In what might be the least heralded storyline (tonight, anyway) coming out of New England’s hard fought Super Bowl 41 1/2 victory, Pro Football Talk suggests Indianapolis has been pumping artificial crowd noise into the RCA Dome tannoy (mp3).

Since such gamesmanship is the sort of thing we’d usually associate with a reprobate like the Hooded Casanova (rather than the saintly Tony Dungy), I feel pretty comfortable accusing PFT of some sort of low-tech trickery. How difficult would it be to find audio from a Fushitsusha stadium gig and just dub Phil Simms’ voice over the top? I don’t have much experience with Garageband, but I’m sure it would be a snap for someone in the Sporting News a/v department.

Which of the following is the biggest surprise from Week 9?

a) the Detroit Lions are 6-2 at the midseason mark,
b) that Adrian Peterson really did see 5 guys drafted ahead of him.
c) Chargers DB Antonio Cromartie has more TD’s so far (3) than Seattle’s Shaun Alexander (2).
d) after starting 0-4, New Orleans won their 4th straight Sunday, a 41-24 victory at Jacksonvile, leaving the Saints with a genuine shot in the decidedly lousy NFC South.

I’ll take “C”, though it’s pretty wild that “A” was accomplished without a change of GM’s in Motown.