Elway's Swan Song

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When the Broncos enter New York's MetLife Stadium for the Super Bowl two days from now, it will be the franchise's seventh appearance in the big game.

For awhile, the Broncos' record for Super Bowl futility was matched only by the Minnesota Vikings. For nearly eight years, both stood at 0–4. In the mid–1990s, the Bills joined them.

But then the Broncos broke the deadlock with a dramatic, last–minute triumph in Super Bowl XXXII, and then Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway led the Broncos to a second consecutive championship 15 years ago today with a more comfortable 34–19 victory over the Atlanta Falcons.

Consequently, the Broncos will be going into Sunday's game with a two–game Super Bowl winning streak.

Elway, now the executive vice president of football operations for the Broncos, was named the game's Most Valuable Player after completing 18 of 29 passes for 336 yards and a touchdown, but I always thought the MVP should have been shared by the Denver defense. In the first half, the Denver defenders stuffed Atlanta when the Falcons went for it on fourth–and–one, then forced the Falcons to attempt a field goal from 26 yards out (the Falcons missed the attempt).

It was after that missed field goal that Elway hit Rod Smith for an 80–yard touchdown strike.

In the second half, Denver intercepted three Atlanta passes, snuffing out drives that appeared to be headed for scores of some kind. If they had resulted in scores, the Falcons would have at least beaten the spread if not the Broncos.

When I was growing up, the Falcons were seen as an expansion team that seldom made the playoffs and even more rarely accomplished anything when they got there. But the 1998 season was an exception. The Falcons had the fourth–best offense in the entire NFL that year, and it led them to a 14–2 record. In fact, they had only lost once since dropping the season opener at San Francisco.

In spite of their excellent record, though, the Falcons had to travel to the NFC Championship, which was in Minnesota in January 1999. The Vikings were 15–1 and favored to return to the Super Bowl for the first time in more than 20 years, but the Falcons beat them in overtime.

Atlanta had met every challenge, but the Falcons still came into the Super Bowl as 7½–point underdogs. Turned out that was optimistic.

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I've heard it speculated that, if the Broncos win on Sunday, Peyton Manning (who was a rookie during the 1998 season and will be 38 in March) will retire, but I think it is just as likely that Manning will stay on for another year and, like Elway, try to retire as a two–time defending Super Bowl champion. He might also have his second — or even his third — Super Bowl MVP by that time.

And why shouldn't he think he could do it? Under Manning's on–field leadership, the Broncos were 13–3 and had the top–rated offense in the NFL in 2013. If he returns for another season next fall, he will be the same age as Elway was when he played in Super Bowl XXXIII 15 years ago today.

Jersey Joe Walcott's 100th Birthday

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Jersey Joe Walcott defeated Ezzard Charles
for the heavyweight championship in 1951.

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Jersey Joe Walcott's boxing career is worthy of more study than I can give it here.

Walcott, who was born 100 years ago today, doesn't tend to show up on Top 10 Heavyweights of All Time lists (although you will often find him in the Top 20). He was regarded as a bit of a journeyman, I suppose, never managing to win a title until late in his career — but he stood tall in bouts with two of the greatest heavyweights of all time, Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano.

He knocked Louis down twice when they met the first time, but Louis prevailed in a split decision on the judges' cards. There are people today who will tell you Walcott won that fight. Enough people thought so at the time that they met in a rematch about 6½ months later. Louis scored an 11th–round knockout on that occasion.

In addition to two losses in title fights with Louis, Walcott lost two title fights with then–heavyweight champion Ezzard Charles, but he took the title from Charles in his third try on July 18, 1951. He was 37 years old, the oldest to win the heavyweight championship. Charles had just turned 30 less than two weeks earlier.

Walcott returned the favor by giving Charles the first shot at the title nearly a year later. He retained his title by virtue of a unanimous decision.

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Only a handful of heavyweight champions are remembered more for fights they lost than fights they won, and Walcott is one of them. He is probably best remembered for his second title defense, which he lost to Marciano in September 1952. It does help to remember, though, that Walcott was 38 years old; Marciano had turned 29 three weeks earlier.

According to all accounts I have read and heard, it was quite a fight. It was named Fight of the Year for 1952.

As I say, Marciano won the fight with a 13th–round knockout, but Walcott challenged him. Marciano had a reputation for knocking out his opponents early, frequently in the first round, but Walcott didn't go down so easily. Early in the first round, Walcott staggered Marciano with a right, then knocked him down with a left hook.

