Montana's Second Super Bowl Victory

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I remember this day in 1985. I was working on the sports desk of the Arkansas Gazette on what is always the biggest day in sports every year — Super Bowl Sunday.

Everything else that would ordinarily demand our attention always took the night off on Super Bowl Sunday. They used to play the Super Bowl in the afternoon — until they discovered they could get a bigger TV audience by playing the game at night. So they moved it to nighttime, and since that time there have been some basketball games played in the afternoons of Super Bowl Sunday. Never very many, just a few, usually featuring big–name programs. Occasionally, sports fans have had the option of watching a hockey game or perhaps Olympic qualifying competition for skiers or skaters.

All that other stuff was usually over by the kickoff of the Super Bowl, though. We didn't have a TV in the newsroom in those days, but someone usually brought a portable TV to the office so we could watch the game. And it promised to be a good one.

It seems to me that maybe the worst thing that can happen to a professional athlete is to achieve great success very early in his career.

Because that tends to make the athlete believe that climbing that mountain is much easier than advertised, and the athlete expects to return to the championship level every year. Few athletes have made it to that level multiple times in their careers, let alone every year.

In truth, that is probably easier for athletes who participate in individual sports to accomplish than it is for those who compete in team sports.

That may have been what happened to Dan Marino, who came into the NFL as a first–round draft choice after the 1982 season. The Dolphins made it to the Super Bowl in 1982 and went 12–4 in Marino's rookie season but lost to Seattle in the divisional round of the playoffs.

In 1983, the Dolphins were 14–2 and crushed their opponents in the AFC playoffs. Waiting for them in Super Bowl XIX at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, California, 30 years ago today were the Joe Montana–led San Francisco 49ers.

It is important to remember that Montana was not a sure bet to be in the Hall of Fame yet. The 49ers had won the Super Bowl three years earlier, but that had been their only appearance. They were not the juggernaut that they would become, and their performance 30 years ago had a lot to do with that transformation.

Going into the game that was played three decades ago today, the 49ers were favored — but only by 3½ points.

It was billed as a showdown between Marino and Montana. Marino was everyone's MVP, having completed more than 64% of his passes (he averaged almost three dozen attempts per game) for more than 5,000 yards and four dozen touchdowns.

Marino may have thought it was all incredibly easy when the gun sounded ending the first quarter. Miami led, 10–7, thanks to Uwe von Schamann's 37–yard field goal and Marino's two–yard touchdown pass to tight end Dan Johnson. But Marino, who averaged three touchdown passes per game during the regular season, would have no more touchdown passes on this day.

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Montana and the 49ers seized the lead in the second quarter. Montana threw a touchdown pass to running back Roger Craig, then Montana ran in from six yards out, then Craig scored again.

Von Schamann kicked two field goals to cut the deficit to 28–16 at the intermission, but the Dolphins were done scoring for the day.

The 49ers got a field goal from Ray Wersching and Montana threw another touchdown pass to Craig, and it was over. The 49ers had won in convincing fashion, 38–16.

And Montana, who had not been named the MVP of the season, was named the MVP of the Super Bowl. As a two–time Super Bowl–winning quarterback, he joined an exclusive club. In a few years, he would win back–to–back Super Bowls and join an extremely exclusive club of four–time winners. So far, the only other member is Terry Bradshaw, who won his fourth Super Bowl 35 years ago today. New England's Tom Brady will be seeking to join that club a week from Sunday.

No doubt, many people believed on this day 30 years ago that Marino would soon win a Super Bowl. He might even win multiple Super Bowls in his career. He was, after all, only 23 years old, and, if he stayed healthy, he clearly had the skill.

But he never made it back to the Super Bowl. The closest he got was conference championship games following the 1985 and 1992 seasons. The Dolphins lost both.

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For the second time, the 49ers gave coach Bill Walsh a victory ride. He would get another four years later.

The End of Miami's Reign

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In the early '70s, the team of the decade seemed to be the Miami Dolphins. Mostly, that was due to the Dolphins' perfect season in 1972. It seemed to set them up for a long stretch of success, one that might extend through the entire decade.

As great as the '72 team was, though, I always thought the '73 team was better because it had to defend the '72 team's legacy. The '73 team came into the season with a gigantic target painted squarely on each player's chest. For every team that played the Dolphins in '73, that was the game of the year.

The '73 team stood up to that challenge, going 12–2 and returning to the Super Bowl and winning. Thus, over that two–year span, Miami won 32 of 34 games.

So, when the 1974 season began, Miami was a two–time defending Super Bowl champion with a .941 winning percentage over the previous two seasons. The Dolphins started the season with a loss to New England, then won 11 of the next 13 games. It looked like the Dolphins might get the chance to win their third straight Super Bowl.

Standing in their way, though, were the Oakland Raiders, the same bunch who snapped their legendary winning streak in the second week of the season after the history–making 17–0 campaign. In the AFC semifinals on this date in 1974, the 11–3 Dolphins took the field against the 12–2 Raiders in Oakland.

It was widely assumed that, with the winner slated to face either the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Buffalo Bills in the AFC championship game the following week, the winner of this game would represent the AFC in the Super Bowl. At halftime, it appeared it would be Miami. The Dolphins led, 10–7.

