Scream 2

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As I have mentioned here before, I used to work on the sports copy desk of the old Arkansas Gazette.

I made many friends during my time there. "Some are dead and some are living," in the words of John Lennon, and one of the living ones, with whom I have reconnected via Facebook, is, as I have told him, the foremost authority on tennis that I know.

I thought of him today when I was watching Maria Sharapova battle Victoria Azarenka in the women's final of the Australian Open.

It was a rematch of a tournament showdown I watched last spring, and the outcome was nearly the same. The 22–year–old Azarenka completely dominated Sharapova and appears to be well on her way to the top ranking in the world.

I wanted to get some feedback from my friend so I e–mailed him after the match, and this is what he had to say.

Of Azarenka, whose victory this morning was her first Grand Slam title, he said, "[S]he's mentally strong enough to win some slam tournaments. She plays big points well."

That was my impression as well. She continues to impress me every time I see her play — and in unexpected ways.

And, perhaps, nothing I saw in today's match made a greater impression on me than what I saw at the end — a triumphant Azarenka dropped to her knees and appeared to be stunned that she had actually won a Grand Slam event.

Never mind that she had completely dominated Sharapova, who has been regarded as a formidable force in women's tennis since winning Wimbledon nearly eight years ago.

Shortly, though, Azarenka's bewilderment turned to pure unadulterated joy as she ripped the sweatband from her brow and threw it into the cheering crowd, then threw tennis ball after tennis ball to the fans.

Her domination of Sharapova had been so complete, in fact, that none other than Chris Evert observed, at one point, that, in her day (and, I would presume, the practice predated her career), it was said that if one player won five consecutive sets (or more) against someone else, the first player owned the second.

And, based on that, Evert continued, it could fairly be said that Azarenka owns Sharapova.

Certainly, based on my observations, that is true. Azarenka beat Sharapova in straight sets in the match I watched last spring — and I thought at the time that it was their first encounter, but, as I understand it, they actually met for the first time a few years earlier. Azarenka won on that occasion, too, which means she has won at least five straight sets against Sharapova.

Of Sharapova, my friend said, "I love watching Sharapova but I don't think she's that interested in winning on the court. She can make more money posing."

Regretfully, that seems to be true.

She's still making noises about wanting to win Grand Slam tournaments, but I have to wonder, especially as Azarenka's star is ascending, if she isn't being drawn to a more lucrative modeling career.

And, frankly, who could blame her?

She is an attractive young woman, and there is always a lot of money for young women who are willing to parlay their physical attributes into bank accounts.

And, if she chooses to dedicate herself to the pursuit of easy paydays, that's fine. It might even be the wisest choice she could make.

Because Azarenka, it seems, is dedicating herself to the pursuit of Grand Slam titles. And, as Geoff MacDonald writes in the New York Times, "she is an attacking, all–court player capable of success on any surface. With her new–found equilibrium on the court, and her fearless competitive spirit, Azarenka will contend for all four Grand Slam titles."

Might be hard for Sharapova to compete.

'Ryp'ping the Bills

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Twenty years ago, I worked on a newspaper copy desk with a young woman who was a devout Washington Redskins fan.

And, when the Redskins won the Super Bowl in January 1992, she was ecstatic. In the aftermath of that game, all kinds of Redskins paraphernalia adorned her work station — and I'm sure I heard her humming "Hail to the Redskins" a couple of times. My desk was next to hers, and I'm convinced I couldn't be mistaken ...

I've never really cared for the Redskins, but even I had to grudgingly admit that it took a certain amount of courage for her to publicly acknowledge she was a Washington fan. We were working for a paper in north Texas, practically a stone's throw from Dallas, home of the Redskins' longtime rivals, the Cowboys.

Most of the people in the newsroom grew up here, and most were Cowboys fans. A Redskins fan living in or near Dallas must feel the same as a Yankees fan living in Boston — like a man without a country.

Oh, sure, these days devotees of just about any sports franchise can find groups of like–minded fans in any metropolitan area. Perhaps these groups have been around for a long time and today, thanks to the internet, it isn't too hard to locate them and the sports bars where they congregate, but if those groups existed in 1992, the task of finding them was a lot more difficult.

So my hat was off to her. We weren't buddies and spent no time together outside the office, but my guess is that she couldn't have had much of a support network based on her favorite football team. Must have been kind of an isolating experience for her.

Anyway, I left that newspaper a few months after the Redskins won the Super Bowl, and I have no idea what became of my former co–worker. But, if she is still living, I wonder how well she's been holding up. The Redskins haven't been back to the Super Bowl since.

For that matter, they haven't even played in a conference championship game since. They share the distinction of the longest period between NFC Championship game appearances with the team they beat in 1992, the Detroit Lions, and both teams will add to their record championship game droughts until one returns. At that time, other one will be the sole holder of that dubious record — unless they both return to the NFC Championship game in the same year.

If they do face each other in a rematch of the '92 title tilt, I hope it will be more competitive. Twenty years ago, the Lions committed two early turnovers and the Redskins jumped to a 10–0 lead and never looked back en route to a 41–10 hammering.

Considering what happened in the most recent NFL season, the Lions may well return to the NFC Championship game before the Redskins do. But it is doubtful that they will enjoy the kind of day the Redskins did in Super Bowl XXVI with the Buffalo Bills.

Things got started a little slowly, which was odd because the teams were the highest–scoring squads in the league. Neither team scored in the first quarter, but the Redskins hung 17 points on the Bills in the second quarter and took a 17–0 lead to the locker room.