It seemed that Walcott, who had dismissed Marciano as "amateurish" prior to the fight, may have been right in his assessment.

But as the fight went on, and the boxers began to tire, Marciano seized control and, eventually, knocked out Walcott in the 13th round.

They met in a rematch eight months later, and Marciano made quick work of his foe, knocking him out in the first round.

In 1994, at the age of 80, Walcott died less than 10 miles from where he was born.

When Parity Arrived and Jimmy Departed

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Twenty years ago today, Jimmy Johnson coached in his final Super Bowl, guiding the Dallas Cowboys to their second straight championship.

Johnson's relationship with team owner Jerry Jones had been deteriorating that season. Jones' ego resented the attention Johnson had received since winning Super Bowl XXVII, and he wanted to have more say in football decisions, which had been Johnson's exclusive domain.

About two months after Johnson led the Cowboys to a second consecutive Super Bowl championship for the first and (so far) only time in their history, Johnson left the Cowboys. I don't think it was ever established whether Johnson resigned or was fired.

Dallas had hammered Buffalo the year before. In fact, it was the first (and, so far, only) time that two teams met in consecutive Super Bowls, and it was the fourth–ever Super Bowl rematch.

It wasn't much of a surprise that the Cowboys were 10½–point favorites in the rematch, considering they had beaten the Bills by 38 points the year before, but the point spread was a bit of a surprise. It was only the fourth time a team was favored by 10 points or more in a Super Bowl since the last time the Cowboys won one with Tom Landry as coach more than 15 years earlier.

As it turned out, the Cowboys covered that spread. But it didn't look too promising at halftime when the Bills led, 13–6.

"[T]hat only gave their fans false hope," writes Justin Tasch of the New York Daily News about Buffalo's second–half collapse, hastened by the emergence of Emmitt Smith.

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In the second half, Dallas' Smith earned the Most Valuable Player award, scoring two touchdowns to lift the Cowboys to a 30–13 victory.

He finished the game with 132 yards on 30 carries. His longest run — for 15 yards — resulted in the touchdown that put Dallas ahead to stay in the third quarter.

In hindsight, Super Bowl XXVIII is an example of NFL parity. Some might even say it is a cautionary tale — but of what?

On this day 20 years ago, it was hard to imagine that both of these teams would be missing from most of the Super Bowls in the next two decades. Dallas did return a couple of years later — with former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer at the helm — but Buffalo has rarely even won its division in the last 20 years.

Perhaps it is a reminder that, for good or ill, time marches on.

The Fight of the Century, Part II

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Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fought three times.

The first was known as the "Fight of the Century." Frazier was the defending world champion, and he defeated Ali on that occasion. It was Frazier's only victory in three bruising confrontations.

The third fight, the "Thrilla in Manila," was fought a year and a half after the second fight, which took place in New York's Madison Square Garden 40 years ago tonight.

Neither man was champion on this night 40 years ago. Frazier had lost his title a year earlier to George Foreman, and the winner of the second fight figured to get a shot at Foreman's crown.

In boxing lore, the second fight between the two men is seen as the least significant of the three, but I disagree with that assessment. It was scheduled for 12 rounds, and it went the distance — no quick decision. Ali was the winner by unanimous decision, but that does not mean it was a lopsided fight.

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It is an exercise in futility to rank the Ali–Frazier fights. It was a great rivalry, and each fight had its unique traits.

I always believed Ali–Frazier II was not the least significant of the three fights. True, no title was on the line, but the winner was expected to get a shot at the heavyweight championship — and, in fact, it did lead to a title shot for Ali later that year.

What's more, Ali cashed in on his opportunity, defeating Foreman in the famed "Rumble in the Jungle" in October.

But that was still nine months in the future. On this night in 1974, Ali got off to the kind of start that was typical for him — scoring enough points to be the unanimous winner of the first two rounds. That came as no real surprise to veteran fight watchers. Frazier always was a slow starter.

Frazier — who was thought to be seriously hurt near the end of the second round — began to score some points with the judges, winning the third round and doing well enough in the fourth to get two of the judges to score the round a draw.

The fifth and sixth rounds went to Ali, then the seventh and eighth went to Frazier. Ali was the unanimous winner of the ninth and 11th rounds while Frazier won split decisions in the 10th and 12th rounds.

It was a unanimous decision — all three judges had Ali winning — but it was far from unanimous as far as all observers were concerned. Sports writer Red Smith of the New York Times, for example, thought Frazier had won a narrow victory.

