Dame before moving on to a nine-year career in the NFL, playing in Houston, Philadelphia and Miami.

Golic said he’s known quarterback Peyton Manning for years and considers the Colts organization a classy group. That said, Golic is tired of being wrong. He picked the Colts to win the championship the past two years and he really, really doesn’t want to be wrong a third time around.

“If you don’t want to do it for yourselves, do it for me,” he joked during the team’s 2006 Kickoff Luncheon at the Westin Hotel.

Golic’s slimmed-down appearance on stage did not go unnoticed. He’s downright svelte, having lost about 25 pounds recently.

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Good Luck!

Phew.That sure was a long seven months.

And while the start of football season isn’t exactly Christmas morning, it’s close.

Not that I’ve been crossing off the days on a Troy Polamalu calendar tacked up next to the bed or anything.

Just kind of keeping track in my head is all.

Now, I certainly don’t mean to suggest that life is utterly devoid of meaning without football. But Sundays just don’t feel quite right without the NFL in your life. There’s simply no substitute for the sort of spiritual renewal one experiences after spending 10 straight hours locked in the house watching football.

They don’t call it the Hail Mary for nothing, you know.

Because football season is a time for hope. It is a time for new beginnings. In many ways, it is like springtime.

Except that it’s fall.

But nevertheless.

And the dawn of a new football season is also, lest we forget, a time when the humiliation of last year’s disastrous fantasy-league showing can be put behind us, and the potential for fantasy immortality can be embraced. There’s nothing like watching a championship season unfold as a masterfully constructed fantasy roster begins hitting on all cylinders.

At least until your starting quarterback breaks his collarbone in Week Two.

At which point it feels an awful lot like a death in the family.

Naturally, we’ve all spent much of the past 203 days futilely attempting to fill the void, desperately trying to fool ourselves into believing there are other things in life worthy of our attention.

The Winter Olympics.

The World Cup.

That whole Hezbollah-Israel situation.

But deep down inside, we knew what really mattered:

Whether Willie Parker can get it done on fourth-and-goal from the 2.

And now it’s time to find out.

That’s the beautiful thing about football season. It’s an unscripted weekly drama that will not be resolved until sometime after New Year’s. And it demands our complete and undivided attention.

Which is why all household projects have been postponed until further notice, incidentally.

Indeed, week after week, for the next five months, football will be there to buoy our spirits through the difficult times that surely lie ahead.

A welcome distraction from the gas bill. A legitimate excuse to cut out of church early.

And you say there are 2 feet of snow headed this way?

Excellent.

Just the way the Steelers like it.

The Detroit Lions suspended their coach Troy Lakes for their home opener against the Denver Broncos due to his 4 recent DUI arrests. Considering everything happening in the league right now, this is probably the right call.

Officer “trapped”: An off-duty police officer inadvertently was “trapped” in a suburban cul-de-sac without backup before he shot San Diego Chargers linebacker Steve Foley, a prosecutor said.

Aaron Mansker, an officer with the Coronado Police Department, had decided to drop his pursuit because no other officers responded to his calls for help, but found himself blocked Sunday morning in the dead-end street where Foley lives, said San Diego County Deputy District Attorney Jim Koerber.

Mansker was on his way home from a shift when he spotted a suspected drunken driver on the freeway weaving through traffic at speeds up to 90 mph.

Koerber’s account came during an arraignment hearing for Lisa Maree Gaut, 25, who was a passenger in Foley’s restored 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.

Gaut pleaded not guilty to charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and assaulting a police officer. She faces up to five years in prison if convicted of all charges. Superior Court Judge David Szumowski ordered her held in custody in lieu of $35,000 bail.

The shooting occurred after Foley got out of the car near his home in Poway and began walking toward Mansker, who said he was armed and fired a warning shot, according to a sheriff’s department report.

“At this time, the officer was trapped,” Koerber told the judge.

There was no update Thursday on Foley’s condition. Earlier in the week, his agent, David Levine, said Foley was hospitalized in stable condition after undergoing surgery.

Smith out: Carolina Panthers All-Pro receiver Steve Smith missed practice again and remains questionable for the season opener against Atlanta.

Smith was limited to 10 practices in the preseason because of a strained left hamstring and an ingrown toenail that required stitches. He did not play in any of Carolina’s four preseason games.

Smith then tweaked his right hamstring in practice Tuesday and was held out of Wednesday’s workout.Bruschi returns: Tedy Bruschi returned to practice about one month after having surgery on his broken wrist and three days before the New England Patriots begin their season.

The inside linebacker, who broke his wrist on the fourth day of training camp July 31, was listed on the team’s injury report as questionable for Sunday’s home game against the Buffalo Bills.