The Redskins made it 24–0 before Buffalo ever got on the board, and they strolled to their eventual 37–24 triumph.

Clearly, the outcome was never in doubt.

It was vindication for quarterback Mark Rypien, who was named the game's MVP. When the season started, the Redskins weren't settled at the quarterback position. Rypien had been their starter for the last two seasons, but he had been erratic at times.

By the time the final gun sounded in Super Bowl XXVI, Rypien was regarded by many as the league's best quarterback.

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But my memories of that day do not focus on the game, really.

I remember attending a Super Bowl party thrown by one of my co–workers. In true Southern fashion, he prepared brisket for his guests (with the usual sides) and was generous in his servings, each of which was bathed in his homemade barbecue sauce.

I grew up in the South and, consequently, I've eaten my fair share of brisket. This may have been the best I've ever eaten. If it wasn't the best, it was darn close to it. (It might have been the sauce.)

Yep, the food was good. Very good. But after the score became 24–0 in the third quarter, there really didn't seem to be much incentive to stick around. When the score reached 31–10 near the end of the third period, I excused myself at a commercial break and went home.

What really stands out in my memory from that day is when Bill and Hillary Clinton appeared on TV to talk about the allegations that had been made about Clinton's relationship with Gennifer Flowers.

The interview was heavily promoted since Clinton was at a critical juncture. He had come in third in the Iowa caucuses, and he was trying to overcome charges of infidelity before the New Hampshire primary that was coming up in three weeks.

That was the challenge to Clinton. If he couldn't demonstrate that his campaign was on an upward trajectory, he might as well drop out.

So the Clintons came on TV after the Super Bowl and made their case. It was convincing enough for Clinton to finish second in New Hampshire, proclaim himself the "Comeback Kid" and essentially launch his successful bid for the White House by sweeping the "Super Tuesday" primaries.

Return to Titletown

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I remember, as a child, watching the Green Bay Packers play on TV.

Vince Lombardi was their coach, and I was becoming interested in football cards. My cards of Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Willie Wood, Donny Anderson and all the others were my prized possessions.

I believed the Packers were the best in football — and they were. But I believed it would always be that way — and it wasn't.

Frankly, it seemed like kind of a dirty trick to me, hooking me as a Packers fan at an early age and then reducing the Packers to NFL bottom feeders for many years.

I can't tell you how often I longed on Super Sunday — as I watched the Dolphins or Steelers or Cowboys or 49ers win it all time after time — for the Packers to just get to a Super Bowl.

I always told myself I wouldn't mind if they lost the game. I just wanted them to play in the Super Bowl, the game everyone watched.

Of course, that wasn't true. The longer I waited, the more I wanted to see the Packers win. Just getting there wouldn't be enough. Eventually, I had to acknowledge that.

But, for a long time, the possibility of the Packers being in the Super Bowl was extremely remote. The Packers usually failed even to make the playoffs. In fact, they typically did so spectacularly. They were frequently among the first to be mathematically eliminated from the playoff discussion.

A Packers Super Bowl appearance was strictly hypothetical for Green Bay fans.

That changed 20 years ago. With a few exceptions, the Packers have become fixtures in the NFL playoffs, and they have actually been to three Super Bowls in those two decades, winning two and losing the NFC Championship game on two other occasions.

It changed when Brett Favre took over as the Packers' quarterback. Not right away. Favre led Green Bay to the playoffs almost from the start, but the Packers in those days reminded me of the Tin Woodman in "The Wizard of Oz" — a little creaky at first but gradually picking up speed as the oil spread to its extremities.

The Packers of the early '90s returned to the playoffs as a wild–card team in 1993 and 1994, then won their division in 1995 and made it to the NFC title game, where they lost to Dallas.

It was 15 years ago that the Packers finally returned to the Super Bowl for the first time since Lombardi's day. Their opponent in the New Orleans Superdome was the New England Patriots.

That might seem rather unremarkable to modern football fans, who have seen both teams in multiple Super Bowls in recent years, but it certainly made Super Bowl XXXI intriguing. At the time, the Patriots had only been to one other Super Bowl more than a decade earlier and had lost in rather spectacular fashion to the Chicago Bears. And the Packers, of course, hadn't been to the Super Bowl in three decades. On the basis of that, I wasn't sure that either team had an advantage.

The Packers, however, had made an impression on the guys who determine the point spreads in athletic contests, presumably based on Green Bay's recent upward trajectory in the playoffs. New England, on the other hand, was considered something of a flash in the pan, having rarely been seen in the postseason since losing the Super Bowl to Chicago.

Anyway, the Packers went into the game favored by 14 points. As a lifelong Packers fan, I felt a certain amount of gratification, naturally, but I also felt a bit anxious as Super Sunday approached. Everyone was treating the outcome as a foregone conclusion, and the last thing I wanted the Packers to do was to treat the game as if victory was assured.

Initially, it seemed my fears were justified. At the end of the first quarter, New England led, 14–10, but the Packers scored 17 unanswered points in the second quarter and went to the locker room with a 27–14 halftime lead.

In hindsight, I needn't have worried. As it turned out, the Packers won by precisely 14 points, thanks to a jaw–dropping 99–yard third–quarter kickoff return for a touchdown by Desmond Howard, who became the first special teams player to win the Super Bowl MVP.

Howard's return certainly deserved recognition, but I always felt that Green Bay's victory on that day was more of a team effort, with many people making significant contributions.

Howard's return did, in fact, stop New England's momentum dead in its tracks. The Patriots had just scored a touchdown that brought them within six points of the Packers, and Howard's return took all the wind from their sails.