The rivalry had what any good rivalry should have — a healthy dose of good old–fashioned hate. At least, it appeared to have plenty of hate coming from the Frazier corner. Prior to their rematch, the men reviewed the tape of the first fight at the ABC studio, during which Ali called Frazier "ignorant," and a fight broke out in the studio.

That might have been a show. Ali was known to be a showman, and Frazier might have been persuaded to play along.

But, if it was a show, it was mighty convincing.

A Drive for the Ages

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Super Bowl XXIII is remembered for one thing — the magnificent game–winning touchdown drive engineered by quarterback Joe Montana in the closing minutes — even though it was noteworthy for other things, too.

San Francisco trailed Cincinnati by a field goal with a little more than three minutes to play. The 49ers had the ball at their own 8–yard line; Montana led the offense down the field and threw the winning touchdown pass to John Taylor with 34 seconds to play.

They called him "Joe Cool" during his playing career, and that really described his demeanor as he directed the 49ers on that game–winning drive.

Repeatedly that day, the Bengals' defenders made the plays they needed to make, but the 49ers won, anyway, 20–16, possibly securing Montana's induction into pro football's Hall of Fame. He entered the game already having won two Super Bowls. Four quarterbacks with at least two Super Bowl victories — Bart Starr, Bob Griese, Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach — had been chosen for the Hall of Fame, and other two–time winners would follow.

Nearly every quarterback who has started for at least two Super Bowl winners has wound up in the Hall of Fame (although Jim Plunkett has never been selected for induction in spite of being a two–time winner). A pretty convincing case can be made that Montana would be in the Hall of Fame, regardless of what happened 25 years ago today.

There was every reason to believe that Montana, who had been MVP in his first two Super Bowls along with being a five–time Pro Bowler, would be inducted, too. And he was, in his first year of eligibility. The stirring game–winning drive simply added to his remarkable resume.

Super Bowl XXIII had a little something for everyone. For Montana, it was a third Super Bowl victory as starting quarterback — and the only one of the four Super Bowls in which he played that he was not named the MVP. For Taylor, it was a game–winning reception.

And for future Hall of Famer Jerry Rice, it was the Most Valuable Player award. He caught 11 passes for a record 215 yards against the Bengals.

The game itself was a rematch of Super Bowl XVI, the third such rematch in Super Bowl history. The score was 3–3 at halftime, the first time a Super Bowl was tied at intermission.

San Francisco coach Bill Walsh retired after the game. So far, he is the only man to end his pro football coaching career with a Super Bowl victory.

But "The Drive" is what fans remember 25 years later.

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On that final drive, Montana completed eight of nine pass attempts. He was calm and cool as he completed three to Rice for 51 yards, but he covered the last 10 on a pass to Taylor.

That last play was probably the most astonishing play of the drive. As I say, Rice caught 11 passes in that game, three of them on the final drive (a fourth pass was thrown his way on that drive as well). Mere words aren't sufficient to describe the brilliance of his performance. He was clearly the game's most valuable player.

With the ball resting on the Cincinnati 10, everyone in the stadium probably expected Montana to throw to Rice. I was watching the game on TV with my parents, and I know the three of us expected Montana to look for Rice.

But, instead, he threw to Taylor for only the fourth time in the game. And Taylor, who nearly fumbled away a punt earlier in the quarter, made his only reception of the day.

It was a brilliant piece of strategy from the mind of a truly brilliant strategist, Bill Walsh, and it was executed flawlessly by his field general, Joe Montana.

Rice was the logical target. Taylor had been a non–factor all day, but "Joe Cool," calmly and confidently, threw the ball to Taylor and joined the exclusive club of football players who have won more than two Super Bowls.

The Montana legend was really born 25 years ago tonight. He was already regarded as one of the NFL's elite quarterbacks; "The Drive" made it official.

Black Sunday

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You'd think that a city the size of Los Angeles would have won several Super Bowls over the years.

But L.A., which has had as many as two NFL franchises at one time but now has none, has only won a single Super Bowl — 30 years ago tonight, when the Raiders, who had only made Los Angeles their home for a couple of seasons, defeated the defending Super Bowl champion Washington Redskins, 38–9.

It was the first time the Super Bowl had been played in Tampa. Nine future Hall of Famers participated in it. Bronko Nagurski, a charter member of the Hall of Fame, tossed the coin before the start of the game. It drew the fourth–highest Super Bowl TV viewership to that time.

But it is remembered for Marcus Allen's record–setting 74–yard touchdown run.

