Todd Lyght is one of five current Rams who played for the team in Los Angeles.

"Media Day," the Rams cornerback said, smiling. "Everybody said it would be a blitz. We welcome the opportunity to address the media. I welcome the opportunity. I'm looking forward to the experience of the whole week."

Perhaps more than any other player, even the Titans' venerable 17-year veteran Bruce Matthews, Lyght is happy to be here at Super Bowl XXXIV. Ecstatic is a better word. For while Matthews has been voted to 12 consecutive Pro Bowls and played in 13 postseason games, Lyght had never gone to either the Pro Bowl or the playoffs in his nine seasons.

He was 0-for-ever, but this season he gets both.

"We have an opportunity to win the Super Bowl," Lyght said. "I laid down in bed (Sunday) and replayed the game a couple of times ... and we still won. It's a beautiful thing, such a beautiful thing."

Lyght arrived after the Rams' renaissance in the '80s, a victim of horrific timing. John Robinson had coached the Rams into the playoffs in six of seven seasons, but 1991 -- a 3-13 disaster -- was his final year at the helm. That was also the year Lyght was the team's first-round pick, the No. 5 overall choice out of Notre Dame. In Lyght's eight seasons, the Rams were uniformly awful:

Taken together, 3-13, 6-10, 5-11, 4-12, 7-9, 6-10, 5-11, 4-12 add up to 40-88, which is really quite amazing if it wasn't so damn sad.

Do you think Lyght hasn't thought about this? He offers the precise 40-88 statistic with little prompting. He grimaces, almost unconsciously, as he says it. Ultimately, coaches Chuck Knox, Rich Brooks and, finally, Dick Vermeil couldn't turn it around.

The 4-12 record of 1998 left Lyght something beyond frustrated. The best player on the worst team skipped the last team meeting, and sitting in his Tustin, Calif., home during the offseason wondered if the Rams were committed to winning.

"It's very difficult," Lyght said. "At times I thought that it was a no-win situation. We'd prepare every season very hard, and you come out and, even though I was successful as an individual, it's the ultimate team game. Individual success doesn't mean a whole lot unless you get it done as a team. And so I got down on myself, I got down on the organization over the years, but that's only human."

He was not, quite frankly, convinced when he arrived at training camp. And then, in a flash, all the hard work and practice of the previous two seasons seemed to make sense. The Rams had discovered how to win.

Lyght had his usual terrific season. He intercepted six passes; only five players in the league managed seven. He was in on 65 tackles. He was deadly in one-on-one coverage, which allowed the Rams' safeties to concentrate on the run. Lyght, weirdly enough, is one of the chief reasons the Rams were ranked No. 1 against the run.

The difference this season has been the players around him.

Linebacker Todd Collins signed as a free agent from the Patriots. Defensive end Kevin Carter led the NFL with 17 sacks. The offense, anchored by new contributors Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk, went ballistic.

The Rams won 13 games during the regular season, trashing division rivals in San Francisco and Atlanta.

"When we won the NFC West title, that was a tremendous feeling," Lyght said. "To come so far in the three-year period under coach Vermeil ... we weren't that good of a football team in his first two years. To finally reach the point where we were the NFC West champs was great because we came from the cellar. We really did."

"I don't think anyone could have seen this coming. Someone said we had been touched by a magic wand. Maybe they are right. To be on the receiving end of a lot of lumps. You know, I've taken my share of lumps in this league over the course of nine seasons. It's been a very difficult road for me, but everything turned around for me in one year. And that was a true blessing."

This Super Bowl thing is all so new to Lyght. He apologized to reporters three times Tuesday for dashing from his podium in the Georgia Dome so he could participate in a team photo with Vermeil.

The Pro Bowl? Let's just say the Rams have had to pay for their Hawaiian vacations in recent years. Before Isaac Bruce was voted to the NFL's season-ending all-star game in 1996, Jerome "The Bus" Bettis and Sean Gilbert were the only Rams to go during Lyght's tenure. Obviously, they are long gone.

I was in St. Louis the chilly December day the Pro Bowl picks were announced. I was standing in a corridor outside the Rams' draft room when a tremendous roar came through the wall. Vermeil had gathered the players in the team's theater for the news and they were beside themselves.

Lyght came into the interview room a little later, and he was clearly moved. For the first time in nine seasons, he was going to Hawaii on the NFL's nickel.

"It's been a long time," he said softly. "You wonder why things happen the way they do. I'm happy we've come this far. I'm here to tell you it was worth the trip."