But defensive lineman Reggie White did his part as well, setting a Super Bowl record for sacks. I can vividly remember seeing White pick up Patriot offensive linemen and toss them aside as if they were rag dolls.

And Favre, who is considered by nearly everyone to be a lock for the Hall of Fame, threw for two touchdowns and ran for another. He was the first Super Bowl–winning quarterback to account for three touchdowns or more and not be named MVP.

That didn't seem to bother Favre at the time. "We etched our place in history today," he said after the game, putting the team's accomplishment over everything else.

Favre, like most observers, probably figured he would have other opportunities to be named the Super Bowl's MVP. But he didn't.

He did play in another Super Bowl — the following year — and lost it. Only once has the Super Bowl MVP come from the losing team — and it wasn't Favre.

When Favre is inducted into the Hall of Fame, there will be many achievements to be listed beneath his name — but Super Bowl MVP will not be among them. And, in some ways, that seems unfair. All the other Green Bay quarterbacks who took the Packers to the Super Bowl were named Super Bowl MVP — including Aaron Rodgers, Favre's successor.

But Favre has a special distinction that may not always get the attention it deserves. He revived a proud but moribund franchise — as did Bart Starr in the 1960s — and is responsible for the virtually dynastic status the Packers enjoy today.

It sure is a different world from the one in which I grew up.

A Tale of Two Halves

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Until this day 25 years ago, Bill Parcells had never coached a team to a Super Bowl — let alone a Super Bowl victory.

He had been in the playoffs a few times, but he had never made it to the Super Bowl — thus, he was one of several NFL coaches who were considered good but not great.

That perception changed in 1986, when he guided the New York Giants to the NFC championship and their first Super Bowl berth. The Giants went on to win their first Super Bowl, too.

But, whereas many of the previous Super Bowls were effectively over by halftime, the score at the intermission of Super Bowl XXI offered no clue as to which team would eventually win.

The Denver Broncos won the first half, 10–9. It was the narrowest halftime lead any team had ever enjoyed in a Super Bowl. The Giants scored 23 unanswered points in the second half, building a 32–10 lead before the Broncos added a 28–yard field goal by Rich Karlis.

The Giants added another TD, and the Broncos answered with another touchdown, producing the final score (39–20) that falsely implied the game had been well in hand all along.

It wasn't as lopsided as it appeared, although New York quarterback Phil Simms completed 88% of his passes (22 of 25) and won the MVP award.

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When the outcome was no longer in doubt, head coach Bill Parcells experienced the first Gatorade shower in Super Bowl history.

Over the years, the scene has become football's equivalent of "the fat lady singing" in opera. Until you see it happen, the outcome is still uncertain.

And, in the last quarter of a century, it hasn't been limited to championship games, either. I've seen coaches get Gatorade showers when their teams ended losing streaks or set new records of just about any kind.

But, on this day in 1987, it was brand new. It was the birth of a new ritual.

I saw it happen, but I've got to admit I didn't realize the significance of what I saw. We were only a year removed from the Chicago Bears' "Super Bowl Shuffle," and I guess I figured I was witnessing the latest fad — sure to be replaced a year later by whatever the next Super Bowl champion would do.

But the Gatorade shower has had staying power. Who knew?

Dawn of a Dynasty

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Super Bowl XVI was played 30 years ago today.

At least through 2009, it was the highest–rated Super Bowl of all time. I haven't seen the ratings numbers on the last two Super Bowls, but I'm pretty sure that, if either game had surpassed Super Bowl XVI in viewership ratings, someone would have mentioned it.

Last February's Super Bowl between Green Bay and Pittsburgh attracted the highest number of U.S. viewers of any Super Bowl — but that certainly was to be expected. I mean, considering the annual population growth rate, it would seem strange if the number of viewers did not increase as well.

Ratings, though, are something else. They are based on the share of viewers who watch at least part of the game at any given time while it is on.

In that category, I'm inclined to think Super Bowl XVI is still the undisputed champ — for a few reasons.

I was in college in those days, and I remember watching part of the game at a party at a classmate's home. My memory of that time is that it was unusually cold across much of the United States — it wasn't quite as cold as it had been two weeks earlier when the conference titles were decided, but it was cold enough — and many people were housebound by a blizzard. Consequently, lots of folks, even people who normally didn't watch football (or, perhaps, any sports event), may have had little choice.

If you're thinking that they would have had other TV options, you need to revisit the world of 1982. Cable TV did exist, but it was still limited in many ways, and the traditional networks still dominated. Likewise, video recorders existed, but they were still too expensive to be commonplace in most households.

The other networks virtually conceded the time slot to the Super Bowl, filling their schedules with reruns and B movies.

Let's cut to the chase here. Super Bowl XVI had a captive audience.

That was probably OK with most folks, though, because Super Bowl XVI was intriguing. It paired two teams who had never played in a Super Bowl before. That is an exceedingly rare occurrence. In fact, if you exclude the first Super Bowl, only one other prior game had been between two newcomers — and only one game since that time has been between two teams that had never been in a Super Bowl before.

Offensive–minded viewers probably figured Cincinnati would win. The Bengals' quarterback, Ken Anderson, was the league's MVP, engineering two impressive wins over the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose 1970s dynasty was showing unmistakable signs of aging but who still commanded a great deal of respect.

Among quarterbacks, Anderson's top rival in the AFC that season was San Diego's Dan Fouts — and Anderson beat him twice, once during the regular season and once on a frigid January afternoon to win the AFC title.