Hill questionable: Seattle Seahawks starting outside linebacker Leroy Hill was added to the team’s injury list as questionable for Sunday’s season opener at Detroit.

Hill, who set a Seattle rookie record with 71/2 sacks last year, injured his left shoulder early in Wednesday’s full- pads practice. D.D. Lewis would start against the Lions if Hill does not.

Lewis, an undrafted free agent signed in 2002, started 12 games last season before Hill’s emergence.

Stroud joins Peterson: Jacksonville could be without two of their top defensive players in the season opener against Dallas. Pro Bowl defensive tackle Marcus Stroud sprained his right ankle in practice and linebacker Mike Peterson returned to practice, but said he wouldn’t know how his injured right knee reacted to drills until today.

Outagamie County Dist. Atty. Carrie Schneider said she still plans to issue charges stemming from a $100,000 Super Bowl betting pool at Grand Chute supper club in 2005.

Schneider said she is waiting to discuss the case with state Department of Justice officials who originally investigated the case.

Justice Department officials told The Post-Crescent a year ago the case had been referred to Outagamie County for prosecution.

“We’re still looking into it. We are still working with the (attorney general’s) office on some issues with it,” Schneider said.

“Some of their people have been off or we’ve been gone at different times so we haven’t had a chance to meet or go through some of the facts in the case.”

Schneider said in January that she was working on charges against three people that could come soon.

On Feb. 3, 2005, agents from the state Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation seized more than $100,000 in cash from the Legacy Supper Club, 5334 N. Richmond St. They said they thought the money had come from bets placed on a Super Bowl wagering board.

Numerous records were seized, including copies of a betting sheet that listed 100 betting squares that investigators say sold for $1,000 a square. Investigators say the payout would have been $95,000 with $5,000 going to the house.

Perhaps the expectations surrounding Tom Ashworth grew from circumstance and timing.The veteran offensive lineman, with a Super Bowl ring in tow, signed with the Seattle Seahawks just days after they lost All-Pro offensive guard Steve Hutchinson to the Minnesota Vikings. With his ability to play both offensive guard and tackle, it was assumed that Ashworth would be among those challenging to take Hutchinson’s spot along Seattle’s stout offensive line.

Fast-forward five months. Ashworth spends most of training camp practice as a backup, sometimes serving on the scout team. He doesn’t like talking to the media, but speaks politely about his new team, even though he’s gone from a starter protecting Tom Brady in New England, to a backup with Seattle.

“They’re the coaches. They’re going to put the guys in the position they feel best helps the team,” Ashworth said. “Wherever they see fit, for me, that’s what it’s going to be.”

For years about this time, in these same pages, some quote from the Dolphins’ offseason would be dredged up to be the flag-bearer for the team. It was a tradition. You get the idea reading them now that they were some sort of joke, a running gag, especially when Dave Wannstedt would insist every winter, “We’re close.”

Then there was Jimmy Johnson, in 1999, saying, how his team could be “something special.” That got repeated, what, 10,672 times?

Even Don Shula, in a fit of boldspeak for him in 1995, said, “We’ve filled all our holes.”

There’s no need to go chapter and verse into the disappointing endings to all that optimism. It’s just good to look back and see how it went wrong, in so many years, especially on the edge of this season as Dolphins fans embark on a newer (and coach-inspired quieter) brand of optimism.

It’s so quiet in Year Two of Nick Saban you can hear the Dolphins’ fear of the Patriots drop. And with good reason. These Dolphins will be a good team — 10-6 sounds right — but remain another offseason away from even thinking Super Bowl.

This is the year the Dolphins should squeeze into the playoffs. They should play with and, if everything breaks right, be able to catch New England in the AFC East.

Sure, optimism is an affliction around most teams right now, starting with Philadelphia because Terrell Owens is gone and Dallas because Terrell Owens is there. Oakland feels good with a coach who hasn’t been around this millennium in Art Shell. Go down the list. Everyone feels good. Most teams have a chance.

But the Dolphins’ optimism isn’t based on feel-good intangibles like confidence, leadership and we’re-close hope. Look at the tangibles.

If last year showed the Dolphins aren’t lost in the wilderness anymore, this is the year where it’s OK to believe good things are coming and here are five reasons why:

1. Daunte Culpepper is here and healthy. Obvious, right? He has questions to answer, namely whether he can thrive without receiver Randy Moss. But two years ago he was a Pro Bowl player throwing for 5,000 yards and so, for the first time since Dan Marino, the Dolphins have a star-quality quarterback. Enough said.