Frankly, it is odd that the game should be remembered for that. Granted, it was an electrifying play, but a good case can be made that the Redskins were already a beaten bunch by that time. When it happened, I thought the Redskins looked like they were shell–shocked and going through the motions.

It was in the closing seconds of the third quarter. The black–clad Raiders held a 28–9 lead. Allen had already scored once that quarter. His second score took whatever wind was left completely out of the Redskins' sails.

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It really seemed, at first, as if the play would be nothing spectacular. Allen started to run to the left, ran into a wall of Redskins defenders, reversed field and ran back to the right, found a hole and slipped neatly through the Washington defense, and he was off.

The Raiders' triumph is their last — so far — in Super Bowl competition. They returned to the Super Bowl nearly 20 years later and lost.

Few who witnessed the Raiders' success in the 1970s and '80s would have guessed 30 years ago tonight that they would not be back as Super Bowl champions.

A Truly 'Super' Super Bowl

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In its first 12 years of existence, the Super Bowl was a blowout more often than not.

A few games were relatively close (i.e., victory margins in single digits). The New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts by nine points in Super Bowl III; the Colts turned back the Dallas Cowboys with a last–second field goal in Super Bowl V; the unbeaten Miami Dolphins topped the Washington Redskins by a touchdown in Super Bowl VII; and the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Cowboys by four points in Super Bowl X.

But those were the exceptions.

That made what happened 35 years ago today in Miami so remarkable.

There was no shortage of compelling storylines. The game was the first–ever Super Bowl rematch. The winner would be the first franchise to win three Super Bowls. The Cowboys were the defending Super Bowl champions, looking to repeat.

The Steelers were favored by 3½ points. The oddsmakers clearly expected a close game.

And the oddsmakers were right. The Steelers prevailed, 35–31, inspiring more than one sportswriter to observe that Super Bowl XIII lived up to the hype. It really was super.

Pittsburgh's Terry Bradshaw threw four TD passes and was the game's MVP. Roger Staubach had three TD passes, but he would have had four if Jackie Smith hadn't dropped a sure touchdown in the end zone in the third quarter. Staubach wouldn't let Smith take all the blame. "The play was wide open, so I tried to take a little off the ball and I think I threw it too low," he said after the game.

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Perhaps the pass was a little low, but Smith knew that wasn't the whole story. "I just was wide open and I missed it," he said.

That dropped pass forced Dallas to settle for a field goal instead of scoring a game–tying touchdown, and the Cowboys never led again. They only led once all afternoon as it was — and briefly at that — after Mike Hegman stripped the ball from Bradshaw and rambled 37 yards to give Dallas a 14–7 advantage early in the second quarter.

The Steelers tied it up about a minute and a half later when Bradshaw hit John Stallworth for a 75–yard touchdown strike. They seized the lead in the closing seconds of the half when Bradshaw hit Rocky Bleier for a touchdown, capitalizing on Staubach's only interception of the day.

Dallas' Tony Dorsett led all rushers with 96 yards, but Pittsburgh's Franco Harris had the game's only TD run.

The victory — and the one the following year — sealed the Steelers' place as the team of the decade. They, along with Miami and Dallas, had two Super Bowl championships to their credit when the game began. They finished the decade with four Super Bowl titles in six years.

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When did the Steelers wrap it up? I think an argument can be made that, when Smith dropped the pass and the Cowboys had to take a field goal instead of a touchdown, that was when the Steelers began to believe they would win, and the Cowboys began to believe they would lose.

Then Pittsburgh broke it open with two touchdowns in a 19–second span midway through the fourth quarter. Harris scored his touchdown run, then Pittsburgh recovered a fumbled kickoff and built the lead to 35–17 with 6:57 to play on Bradshaw's 18–yard strike to Lynn Swann.

Dallas managed two late touchdowns, but the deficit was simply too great to overcome.

Defending Perfection

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Over the years, people have come to speak of the Miami Dolphins' perfect 1972 season in hushed tones.

I don't quibble with that. The 17–0 season was a remarkable achievement, accomplished, to a great extent, with a backup quarterback (starter Bob Griese went out with an ankle injury midway through the season) and a "no–name defense" that put the clamps on the best quarterbacks of the day — Len Dawson, Fran Tarkenton, Joe Namath, Johnny Unitas — and then beat an emerging Hall of Famer, Terry Bradshaw, in the AFC championship game.