Statistically, Anderson's leading rival in the NFC probably was Minnesota's Tommy Kramer — who, like Fouts, completed more passes for more yards than Anderson did. But Kramer's Vikings failed to make the playoffs.

Next in line from the NFC was the man Anderson would face in the Super Bowl, San Francisco's Joe Montana. He had the highest passer rating in the conference, but most of his numbers that year weren't too gaudy — except for his team's won–lost record, which went up from 6–10 in 1980 to 13–3 in 1981.

Defensive–minded fans may have figured San Francisco would win. The 49ers were second in the NFC in team defense, third against the pass and had beaten the Bengals in the 14th week of the season, holding them to only a field goal.

As it turned out, San Francisco did win the Super Sunday rematch, but, for most of that afternoon, its defense did not shine.

People often forget that Super Bowl XVI was the first in which the team that got the most yards and scored the most touchdowns did not win the game.

The Bengals, however, turned the ball over five times, and the 49ers' defense did rise, memorably, to the occasion with a thrilling goal–line stand in the second half. It didn't seal the deal — Cincinnati scored two touchdowns in the final quarter, and San Francisco needed two Ray Wersching field goals to claim a 26–21 win — but it spoke volumes about the 49ers' team personality and desire to win.

And it turned out to be the dawn of a dynasty.

That desire to win carried the 49ers through the rest of the decade and into the next one. They added four more Super Bowl championships to their team resume in the next 13 years.

Talk about striking gold.

JoePa's Final Chapter

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After the child sex scandal that engulfed Penn State only a few months ago, there simply was no way that Joe Paterno's obituary — when the time for it came — would not mention Jerry Sandusky.

In fact, I remember saying that very thing to some people right after Paterno was fired. I just didn't realize Paterno's obituary would be written so soon.

But, like Richard Nixon, who lived nearly 20 years after he resigned the presidency but whose obituary still mentioned Watergate in the first paragraph, it was inevitable that, at the time of his passing, Paterno would be remembered, at least in part, for the scandal that ended his coaching career.

• Paterno was a "a legend, lion and tainted leader," wrote Rana Cash for The Sporting News.


• The first paragraph of ESPN's obituary observed that Paterno "won more games than anyone in major college football but was fired amid a child sex abuse scandal that scarred his reputation for winning with integrity."


• Paterno was an "Ivy League–educated coach who transformed sleepy Penn State University into a national football power ... only to see his career end abruptly and his legacy tarnished," wrote Chris Dufresne in the Los Angeles Times.


• The New York Times has long had the reputation for writing the best and most thorough obituaries in the print business, but Richard Goldstein, nevertheless, could not avoid mentioning the scandal in his summation of Paterno's life.
  
  Paterno, he wrote, was "a symbol of integrity in collegiate athletics only to be fired ... amid a child sexual–abuse scandal."

Try as they might, no obituary — at least, none that I have seen today — has been able to avoid mentioning the scandal.

And some really have tried.

John Canzano, writing in The Oregonian last night when rumors were swirling that Paterno was dead, spoke of the "sad irony" that JoePa's life had become.

"[N]o discussion about Paterno will ever be complete without noting that Penn State's Board of Trustees fired him Nov. 9 in the aftermath of the child sex abuse charges against former assistant and close Paterno friend Jerry Sandusky," Canzano wrote — anticipating by a matter of hours the challenge facing those who would write Paterno's obituary.

Perhaps Jack McCallum of Sports Illustrated did the best job of balancing the good and the bad.

"For so long," McCallum wrote, "Joe Paterno seemed indestructible, more icon than man ... But when the end came, it came with such breathtaking suddenness that even non–believers must pause ... to wonder if it wasn't part of some cosmic script."

In the end, I suppose, we are left with our contradictory thoughts and feelings about this man who did so much good but whose memory will be forever linked to so much bad.

Death of a Skier

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I don't know if most Americans have ever heard of Canadian skier Sarah Burke.

Until recently, I must admit, I knew little about her myself. But, apparently, she was well known among extreme sports enthusiasts. And Burke' death dramatically alters expectations for the next Winter Olympics.

Burke, who died yesterday at the age of 29, was a freestyler who successfully lobbied to have her sport included in the Winter Olympics and was widely expected to win a medal in the sport when it makes its debut in the 2014 Winter Games in Russia. She died from injuries suffered 10 days ago in a training accident in Utah.

The death of one so young is always a tragedy, and the circumstances of Burke's death make it even more tragic. She was practicing the sport to which she had committed everything. Her commitment to it appears to have been even more binding than the marriage vows she took less than two years ago.

As I have observed, she was the driving force behind the inclusion of freeskiing in the Winter Olympics — and the ironic (and, apparently, inevitable) outcome of her death may well be a renewed and reinvigorated debate over the risks of her sport.

That may or may not be an overreaction. Burke's death is a tragedy, but from what I know of her I think she would agree that the sport has gone to great lengths to minimize the risks.

And the accident that caused her death appears to be more of a fluke than anything else. Observers say the accident occurred not on a complicated maneuver but on a routine jump that Burke had performed hundreds, if not thousands, of times before without incident.

Perhaps, as some have suggested, she landed at just the right angle to cause her fatal accident, that the odds against such a thing happening again are astronomical.

Accidents and injuries are "part of the game," Burke said. "Everybody gets hurt."

Canadian Freestyle Ski Association chief executive Peter Judge said, "[Burke] will be greatly missed by all of us at the CFSA and the entire ski community."

Burke may not have been a mainstream household name, but my guess is that the Olympic debut of the sport to which she dedicated herself will be among the most emotional of the next Winter Games.

