He chants. He mumbles. He talks to himself. He rocks, violently, back and forth in his seat. His arms flail. His voice cracks. His eyes dart. He cusses out teammates. He prays.

And this is just his pre-flight ritual.

Trust me, nobody in the NFL wanted home-field advantage more than the Saints' scrappy wideout Joe Horn. Because like most of us around the holidays, Horn hates to fly. "I fear nothing in football," Horn told me recently. "But when it comes to flying, I am the biggest wussy in the air."

So if the Saints make the Super Bowl (and after all the craziness that has gone on this season, why not?), Horn swears he's going to drive to Tampa. His teammates might just gas up the car for him, because every time they stand up during a team charter flight, Horn spews more trash at 'em than Li'l Kim. "You don't stand up during turbulence," he protests. "That's just disrespecting Mother Nature."

Of course, Horn is not the first athlete with transportation trouble. Ty Law's Ecstasy snafu? He was driving home from a game because of a teammate's fear of flying. Former Panther running back Fred Lane once showed up late for a team flight in Charlotte, saw the plane taxiing down the runway, jumped a fence, and tried to run that sucker down. Watching from inside the plane, his teammates chanted: Fred-dy! Fred-dy!

But after what he's been through to get to the league, you'd think Horn would fear nothing. Only a few seasons ago, he was on the third shift at a sofa factory, working out on his high school football field in the inky darkness, hoping for a break. Horn eventually hooked on with the Chiefs, and he signed with the Saints during the off-season. This year he's been one of the NFL's best pass catchers while keeping the Saints offense marching after Ricky and Jeff Blake went down.

And most of those catches have come across the middle of the field. Odd, isn't it? That one of the few guys in the NFL who has no fear flying across the middle -- where the threat of lurking linebackers and back boards is very real -- is actually much more frightened by the friendly skies? "I would rather have a guy like Romanowski set his sights on me and, BOOM, crush me, than see smoke coming out of the cockpit and hear the pilot yelling 'We're having mechanical problems, brace yourself for a disastrous landing.' That's some scary s---, man. Compared to that, football ain't nothing."

What I told Horn was, if he thinks flying in a cushy chartered plane is scary, he should try schlepping around like the rest of us poor slobs. Hell, I hate to fly, too. But I get hysterical on airplanes because the service has declined to the point where I may give my seat to my dog and start shipping myself in his crate.

Just recently on my way to Nashville I had somehow managed to fall asleep in my luxurious coach chair (which is roughly the size of a child's car seat) when a flight attendant beaned me in the face with a bag of peanuts. (Coincidentally, the Texas Rangers signed her to a $145 million deal once we landed.) Later that same trip, I dunked my coat into my neighbor's frozen yogurt. But the saddest part was that licking the confection off my jacket actually provided more calories than the in-flight meal. My brother Greg's flight home for the holidays was only, oh, 16 HOURS LATE. Why is it that the guy seated next to me always seems to have incurable, chronic, flatulence? (Or is that just what the recirculated air smells like?) And I swear to all that is holy: the next time someone reclines their seat into my lap, I am going to fasten my seatbelt around their neck.

(If you have a second, Flem Filers, hit me with your worst travel traumas. I'd love to read 'em. And I'll post the best air travel WHYLOs. We'll call them SKYLOs.)

Horn says we should all start tipping pilots upon our safe arrival. A hundred bucks for each landing, he says. "Come on, let's start this, we'll change everything," he says.

$100? My sanity is worth at least $105.

David Fleming, a senior writer for The Magazine, shares his off-center perspective each week on ESPNMAG.com. E-mail flemfile@aol.com.