2. The schedule. This is a godsend. Eight games are against teams that drafted in the top 10 and had no better than a 6-10 record. There are no West Coast games, only one cold-weather game (at Buffalo on Dec. 17) and an AFC East where the Bills and Jets are in first-year rebuilding phases. Plus there’s …

3. New England. Its lost too much to win the Super Bowl. Yes, that’s been said before. And, yes, of all teams, the Dolphins shouldn’t be thinking this considering the Patriots had just 11 regular starters last year and still won in Dolphin Stadium.

But the salary-capped, parity-driven league has caught up to the Patriots to the point they’re nearly an even match for the Dolphins right now. Their coaching staff has been raided. Another round of veterans, like Willie McGinest, are gone. They even made a rare front-office mistake by losing kicker Adam Vinatieri to the direct-rival Colts in free agency.
Bill Belichick still has the proven system. But …

“You’ve got to have great players to play in that system,” McGinest told the San Diego Union-Tribune during training camp. “I think we kind of found that out last year. The system was great, but it couldn’t save us. Some of the guys coming in were terrible.

“Duane Starks, he came in and played like trash. He was terrible. We had other guys coming in that couldn’t fill those shoes of some of those guys that had been there for years and were your core guys.”

4. The Dolphins’ secondary. Yes, the secondary. It’s a question, especially with so many cornerbacks hurt in the preseason. But let’s look back a year for perspective. The questions then included fourth-round rookie Travis Daniels, late-free-agent signee Lance Schulters and the infamous Reggie Howard. Yet the secondary wasn’t a glaring problem. With additions of top pick Jason Allen and veteran Will Allen, can this year be any worse?

5. Six straight wins to close last year. An NFL general manager was asked this winter what that meant. “It means it took eight games for Saban to impress his style on the team. He held it together. Now we’ll see where he takes it.”

That sounds about right. Their offensive line and overall depth suggests they’re still a season from contending. Their offseason steps tell of a team on the rise.

Saban, quietly, with no measuring-stick quotes, merits optimism by marching in the Right Direction.

A 10-year reunion of more than 30 players from the Green Bay Packers’ Super Bowl XXXI-winning team will take place Sept. 10 at the season opener against the Chicago Bears, highlighting the team’s annual alumni weekend.

They’ll be honored at a pregame ceremony during which Pro Football and Packers Hall of Famer Reggie White’s name will go up on the facade of the east side of the stadium bowl.

Among the players scheduled to attend: Don Beebe, Robert Brooks, LeRoy Butler, Mark Chmura, Doug Evans, Antonio Freeman, Chris Jacke, Keith Jackson, Sean Jones, Dorsey Levens, Aaron Taylor and Frank Winters.

For the eighth straight year, Sports Illustrated has picked the Carolina Panthers to win the Super Bowl.

In the magazine’s annual NFL preview, the Panthers are picked to defeat the Miami Dolphins 24-20 in Super Bowl XLI.

Sports Illustrated also picked the Panthers to win the Super Bowl last year, but Carolina lost in the NFC Championship Game.

Sports Illustrated’s not alone. This week’s edition of Pro Football Weekly picks the Panthers to defeat Indianapolis in the Super Bowl. Numerous other publications, websites and television and radio shows have picked the Panthers to win or reach the Super Bowl.

SI picks Dolphins to reach Super Bowl

Sports Illustrated, in its 2006 NFL preview, predicts the Dolphins will reach Super Bowl XLI, where they will lose to the Carolina Panthers.

If Miami reaches the championship game, to be played at Dolphin Stadium, it will become the first NFL team to play in a Super Bowl in its home stadium.

Super Bowl organizers plan two huge Hispanic festivals

South Florida Super Bowl organizers want to ensure that the region’s Hispanic community is not left out of the festivities. They’re organizing Super Fieston! The two outdoor festivals will be held in Broward County on Jan. 28 and in Miami-Dade County on Feb. 3 at as-yet unannounced locations.

The free festivals will feature Latin music and food, Hispanic NFL players and new product demonstrations, said Nelson Albareda, president of Eventus, the Miami firm organizing the events.

Super Fieston! is one of the ‘’Super Celebration’’ series of community cultural events being organized by the Super Bowl XLI Host Committee

NFL referee Ed Hochuli dropped by Seattle Seahawks training camp to discuss new rules and points of emphasis for 2006.He wound up answering questions about controversial officiating in Super Bowl XL.

“The Super Bowl was one of those games where it seemed like the big calls went against Seattle,” Hochuli said Thursday. “That was just fortuitous, bad fortuitous, for Seattle. That doesn’t mean there were no mistakes, but it was a well-officiated game.”

Hochuli and three other officials – Tom Symonette, Don Dorkowski and Tom Sifferman – began monitoring Seahawks practices Thursday. They planned to stay around long enough to oversee a scrimmage scheduled for Saturday at 2 p.m. at Eastern Washington University.

