Green: Super Bowl starts slowly but reaches spectacular
Jerry Green is one of two journalists — Jerry Izenberg of Newark (N.J.) is the other — to cover every Super Bowl.
San Francisco — A colossus or a resounding dud?
The words, once tinged with skepticism and doubt, never have perished.
They have prevailed from Vince Lombardi to Joe Namath to Don Shula to Garo Yepremian to Terry Bradshaw to Lynn Swann to Joe Montana to Jerry Rice to Lawrence Taylor to Emmitt Smith to Tom Brady to Bill Belichick to Eli Manning to Peyton Manning — and now to Cam Newton.
The words remain as pertinent now during the prelude to Super Bowl 50 as when they first appeared in The Detroit News on the Sunday morning of Super Bowl I — Jan 15, 1967.
Back then, Sports America was curious about the impact of a football game between the champions of the established National Football League and the young, upstart American Football League.
Would anybody care? Would it grow? Would it survive?
Yes. Yes. And Yes.
In the years and decades — and centuries — the Super Bowl has exploded into an event that has become a quasi-global holiday. It is no longer a mere championship football game, but a gala. It has become a week-long carnival, celebration and celebrity-clogged ego-fest — climaxing in a football game.
A colossus — for certain.
A colossus that began with a series of resounding duds.
Before Super Bowl X, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle gathered what he called “The Super 10 Club” — 42 sports journalists, pioneers, who had covered them all — for a special party.
Then he delivered a confession:
“The game doesn’t have the electricity, I agree,” he said. “The coaches go into it with conservative game styles. We’ve talked about it a lot, but it’s something that’s impossible to change as much as we’d like to.
“Certainly, we’d like to see more exciting games.”
And while some duds have remained, “more exciting games” have become the norm.
They’ve become colossus.
Lombardi boosts NFL
Lombardi stood in the entrance of the locker room at the Los Angeles Coliseum with his legendary gapped-tooth grin in January 1967. He was flipping a game football into the air and catching it.
“That an NFL football?”
Lombardi was silent.
The quality of the two leagues had been determined. Green Bay had defeated Kansas City, 35-10, in what Rozelle had billed “The First AFL-NFL World Championship Game.”
After six years of open enmity between the warring leagues, the game had been a dud.
Bart Starr shined for the Packers. Max McGee, hung over after partying all night because he did not expect to play, caught two touchdown passes.
Those were with an NFL football, used by the Packers on offense.
Willie Wood had returned a interception for another Packers touchdown.
That had been with an AFL football used by the Chiefs offense.
Back in the locker room, Lombardi kept tossing the football up and catching it.
For the second time ...
“That an NFL football?”
Prodded a third time, he finally responded.
“This is an NFL ball, and it kicks a little bit better, it throws a little bit better, and it catches a little bit better,” Lombardi responded through his teeth.
And he went on.
“I don’t think Kansas City compares with the top teams in the NFL. Dallas is a better team.
“There, dammit, you made me say it.”
A year later, the Packers would win Super Bowl II, 33-14 over Al Davis’ Oakland Raiders.
The players would carry Lombardi off the Orange Bowl field after five years of NFL championships — three before the Super Bowl and Super Bowls I and II.
A never-matched dynasty.
Namath changes everything
Don Shula’s Baltimore Colts, flourishing a 15-1 record, went to Super Bowl III with their NFL championship as heavy favorites.
Joe Namath, flourishing his New York nocturnal reputation, took the Jets to Super Bowl III with massive popularity and mystique.
After playing hooky from Rozelle’s first Super Bowl media circus and skipping the orchestrated news conferences, Namath showed up poolside at the Galt Ocean Mile Hotel in Fort Lauderdale. He charmed a half dozen hand-picked reporters with grins and comments about his life’s preferences in liquor and ladies.
“Somebody wrote that I was fined for drinking J&B Scotch,” Namath said. “Hell, I don’t even drink J&B ... unless they run out of Johnnie Walker Red.
“I was fined for missing the picture session.”
The odds had the Colts whipping the Jets by 17 points.
But two nights after Namath’s poolside chat, he received an award during a Miami banquet.
“We’re going to win Sunday,” Namath told the audience. “I guarantee you.”
On Sunday, Namath delivered.
The Jets defeated the Colts, 16-7, in another dud.
But the upshot was the AFL was able to alter Rozelle’s roadmap for the future of pro football.
He had envisioned maintaining the separate identities of the NFL and AFL after the merger was finalized in 1970. It would be like baseball, Rozelle theorized, two leagues with the Super Bowl as a football World Series.
But the AFL owners balked. They wanted to be included in the NFL brand with all its prestige.
And so, the format remains.
Just getting better
Ultimately, the single-branded NFL would produce a series of colossal Super Bowls — competitive with multiple lead changes.
Six of the last eight Super Bowls have been won by less than a touchdown.