And I predict that, in death, Burke will inspire far more people than she ever did in life.

It would be a tragedy compounding another to turn the situation into something it isn't, whatever the motivation.

The Greatest Is 70

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When I was growing up, Muhammad Ali — who was born in Louisville, Ky., 70 years ago today — was an inspiring figure.

In the eyes of many, he was a braggart, a smart aleck, the embodiment of the antiwar movement — even though, to my knowledge, he never participated in an antiwar march or protest after being stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing military induction during the Vietnam War.

It is appropriate, I suppose, that this milestone birthday comes one day after the national observance of Martin Luther King's birthday. Ali's stand, it was said, persuaded King, who had been hesitant to speak out against the war, to reverse his policy.

He took his share of scorn from those who supported the war, though, and, as I wrote last year on the 40th anniversary of Ali's first fight with Joe Frazier, the war was the reason most of those people rooted against Ali when he was in the ring.

They said he was arrogant, and they called him names like "the Louisville Lip" — an anti–Ali spin on his own declaration that he was "the Greatest" — but I always felt it was mostly a case of transference. The war was the real reason for their opposition.

Maybe they really did dislike Ali — he could be abrasive at times — but the war was their excuse.

I don't know if Ali was the greatest of all time, as he claimed. Perhaps the very suggestion was offensive to those who remembered Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano.

But I felt then — and I still feel today — that he was the best in my lifetime. Admittedly, some of that may have been due to my youth and susceptibility. But not everyone who saw him fight was as young as I was — and even many of those who disagreed with his politics acknowledged, however grudgingly, how talented he was.

His talent was never an issue for me. When Ali said he was "the Greatest," I never thought he was boasting. I thought he was stating a fact.

And today he is 70. And, strangely, I am the one who feels older.

Happy birthday, champ.

Winning the Big One ... Finally

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As they began the 1971 season, the Dallas Cowboys had been known as the team that couldn't win it all for a long time.

Well, it was a long time by Texas standards.

The Cowboys had actually been in existence for a little more than a decade when they finally won the conference title in January 1971 and went on to play in their first Super Bowl ever. As expansion teams go, that's a pretty rapid ascension, but they lost that Super Bowl to the Baltimore Colts on a last–second field goal — and, once again, fell short of Texas–sized expectations.

That did not happen on this date in 1972.

I don't know how — or, for that matter, precisely when — it started, but sometime in the late 1960s the Dallas defense acquired the nickname "Doomsday."

The Cowboys of those days always seemed to have talented players on offense, but the defense was the team's foundation.

And it was frequently the failure of the offense that kept the team from advancing to the next level.

In January 1972, though, Roger Staubach had been the starting quarterback most of the year and enjoyed what may have been his best season as a pro. With Staubach in charge on the field, the offense finally matched the defense, and the rest of the league was powerless to do anything about it.

Certainly, Miami appeared powerless on this day 40 years ago.

Most Super Bowl teams have scored at least one touchdown, but, on that day, Miami did not. Even the few teams that failed to score a touchdown got more points than the Dolphins did — and, unless a future Super Bowl participant is held to a safety or shut out completely, Miami's standard for scoring futility is going to remain on the record books.

Doomsday held Miami to a single Garo Yepremian field goal in the first half, essentially smothering the Dolphins' key offensive weapons — receiver Paul Warfield and running backs Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick.

When the Cowboys had the ball, Staubach completed nearly two–thirds of his passes, two of which went for touchdowns as Dallas prevailed, 24–3. Staubach was named the game's MVP and was jubilant, recalling on the 25th anniversary of that triumph that "I don't think I ever felt any better as an athlete than ... I felt after that game."

And why shouldn't he? Staubach and his teammates shook a monkey the size of King Kong from their backs that day.

The First Super Bowl

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Super Bowl Sunday is firmly established as perhaps the biggest social event of any year.

It's so well established, in fact, that it is almost certainly difficult for most people to imagine a time when there was no Super Bowl. But there was.

The first Super Bowl was played 45 years ago today. It wasn't called the Super Bowl at the time. It was generally known as the AFL–NFL World Championship Game; some media reports called it the Supergame. Later on, Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt came up with the name it is known by today — Super Bowl.

But that's another story.

What it was, actually, was the Establishment vs. the Upstarts. The Establishment was the NFL, appropriately represented by the Green Bay Packers — who, incidentally, will be hosting the New York Giants in the playoffs later today. The Upstarts, the AFL teams, had only existed for a few years, but, like a presidential challenger who is given an opportunity to stand on a level playing field as the president's equal in a debate, they were eager to make the most of it.

Unfortunately for the AFL's representatives, the Chiefs, things never really went their way. That didn't surprise most people. The Packers came into the game as 14–point favorites and exceeded expectations with a 25–point margin of victory.

I guess it goes without saying that a lot of things have changed in 45 years. That's probably a classic understatement applicable to any time, any year in recorded history, and it's certainly true of the Super Bowl.

The game that was played 45 years ago today really bore little resemblance to the spectacle that the Super Bowl has become. The difference in the name is probably the least of the changes.

In fact, if a football fan could be magically transported back to January 1967, that fan would be in for quite a case of culture shock.

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Oh, to be sure, it would look like the same game in many ways — same field dimensions, same rules (mostly), same uniforms (although their designs as well as their construction certainly have changed).

The first thing a modern fan probably would notice would be an absence of hype surrounding that first Super Bowl. It was really more of a curiosity. I mean, everyone just knew that the NFL's team would beat the AFL's team. The superiority of the NFL was obvious. Nearly all of the best college football players went on to play for NFL teams.

