Ravens' Goose has gift for gab

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Tony Siragusa Show, now playing in Tampa. Our studio audience is composed entirely of reporters who gather daily waiting for Siragusa to arrive. Siragusa's act packs the house.

Here he comes now, the Goose, star of the gridiron, press conference and deli. The Goose shows up wearing sunglasses, shades and a T-shirt that reads: Big Daddy. Which he is.

"Am I gonna get an intelligent question today? Not like yesterday," Siragusa says as he settles into his seat for today's interview session with the Super Bowl press.

Siragusa, the comic relief of Super Bowl week who doubles as a defensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, holds court for another hour. He's vulgar, immature, intelligent, funny, outrageous, articulate and definitely an unapologetic slob. He's the John Belushi character from "Animal House" (it might not be a coincidence that he's a fan of both). For lunch he once ate an entire meat loaf, five pieces of chicken and two pints of mashed potatoes oozing with butter. He claims he weighs 342 pounds and asks reporters not to exaggerate his weight because "I'm trying to get that Jenny Craig commercial."

But others are skeptical. "He'd have to amputate body parts to get to 340," says New York's Michael Strahan. Teammate Shannon Sharpe guesses the Goose's weight is somewhere between 355 and 400.

Strahan, by the way, once noted that when Siragusa jogs into a game, the field is littered with chicken bones. The Goose begs to differ: "Those aren't chicken bones; those are quarterback bones."

The Goose has more chins than a Chinese phone book. His head barely fits inside a helmet, and he says, "I have to grease my hips to get into my pants." Where you have a gut, he has a boiler. Paired with the Ravens' other tackle, Sam Adams (330 pounds), the Ravens have about 700 pounds of beef, fat and cholesterol to clog up the middle. No wonder the Ravens haven't allowed a 100-yard rusher for 36 consecutive games.

"Me and Sam are trying to eat as much as possible, so our bellies are so bloated that we can totally block out Ray Lewis," the Goose says. Did we mention he's a slob? "All of the guys I match up against are worried about my hygiene, and how greasy and stinky I am," he says. The Giants' Glenn Parker worries that if he rubs up against The Goose in Sunday's Super Bowl he might start a grease fire.