The best ...
Super Bowl XLIII, for pure football theatrics and electricity.
It pitted the Steelers, a franchise with a dynasty in its background, against the Cardinals, a franchise with a long reputation as an NFL comedy group with origins in Chicago, seasons in St. Louis and Phoenix as its name.
The Cardinals had not won any championship since 1947.
Just before halftime, Steelers linebacker James Harrison returned an interception 100 yards.
But that prize play was upstaged by the fourth quarter.
The Cardinals overcame a 20-7 Steelers lead with a 16-point flurry, going ahead 23-20 on Larry Fitzgerald’s 64-yard dash on a pass from Kurt Warner with 2 minutes 37 seconds left.
But the Steelers had another punch. As the clock ticked toward zero, Ben Roethlisberger started the drive from the Steelers 22, and moved them forward play after scintillating play.
They reached the Cardinals 6 when Roethlisberger found Santonio Holmes, who caught the ball on his tiptoes just in-bounds in the end zone.
Steelers 27-23.
Super Bowl No. 6 — the most by any franchise.
Manning caps thriller
The Patriots were 18-0, hoping to etch themselves in pro football lore with only the second perfect season in history.
All they had to do was beat the Giants, who lost six games during the season, at Super Bowl XLII.
In the fourth quarter, Tom Brady led the Patriots downfield for a touchdown with 2:42 left for a 14-10 lead.
But ...
The Giants drive started from their 17.
On third-down and five, quarterback Eli Manning was trapped at the Giants 44. He ran right and nearly was tackled, but escaped to his left. Two Patriots defenders caught him by his jersey and tugged away, only to see Manning escape again
In desperation, Manning threw the ball, looping it downfield. Two players leaped for the ball — David Tyree and Rodney Harrison.
Tyree won the jump ball — for the Giants — catching the pass with one hand and securing the football against his helmet.
A classic play in a classic Super Bowl.
With 35 seconds left, Manning found Plaxico Burress on a 13-yard score, giving the Giants a 17-14 victory.
Fighting to the last
No Steelers, no 49ers, no Packers, no Patriots, no Giants.
Rather, Super Bowl XXXIV in January 2000 featured two ne’er-do-well vagabond franchises — the St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans.
And they produced another colossus.
The Rams led 16-0 in the third quarter before the Titans rallied to tie it with 2:12 left.
But Kurt Warner, a roustabout quarterback, and “The Greatest Show on Turf” responded. He connected on a 73-yard pass play with Isaac Bruce to give the Rams a 23-16 lead with less than two minutes to play.
Not over.
Steve McNair guided the Titans downfield, hoping to score and force the first overtime in Super Bowl history.
The Titans were at the Rams 10 with six seconds left.
McNair found Kevin Dyson down the middle of the field. After catching the ball, Dyson pushed toward the goal line. But Rams linebacker Mike Jones caught Dyson just before the 1. Dyson stretched out his arm in an attempt to reach the ball over the goal line, only to have Jones grab hold and never let go, pulling Dyson by the leg.
The clock went to 0:00 as the tug-of-war continued.
Dyson was short by less than one yard.
Names made
But there is more than a colossus game.
There are colossus figures.
■Joe Montana, with four victories for the 49ers is the best quarterback the game has seen — by a shade over Terry Bradshaw with four victories for the Steelers, and Tom Brady with four for the Patriots.
■Jerry Rice. Enough said. He’s incomparable. The best receiver the game has witnessed.
■The Steelers dynasty — with four Super Bowl victories in the 1970s and 1980s — reigns over them all. Still, you can’t mention dynasty without talking about the 49ers of the 1980s and 1990s, the Cowboys of the 1990s, and the Patriots of the 2000s.
■Pete Carroll’s decision to pass rather than use Marshawn Lynch to punch out the final yard at Super Bowl XLIX is a colossal blunder. The interception cost the Seahawks a second victory and gave the Patriots title No. 4.
■Garo Yepremian set up for field goal for Miami in Super Bowl VII. The kick was blocked. Instinct, however, took over, and Yepremian picked up the ball and attempted a pass — only to have the ball squirt from his hand into the waiting arms of Washington’s Mike Bass. Bass returned it for a touchdown in a game Miami won 14-7. It completed the only perfect season in Super Bowl history.
■The Super Bowl has become more than a game, and that’s why the greatest way to honor 50 years of the event is to honor the country in which it is played. Enter Renee Fleming, with her colossal singing of the national anthem at Super Bowl XLVIII followed by her open emotions, upstaging the athletes and coaches.
Can’t-miss
Rozelle’s assessment at our Super Bowl club gathering in 1977 included a prophetic comment:
“The Super Bowl is like the last chapter of a hair-raising mystery. No one would think of missing it.”
Couldn’t say it any better.
Jerry Green is a retired News sports writer.