At that time, I think the only truly high–profile college player who had signed with an AFL team was Joe Namath — and Namath did go on to win an early Super Bowl, legitimizing the league in the eyes of many. But that was still in the future on this day in 1967.

Super Bowl I was unique in other ways.

• It is the only Super Bowl to be broadcast on two TV networks, NBC and CBS. NBC had the rights to AFL games; CBS had the rights to NFL games.
  
  Subsequent Super Bowl broadcast rights have been granted to only one network each year, although the network has varied depending upon the arrangement. Forty–five years ago, it was decided that the best solution was to permit both networks to carry the game.


• Very little video footage from that first Super Bowl survives to this day, even though two networks carried it.
  
  There was a broadcasting procedure at the time called wiping, in which videotape of a previous program was taped over. Usually — but not always — this was done with tapes of programs that weren't expected to have much value in the future.
  
  It is, perhaps, indicative of just how low expectations for the game were that both networks chose to recycle their videotapes instead of preserving them.


• Considering how difficult it is to acquire tickets to a Super Bowl today, it certainly would surprise some modern fans to know that the very first Super Bowl was not a sellout.
  
  It was still possible on game day to walk up to the Los Angeles Coliseum, where the game was played, and pay $12 for admission to the game. Those were the days, huh?

Confessions of a Packer Fan

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I try not to mention it too often on this blog, but I am a Green Bay Packers fan.

I have been a Cheesehead since I was a child — when I lived in central Arkansas, the only TV my family had was a rather small black–and–white number that my grandparents gave us and a guy named Lombardi was on the Green Bay sideline.

Through most of my life, a statement like "I am a Green Bay Packers fan" was kind of like one of those confessions people make at 12–step meetings. But not really. I mean, such meetings usually are about some kind of addiction over which a person is powerless, like an addiction to alcohol or tobacco. Other times, they are about an addiction to some other kind of destructive behavior, like kleptomania.

In the early years of my life, being a Packer fan was rarely about gratification — although I guess a case could be made for the cumulative destructive impact on one's psyche and self–esteem from all those losing seasons.

("My name is David, and I'm a Packerholic ...")

For awhile, I wore it as a badge of honor. When I was about 12 or 13, I had a Packers jacket — designed like those letterman jackets that jocks have been wearing since the dawn of time — that I wore almost defiantly everywhere I went.

It was a small club. I had a few friends who liked the Packers, too, and most of my friends wore similar NFL jackets, but the logos on their jackets were for the winners. I tended to see most of my peers as either fair–weather fans who followed whichever team was winning (they were the ones who liked Don Shula's Dolphins or Chuck Noll's Steelers) or were susceptible to regional influences (mostly Cowboys fans).

I considered myself special because my allegiance was not based on either factor.

Green Bay must be several hundred miles from my hometown, and the Packers rarely had winning seasons when I was growing up. It's hard to make a convincing case that someone jumped on a team's bandwagon when the team in question routinely loses at least two–thirds of its games — unless the fan is a glutton for punishment, which I am not.

(At least, I don't think I am.)

But, as I got older, I started to think that being a Packer fan was something shameful so I stopped sharing it with new acquaintances, and I became selective about the old friends with whom I would discuss it. In that sense, perhaps I was sort of like an alcoholic, indulging in my addiction within a select circle of friends — or (shudder!) when I was by myself.

Most of the time, it was easier just to not say anything when I was with a group of Cowboys fans or fans of the latest powerhouse.

Drinking alone would have been far more satisfying than sitting through the Packers' often lopsided losses. Fortunately, I guess, I rarely saw a Packers game on TV in those days. They weren't winning so there was little interest in them outside their home region.

Occasionally, I might get to see them on a Sunday (if they were playing someone in my region, like the Cowboys or the Chiefs or the Cardinals when they were still in St. Louis) or in a Monday night game. But, most of the time, I was spared the pain of watching them being subjected to a severe beating — which, inevitably, they were.

In spite of it all, I remained loyal to the Packers — through all those 2–, 3– and 4–win seasons. I assured myself that things would turn around eventually. I just didn't know if I would live to see it.

But I did.

I guess all those losing seasons really conditioned me because, even after the Packers turned things around, I still kept expecting them to revert to their old ways. In my formative years — after Lombardi left Green Bay — success was fleeting. Winning seasons didn't come in bunches.

I must admit, I was often envious of the people I knew whose favorite teams were always in the playoffs. For me, if my favorite team was in the playoffs, that alone was cause for celebration. Who knew when it might happen again?

Because of that mindset, it's kind of like an out–of–body experience — or maybe an alternate reality experience — to read Richard Rothschild's suggestion in Sports Illustrated that today's Packers might be better than Lombardi's teams of the 1960s.

Well, actually, Rothschild didn't suggest it — members of the 1961 team that won the first of five NFL championships in seven years suggested it — but Rothschild made a good statistical case supporting it.

God help me, I think I'm starting to believe it.

In my experience, things started to turn around in the 1990s, when Brett Favre came to Green Bay and started leading the Packers to the playoffs on a regular basis. Before he left Green Bay, Favre set all kinds of records and took the Packers to two consecutive Super Bowls, matching Bart Starr's achievement in my childhood, but he couldn't win both.

But even with all his success, even with three consecutive MVPs in the 1990s, Favre didn't take the Packers to the dizzying heights that were reached in the 1960s. Starr is still the only quarterback to lead the Packers to two straight Super Bowl victories.

But Aaron Rodgers, Favre's successor, has the opportunity to match Starr in that category if he wins this year's Super Bowl, and the Packers appear to be talented enough to turn this decade into a repeat of the decade of Starr and Lombardi.

