It’s Sunday, one week before Super Bowl LX.

The players arrive today at San Jose International Airport on their team charter flights. The pilots routinely display the team flag out of the cockpit window in a salute to their passengers. The players check into their hotels and the tension for the upcoming game builds.

On Sunday, players, coaches and staff will look at the clock as 3:30 p.m. approaches and will think that in just one week at this hour they will be taking the field to play in the biggest game of their life.

Between now and next week’s game, there will be lots of distractions. Some caused by league activities they are required to attend, others of a more personal nature.

There have been a number of incidents in past Super Bowls where players took a wrong turn in their game preparation. In the very first Super Bowl, before it was even known as a Super Bowl, Max Magee of the Green Bay Packers spent the night before the American and National Football League Championship Game out drinking with little regard for the curfew Vince Lombardi had imposed.

McGee, who along with teammate Paul Hornung, was a world class athlete off the field in activities better not advertised. McGee didn’t wander back into his hotel until the morning sun on January 15, 1967, had already lit up the eastern sky. He was hungover when he went through his morning drills at the Los Angeles Coliseum and implored starting receiver Boyd Dowler not to get hurt and force him to play.

Dowler was injured early in the game and McGee was forced into action … and made the most of it. He caught seven passes that day, three more than he had collected during the entire 1966 regular season, including a pair of touchdowns and the first ever score in a Super Bowl.

For carousing athletes, it didn’t always work out so well.

Before the Atlanta Falcons met the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXXIII, defensive back Eugene Robinson was arrested on the wrong side of town in Miami while propositioning for a sexual favor from an undercover policewoman. Ironically, earlier on that same day, Robinson had received the prestigious Bart Starr Award for high moral character.

The distraction didn’t benefit the Falcons result like McGee’s night of carousing had … Atlanta lost to the Broncos who won their second consecutive Super Bowl in John Elway’s last game, 34-19.

Before the Los Angeles Raiders met the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to complete the 2002 season, Raiders starting center Barret Robbins suffered a bipolar episode that had him missing for the entire Saturday on the eve of Super Bowl XXXVII. His drinking and drug use still had Raiders defensive coach Willie Brown working him out in the parking lot outside the stadium in San Diego in hopes of allowing him to play in the game.

Didn’t work.

Barrett was missing in action during the Raiders blowout loss to the Buccaneers.

Dion Sanders was an attraction all by himself. After spending his first five professional seasons with the Atlanta Falcons on teams that only once cracked the playoff field, he signed with the San Francisco 49ers in 1994.

His contributions to the 49ers were a key element in Steve Young getting the “monkey off my back” with a triumph in Super Bowl XXIX over the San Diego Chargers. Before that game, Sanders used the Super Bowl spotlight to his full advantage. He rented a black Lamborghini Diablo which he had delivered to the team’s hotel and parked on the curb out front with the doors open to showcase the automobile. He subsequently purchased the car after San Francisco crushed the Chargers in the Super Bowl, 49-26.

Sanders blew off curfew rules like yield signs on a freeway, and still was there to perform at a high level when the bell rang for gameday.

There are no obvious culprits on the Patriots or Seahawks that will break curfew and carouse into trouble before next week’s Super Bowl. But you just never know.

The New England Patriots were forced to spend the night in Denver due to the severe weather that grounded their flight following their Championship Game victory over the Broncos last Sunday. Their head coach, Mike Vrabel, put the responsibility on his team to get done what they needed to get done with these instructions, “There is no curfew tonight, but the bus leaving at 8 in the morning, so if you ain’t on it, you ain’t playing in the Bowl.”

No one missed the bus departure time. But what if Drake Maye had overslept?

Reminds me of something Jimmy Johnson did while head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. One day an offensive lineman fell asleep in a meeting and Johnson immediately cut him.

That afternoon, after word of the quick departure of the player had been revealed, a reporter asked Johnson, “What would you have done if Troy Aikman had fallen asleep?”

Johnson offered an honest response, “Wake him.”