But I have long believed that what the Dolphins did 40 years ago, in their followup season of 1973, was even more impressive. (Incidentally, until next month's Super Bowl in New Jersey, Super Bowl VIII stands as the third–coldest Super Bowl ever played.)

Heading into the 1973 season, the Dolphins had an enormous bull's eye on their chests. In the eyes of all their rivals, they were the 17–0 Dolphins of the previous year who hadn't lost in a game that counted since Super Bowl VI, when Roger Staubach and the Dallas Cowboys beat them, 24–3.

Every team that faced the Dolphins in 1973 was hoping to be the one to knock them from their lofty perch.

The '73 Dolphins managed to stay up there in the season opener, beating a declining San Francisco team, but they lost to Oakland in the second week. They only lost once more that year, in a meaningless game with Baltimore in the next–to–last week of the regular season, then hammered Cincinnati in the first round of the playoffs and avenged their second–week loss to Oakland in the AFC championship game.

Then, in Super Bowl VIII 40 years ago today, the Dolphins pounded the Minnesota Vikings to become the second team to win back–to–back Super Bowls.

(That's still a relatively rare achievement, by the way. Pro football will play its 48th Super Bowl next month, and teams have won back–to–back Super Bowls only eight times.)

In spite of the constant pressure they faced all season, even after losing that game to Oakland, the Dolphins followed their 17–0 campaign with a 15–2 season. That's 32 wins in 34 games over a two–year period. That's a two–year record that few Super Bowl champions have come close to matching.

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For a long time, I thought I was the only one (or at least one of the few) who recognized the accomplishment of the '73 Dolphins.

I remember a conversation I had with my friend Steve. He was a great admirer of the '72 Dolphins, and we often discussed that team. Once, I mentioned to him that I thought the '73 Dolphins were better, and his jaw just about hit the ground. After I explained my reasoning to him, he seemed to agree with me — or, at least, he agreed that I had a convincing case.

Anyway, recently, I read a retrospective article in the New York Daily News by Joe Belock that said what I have been thinking all these years: "Is it possible," Belock asked in his opening paragraph, "for a Super Bowl championship team to be underrated? Underappreciated?"

It's hard to imagine a Super Bowl champion being underrated, isn't it? Yet, that is precisely what the '73 Dolphins were — and still are, to an extent, as Belock's article suggests.

As Belock observes, they were better than the bunch that went unbeaten. "The schedule was tougher," he writes, yet the defense yielded fewer points.

Many coaches have won Super Bowls, but only a few have won two or more — and fewer still have won them back to back. It is so difficult — more difficult now, it seems, than it used to be — to repeat as champions in any sport. (We don't know yet who will play in this year's Super Bowl, but we do know that last year's winner, the Baltimore Ravens, will not be in it.)

I believe the Super Bowl that was won by Miami 40 years ago today was what secured Don Shula's spot in football history.

What happened in the following years added to his reputation, of course — most career wins (347), most Super Bowl teams (six) — but he was already regarded as a coaching legend by sundown 40 years ago.

Shula never won another Super Bowl. His '73 Dolphins were the last to achieve that for him.

Namath's Guarantee

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On this day 45 years ago, Broadway Joe Namath made good on his famous guarantee, and Namath's underdog New York Jets became the first members of the old AFL to win the Super Bowl, defeating the Baltimore Colts, 16–7.

It was also the first time that the name Super Bowl was used officially.

Before the game, there was a widely held belief that the AFL was inferior to the NFL in every possible way. Baltimore was favored by 18 points — and that was surely seen by many as too few. The Colts, they would have told you, were certain to beat the Jets by more than that. They had outscored their opponents by more than 18 points in more than half of their regular–season games that year (and came within a point of an 18–point victory margin in three other games), and they had won the NFL championship two weeks earlier by nearly five touchdowns.

And, with a defense that was coached by future Hall of Famer Chuck Noll and featured players like Bubba Smith, Billy Ray Smith and Mike Curtis, it was easy to imagine the upstart Jets being manhandled as the Chiefs and Raiders had been in the previous two Super Bowls.

The AFL began to gain some grudging acceptance when the Jets managed to sign Namath, who played his college ball at Alabama for Bear Bryant. In fact, it was due in large part to Namath's decision that the NFL agreed to merge with the AFL a few years later. The NFL feared bidding wars for the top collegiate talent and felt that bringing the AFL into the fold and subjecting its teams to the annual draft would prevent such wars from happening.

The merging of the two leagues didn't happen until 1970, more than a year after Namath's Jets beat the Colts in what has come to be regarded as one of sports' greatest upsets.