The officials showed a league-produced officiating video to reporters and players in separate sessions Thursday. The video featured potentially confusing plays with explanatory voiceovers.

Down-by-contact is now a reviewable play on fumbles.

In another change, referees will have 60 seconds, not 90, to view replays on the sideline. That rule was approved for 2006 only.

Hochuli said none of the rules changes would have affected any of the calls made against Seattle in the Super Bowl.

He said the disputed pass-interference call against receiver Darrell Jackson was a “no-brainer” because “any time you have an extended arm and you have separation between the players, it’s going to be an automatic flag for pass interference.”

Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren disagreed with several calls in the Super Bowl, but he declined to elaborate Thursday.

He called Hochuli the game’s best referee while praising his three associates as strong at their positions.

The league sends officials to every NFL training camp.

“They are helping our guys,” Holmgren said. “I always ask them to talk to the players. Right away I saw some good give and take there between the players and the officials.”

The next step toward forgetting last season starts Sunday for the Indianapolis Colts.

Players report for training camp at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind., and renew their quest for that elusive Holy Grail, the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

What’s the scoop at running back?
The loss of Edgerrin James to the Cardinals will be felt, not only in the loss of his rushing yardage, but his pass-protection skills and his positive locker room influence. It’s imperative that rookie Joseph Addai reach a contract deal and get into camp. He has an opportunity to challenge Dominic Rhodes for the starting spot, but that won’t happen if he’s a holdout.

The Colts’ offensive line is strong enough, and the passing game potent enough, to make a Rhodes-Addai partnership work in the backfield. But Addai must get into camp and start learning.

Who’ll replace David Thornton?
Thornton, like Mike Peterson and Marcus Washington before him, was allowed to move on in free agency under the assumption that the Colts will find an able-bodied linebacker to replace him. The top choice is Gilbert Gardner, who has shown promise but has had trouble remaining healthy. Cato June at one outside linebacker spot and Gary Brackett in the middle are solid. Gardner’s health will be a major factor in how strong the Colts’ defense becomes.

Will Brandon Stokley return to form?
Stokley’s production dropped significantly in 2005. After logging 1,077 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns in 2004, his numbers dropped to 543 yards and one TD last season. Much of the drop was due to the most frequent use of two tight ends in the Colts’ offense, with Dallas Clark in the slot. Stokley’s yards per catch (13.2) were still respectable, and it may turn out that his 2004 numbers were an aberration due to Peyton Manning’s record-setting season.

Stokley remains a quintessential team player and one of the best at running routes in traffic across the middle. His numbers could rise again if the Rhodes-Addai running attack struggles and Manning goes more and more to the air. Stokley might not reach 2004 heights, but expect a rebound to numbers higher than last season as he continues to supplement Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne.

Can a kicker provide confidence?
Adam Vinatieri brings his Super Bowl rings and experience from the New England Patriots, replacing Mike Vanderjagt at kicker. There’s little difference between Vinatieri and Vanderjagt statistically, but Vinatieri’s demeanor is much more suited to the workmanlike style of Colts coach Tony Dungy.

Vinatieri is clutch, and Manning will appreciate the security of knowing three points are almost always assured with a decent offensive drive. Plus, Vinatieri won’t say anything controversial to the media.

Will Corey Simon become more dominant?
Simon says he has dropped some excess weight from last season, and that can only be a major positive move.

Two factors worked against Simon last season — his weight and his unfamiliarity to the Colts — but he still made a solid contribution.

If he’s in tip-top shape, he could be dominant on the defensive line, making sack experts Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis even more effective. Seeing Simon report in good shape would a beautiful sight on Sunday.

Will there be significant changes in the secondary?
Speculation that Marlin Jackson might be moved to safety did not materialize, but look for Jackson to push for a starting spot at cornerback this season.

His speed and savvy demand to be put to better use. Whether that means less time for Jason David or Nick Harper remains to be seen. Harper, who’ll be 32 this season, isn’t getting any younger, but he’s far from over the hill.

The only indispensable defensive back would be safety Bob Sanders, who improved by leaps and bounds during his first two seasons.

Can the Colts put last year’s fizzling end behind them?
NFL training camp is much like baseball’s spring training. It’s a fresh start. There were departures (James, Thornton, Vanderjagt and Larry Tripplett) and additions (Vinatieri, Addai and other rookies), but the core of the Colts remains the same.

Dungy has had time to recover — as much as that’s possible — from the death of his son and refocus his energy on coaching.

As usual, no matter how much is answered in training camp, this year’s success won’t be determined until the playoffs in January. Super Bowl or bust? No question.