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But who should be standing in their way this weekend but the New York Giants ... the very team that came to Lambeau Field four years ago and beat Favre in his final game in a Packer uniform, the NFC Championship game that most observers thought would propel him to his third Super Bowl.

That would have been a first for a Packer signal caller. Instead, it was the end of an era, and I am sure I wasn't the only Packer fan who worried that the team might slip back into mediocrity.

The Packers did slump to that all–too–familiar sub–.500 territory in Rodgers' first season as Green Bay's starting quarterback, but he had them back in the playoffs the next year. And he won the Super Bowl the year after that.

The NFC Championship is not on the line this weekend. It won't be the first time these teams have played each other since that game in January 2008. They've met twice, both times in Green Bay, and the Packers have won both.

But those were regular–season games. There's an appealing symmetry to the idea that Rodgers — who launched a 19–game winning streak with a lopsided victory over the Giants in December 2010 — can avenge that playoff loss Sunday.

Wanna talk symmetry? The Giants were the first team the Packers of the 1960s beat in an NFL championship game back in December 1961. On Sunday afternoon, they will be back at Lambeau Field.

In spite of myself, I'm starting to think pro football history might be about to repeat itself.

The Value of a Single Catch

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I have often wondered how different professional football would have been if the San Francisco 49ers had not won the NFC championship on this day 30 years ago.

I've been following sports since I was a child, and if there is one thing I have learned, it is that there really is such a thing as destiny — at least when it comes to sports teams.

Some franchises never overcome their initial reputations as losers, and some allow those reputations to continue to hinder their progress long after they have risen above those reputations.

Sometimes franchises that have been struggling surge to the top from nowhere, get close to grabbing the brass ring but come up short and then fall back into relative obscurity — after which you might hear from them again in another 10 or 15 years.

But sometimes those franchises that surge to the top break on through to the other side and win it all — and a dynasty is born.

I believe that's what happened with the San Francisco 49ers 30 years ago today.

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The 49ers weren't strangers to the playoffs, but they hadn't been participants in the postseason for nearly a decade.

Shoot, it had been five years since they had had a winning season.

In their memorable showdown with the Dallas Cowboys on that Sunday afternoon, the 49ers introduced the West Coast Offense to football fans, many of whom were seeing it for the first time. If it had failed, Joe Montana might never have enjoyed the career that he did — and the West Coast Offense might not have risen to the prominence it did.

At least, at that time.

It's safe to assume that, if Dallas had won the game, something else would have been the popular offense — and some other quarterback would have emerged as the NFL's top signal–caller — of the 1980s.

Failure on this day would have meant that the Cowboys would return to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in seven years. Success for the 49ers, however, brought the energy and excitement of a new team in the Super Bowl — and that is what the 49ers were in January 1982, first–timers in the Super Bowl (as were their opponents, the Cincinnati Bengals).

But it might never have happened if Montana hadn't completed a six–yard pass to Dwight Clark in the end zone, an iconic moment that was captured in photographs that appeared in newspapers across the country the next day.

It isn't hard for me to imagine Bill Walsh and his coaching staff abandoning the West Coast Offense if it failed to produce a conference championship on this day in 1982.

Walsh was kind of like football's version of Franklin D. Roosevelt. From the moment he became the 49ers' coach, his mission was to revive a foundering franchise, just as it was Roosevelt's mission to revive the nation. FDR's presidency in the 1930s was very experimental; if something didn't have the desired effect, it would be scrapped and something else would replace it.

If the 49ers had failed to win the NFC championship on this day 30 years ago, Walsh and his staff certainly would have re–evaluated their roster — and they might well have concluded that their personnel was better suited for a different strategy.

That doesn't mean that the West Coast Offense would have died three decades ago today, never to be seen on an NFL field again.

No, I'm sure someone would have resurrected it — and probably thrived with it — if it had gone unused for years following a 49ers defeat 30 years ago today because defensive coordinators would have spent little, if any, time planning for it.

But Montana completed that pass to Clark — and the 49ers went on to win four of the next nine Super Bowls.

And the West Coast Offense set the pace in professional football for the next two decades.

A Really Cold War

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On this day in 1982, there were lots of stories vying for the attention of the editors of metro newspapers.

Jan. 10, 1982, was a Sunday. And, historically, Sundays are pretty slow news days.

There are exceptions to that rule, of course. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on a Sunday. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon on a Sunday. As far as news is concerned, Sunday is just another day in the week.

And that Sunday 30 years ago was a spectacular exception to the rule.

Sports desks were busy — as they had known they would be — with the AFC and NFC championship games that were to be played that day. I worked on sports desks for several years, and I can easily imagine the anticipation in newsrooms across the country.

But the news desks were busy with a developing story that would seize the nation's attention — a fierce cold front that set records in many cities across the country. Hundreds of those records would be shattered within the week by an even more brutal cold front, leaving in its wake record low temperatures that still stand today.

In pro football lore, the 1967 NFL Championship game played in Green Bay has long been remembered as the "Ice Bowl" — and deservedly so. The air temperature was –15°. The wind chill was –48°. No other postseason game has ever been played in conditions as cold as that.

But the game played in Cincinnati three decades ago today came close. The air temperature that day was –9°, and the wind chill was –37°.

I wasn't in Cincinnati that day. I was in Fayetteville, Ark., where I was in college at the time. Fayetteville was well acquainted with cold winters. It always had snow during the winter months. The snow didn't always remain for days or weeks, but sometimes one snowfall would still be on the ground when the next one came along.

