By RICK GANO

The Associated Press

MIAMI – Brian Urlacher was so at ease that he slept on the flight to the Super Bowl. And when Sunday arrives, he’ll make sure he tunes into his favorite morning fishing show on TV. Just to sort of chill.

Once he hits the locker room to get ready for the biggest game of his life, Urlacher will eat a couple of cookies. He’ll cap his pregame routine by listening to music.

Then at game time, with millions watching, he’ll step onto the finely manicured grass at Dolphin Stadium and stare across the line at one of the NFL’s greatest quarterbacks, Peyton Manning.

Both will be making hand signals, pointing and instructing their teammates where to go on every play. It’ll be a showdown between the two marquee players, the two central characters, of the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears, respectively.

“Brian Urlacher is a guy I will always know where he is. You just can’t help it,” Manning said of the Bears’ six-time Pro Bowl middle linebacker. “There are certain guys like that.”

Urlacher, who was hurt in 2004, when the Colts beat the Bears 41-10 behind Manning’s four touchdown passes, said the Bears will have to be ready for Manning.

“You are not going to fool Peyton Manning. He knows where to go with the football before it’s even snapped,” Urlacher said.

Urlacher has come far just to reach the point where he can defend and match wits with Manning as the Bears go for their second Super Bowl win in 21 years.

Urlacher grew up in the small New Mexico town of Lovington, population around 9,000, and worked summer jobs in oil-pipeline construction, toiling for 12-hour shifts in 100-degree heat for $7 an hour.

He went to college at New Mexico when he got few other recruiting feelers. There, his speed, strength and versatility turned him into a star.