Namath's guarantee was the result, perhaps inevitably, of accumulated frustration from suggestions that the AFL was inferior. Some analysts had suggested that, if they had played in the NFL, the Jets would not have qualified for the playoffs, let alone made it to the Super Bowl.

Three days before the game, Namath appeared at the Miami Touchdown Club. A belligerent Colts fan heckled Namath and taunted him with claims that the Jets would lose. Exasperated (and intoxicated), Namath said, "We're gonna win the game. I guarantee it."

Without question, there have been times — in the histories of all sports — when players for one team believed they didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning a certain game. Sometimes it happens in championship games.

On this day 45 years ago, there might even have been a few Jets players who believed they would lose to the mighty Colts. But Joe Namath was not one of them.

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The year before he led the Jets to the Super Bowl, Namath was the first pro quarterback to throw for 4,000 yards, and he is still the only one to accomplish the feat in a 14–game regular season.

Ironically, Namath was the MVP of Super Bowl III in spite of the fact that he didn't throw a touchdown pass in the game. In fact, he didn't attempt a single pass in the final quarter.

The Hole-in-the-Head Gang

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"Why me? Why me?"

Nancy Kerrigan
Jan. 6, 1994

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On this day 20 years ago, ice skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on her right knee on the eve of the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit.

It was part of a plot to keep Kerrigan from competing in the 1994 Winter Olympics, ostensibly opening the door for rival Tonya Harding to win the gold medal.

The hit man, Shane Stant, had been instructed to break Kerrigan's leg so she could not compete. Kerrigan's leg was only bruised, though. While she had to withdraw from the national championship competition, both Kerrigan and Harding (the winner of the national championship in Kerrigan's absence) were chosen to compete in the Olympics in February 1994.

The motive for the clubbing wasn't immediately clear, though. I mean, there was no one calling media outlets to claim responsibility for it or anything like that.

The speculative soap opera that followed quickly became a media sensation and catapulted figure skating into an entirely new stratosphere.

As Barry Wilner of the Associated Press writes, "Often considered elitist because of its expense, and only something to watch whenever the Winter Olympics rolled around, skating entered an entirely different realm because of Tonya and Nancy. That surge in popularity lasted for the rest of the 1990s."

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The surge continued through the 1994 Winter Olympics, held that year in tiny Lillehammer, Norway. It must have been the biggest media circus ever to hit that community. I wasn't there so I don't know, but, from the perspective of one who watched it play out on television, the Tonya and Nancy show truly was a media circus in every sense of the phrase.

It struck me at the time — and it still does — that the Kerrigan episode was evidence of just how provincial Americans were in 1994 (and still are, for that matter). The assumption was that the top American female skater would win the gold medal — ultimately, Oksana Baiul of the Ukraine took home the gold in 1994 — but why would Americans get that idea? It ignored all the talent in the rest of the world, not to mention the history of the sport.

East German Katarina Witt dominated Olympic women's figure skating in the 1980s. Ever since women's figure skating was introduced as an Olympic event, women from other countries had ruled the sport.

Peggy Fleming was the breakthrough figure skater for the U.S. in 1968, and Dorothy Hamill won the gold in 1976, but America's top finisher in 1980 was silver medalist Linda Fratianne. Witt beat Americans Rosalynn Sumners in 1984 and Debi Thomas in 1988.

Perhaps it was Kristi Yamaguchi's triumph over favored Japanese skater Midori Ito in 1992 that ignited the fire that led, possibly inevitably, to the assault on Kerrigan 20 years ago today.

The lust for lucrative commercial deals inspired Harding's husband, Jeff Gillooly, and some other ne'er–do–wells to hatch the plot to get Kerrigan out of the way.

I guess it never occurred to the Hole–in–the–Head Gang that someone from another country — Baiul, for example — might take the gold.

I also think the Nancy–Tonya spectacle of '94 serves as something of a 21st–century cautionary tale.

Because, in spite of what Gilloly and his accomplices thought, Olympic gold isn't really worth much more than that — it brings a little fame that really doesn't last as long as they probably thought it did and a little temporary income that is gone before you know it. In 1994, mostly what Olympic gold (or the lust for it) brought to Tonya Harding was notoriety.

For her part, Kerrigan retired from amateur competition after the Olympics. She performed in some ice shows and participated in other skating–related activities, but largely her life seems to have been dedicated to her husband, whom she married the year after the Olympics, and their children.