That winter, snowfall after snowfall fell and stayed for weeks because it was so cold — and on that day, it might have approached 30° briefly at some point, but my memory is that the temperature was mostly in the teens if not single digits. And it was windy — not fiercely so but windy enough to make it feel colder than it actually was.

I spent nearly all that day indoors next to the fireplace watching the football games — with a mug of hot chocolate in one hand and a blanket over my feet.

Of the second game that was played that day — the now–legendary Dallas–San Francisco game — I will have more to say in my next post later today. It was a very exciting game with plenty of big plays and momentum shifts.

The Cincinnati–San Diego game wasn't really that way. Maybe it was the extreme cold. Mind you, it was cool in San Francisco that afternoon, cooler than it normally is, I suppose. But it was cold in Cincinnati, and that made it memorable.

If it had come down to the final seconds, the way it did in Green Bay 15 years earlier, I guess that would be what people remember about that game.

But it wasn't close. The Bengals had things under control early. They forced four turnovers and won by 20 points.

Cincinnati's coach that day was Forrest Gregg, the right tackle for Green Bay in the "Ice Bowl," but, reportedly, he could not recall a game that was played in colder conditions than the one played in Cincinnati 30 years ago today.

Perhaps moving around on the field helped him feel warmer in Green Bay.

I remember feeling sorry for the fans I saw shivering in the stands in Cincinnati. I feel the same way whenever I see footage from the "Ice Bowl." I suppose it was a good thing — in both instances — that the home team won. That way, most of the fans had plenty to cheer for and jump up and down about (thus generating a little warmth).

The fans in Cincinnati didn't have a lot to be happy about two weeks later when their Bengals lost the Super Bowl.

But, because it was so cold 30 years ago today — coldest ever in the AFL/AFC — the game with the Chargers achieved a memorable status all its own.

Seizing the Moment

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The Rose Bowl in Pasadena has been the scene of many memorable college football games over the years, but no professional football games were played there until this date 35 years ago.

Only five professional football games have been played in the Rose Bowl — and all were Super Bowls. The NFL has a policy against holding a Super Bowl in a city that does not have an NFL franchise, but that does not mean Super Bowls can only be played in stadiums that are the full–time homes of active teams.

The Rams and, for a time, the Raiders played in other stadiums when they were based in Los Angeles, but, by the mid–1990s, the Raiders had returned to Oakland and the Rams had moved to St. Louis.

Thus, Los Angeles no longer has an NFL franchise — which is why no Super Bowls have been played there since 1993 — but it was the most popular Super Bowl destination for more than 15 years, starting with the game that was played on this day in 1977.

That was one of the things that made Super Bowl XI noteworthy before it was played — the fact that it was being played in the Rose Bowl where so many great college football games had been played in the past, but, up to that time, no professional games had been played there.

Another thing that made it noteworthy was the knowledge that championship futility was going to end for one of the two entrants. The Oakland Raiders and the Minnesota Vikings had both been to the Super Bowl before and come away empty handed. They had made the playoffs on other occasions as well and missed the Super Bowl entirely.

When I was a child, the Dallas Cowboys were known as the team that couldn't win the Big One. But the Cowboys shook that monkey from their backs, winning it all in January 1972 and returning as the Super Bowl's first wild–card entry a year before the Raiders and Vikings met on this day.

By the mid–1970s, a handful of NFL squads had emerged as the latest teams that couldn't win the Big One. The Raiders and Vikings were clearly in that group when the 1976 season began, and they surged to their division titles as if they were men on missions.

They both won rematches of early regular–season contests in their respective league championship games, advancing to meet in the Super Bowl in Pasadena, and each was impressive in its own way.

The Vikings overwhelmed the Rams, who fought to a 10–10 tie with Minnesota in the second week of the season, and the Raiders beat the two–time defending Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers, 35–20. The Raiders beat the Steelers by a field goal in the season opener.

The first quarter was a testament to the desire on both sides as neither team managed to score.

Defense played a prominent role in that game. I guess you wouldn't think that if all you knew about the game was the final score (Oakland 32, Minnesota 14), but it is really true.

Minnesota entered the game with the NFL's second–best defense even though many Viking starters were thought to be nearing the ends of their careers (as, in fact, many were), but if either defense was in the spotlight prior to the game, it was Oakland's. The Raiders were ranked 12th in defense, but they had often been criticized in the mid–1970s for being too aggressive.

Undoubtedly, the Raiders' defensive backs were a hard–hitting bunch, especially George Atkinson. After breaking Russ Francis' nose in the first round of the AFC playoffs and then giving Lynn Swann a concussion in the AFC championship game, Atkinson was truly the center of attention.

But it was teammate Jack Tatum — also known as "The Assassin" — who delivered what is rightly regarded as the hardest blow in Super Bowl XI, if not in the history of the Super Bowl.

Minnesota quarterback Fran Tarkenton found Offensive Player of the Year Sammy White on a crossing pattern. The pass didn't hit him in the numbers, but it required no special effort to catch, either, and White caught it in stride. Tatum seemed to come from nowhere and knocked off White's helmet with a teeth–rattling hit. Incredibly, White held on to the ball.

Such concentration should have been rewarded, but, of the Vikings' four (so far) Super Bowl losses, the margin in the game they lost 35 years ago today was the widest.

White's heroic effort was for naught, and none of his successors in purple have had the opportunity to make up for it.

In the 35 years since that day, the Raiders have been back to the Super Bowl on several occasions. The Vikings have never returned.

Sometimes I wonder if they ever will.