But the Raiders outscored the Dolphins, 21–16, in the second half and won on Clarence Davis' eight–yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter.

The Raiders advanced to the AFC title game against the Steelers. Everyone thought the Raiders would win. The Steelers had never been to a Super Bowl before. Of course, the Raiders had only been to one at that time, but they had come close frequently. Their time had come. That was what the conventional wisdom said.

But times changed. The Raiders lost to the Steelers, and Terry Bradshaw went on to lead Pittsburgh to the first of four Super Bowl titles in six years.

Thanks For the Memories, Earl

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I guess everyone knows about the 1972 Miami Dolphins — the only team in modern pro football history to go undefeated through the regular season and the postseason.

Fewer people remember that more than half of those wins were accomplished without the Dolphins' star quarterback, Bob Griese, who went down with a broken leg and dislocated ankle in the fifth game of the season. He was replaced by backup Earl Morrall, who had recently been picked up on the waiver wire after being released by the Baltimore Colts.

Miami's coach, Don Shula, had been Morrall's coach for a time in Baltimore. They had been in Super Bowl III, which the Colts lost to the New York Jets. Shula knew precisely what he was getting when he picked up Morrall. Possibly no backup quarterback has ever stepped in as the substitute for the starter better equipped to run his coach's offense and succeed.

In fact, Morrall wound up leading the AFC in passing, just as Griese had the year before — in spite of throwing only one pass in the first four games.

He started the last nine games of the 1972 regular season and the first two games of the playoffs while Griese recovered. It wasn't always as easy as it may seem today; they struggled at times, but the Dolphins won all those games.

They hung on to beat Buffalo by a single point the week after Griese went down. They beat the Jets by four points in the 10th game, and they barely got past a mediocre Cleveland Browns team in the playoffs. Griese returned to the lineup in the second half of the AFC championship game, then led the Dolphins to the Super Bowl title.

He was on a third Super Bowl team as well. He was still on Miami's roster the next year when the Dolphins defended their title in Super Bowl VIII.

I remember having Morrall's football card and not knowing who he was. There were some players who were like that. I only knew their names because I had their cards. It wasn't until years later that I learned Morrall had been the quarterback of the Colts team that lost to Broadway Joe Namath and the Jets. I knew who Namath was, of course. Who didn't?

That was a good Colts team, too. Before facing the Jets, the Colts lost only one game. In a year when most teams were equally balanced between the run and the pass, Morrall completed more than 57% of his passes for nearly 3,000 yards.

Anyway, Morrall died Thursday at the age of 79. The news was confirmed today. From what I have heard, he had been in poor health for awhile.

He played pro football in relative obscurity for more than two decades. In those two Super Bowl seasons, with the sports world watching his every move, he led his teams to a combined record of 24–2.

He died in relative obscurity, too. I'm sure there were many young people across the country who didn't know who he was when they heard of his death.

The historian in me would like to think that someday football fans will re–discover the rich history of their sport — and Morrall's contributions to it.

But the realist in me doubts that will ever happen.

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.

A Super Super Bowl

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They've been playing the Super Bowl for nearly half a century now.

There have been a handful of Super Bowls in which two teams met for the second time. The Super Bowl that was played 30 years ago on this day was one of those occasions.

The Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins met 10 years after they met the first time — in January 1973 when the Dolphins capped a perfect season with their victory over the Redskins.

(The record for the most matches between the same two teams belongs to the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers, who have squared off in three Super Bowls.)

In the decade that had passed, the Dolphins had returned to the Super Bowl once and the Redskins had not been back at all. I do not recall either team being the favorite to play in the Super Bowl before the season began.

Maybe the Dolphins were. In those days, the Dolphins were sort of like the Patriots are today. They ruled the AFC East and, thus, were always in the playoffs. I imagine, though, that, if I could go back in time and read the preseason assessments, Miami would have ranked below several other AFC teams.

And the Redskins had rarely been a factor in the NFC East in the previous 10 years. Perhaps expectations were higher than I remember, but Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys still commanded a lot of respect in their division. Not content merely to qualify for the playoffs, the Cowboys had been in six NFC championship games since the last time the Redskins had played in the Super Bowl — and had advanced to three Super Bowls.

Anyway, I had my doubts that Super Bowl XVII really brought together the two best teams — in large part because an eight–week players' strike wiped out nearly half of the regular season.

The teams played only nine games each; under normal circumstances, they would have played 16.

And that, I always felt, skewed the final results.

The Dolphins and Redskins might have wound up in Super Bowl XVII, anyway, but I always doubted it, especially with the playoff system that the NFL used to compensate.

The NFL seeded the top eight teams in each conference — and two of the teams who made it to the playoffs through this system, the Detroit Lions and the Cleveland Browns, had losing records.

Their records were 4–5; if they had played the full schedule, they might well have finished with winning records — but they might not. The Browns had four winning seasons in the previous decade so they were pretty good possibilities, but the Lions had only one winning season in the previous 10.

A pretty good case can be made that neither would have been in the 1982 playoffs if the full schedule had been played. But, as it was, those teams became the first sub–.500 teams to make the playoffs.

No team with a losing record had ever made the NFL postseason before, and it would be nearly three decades before another one did. That is a pretty compelling argument that the entire strike–shortened season deserves an asterisk.

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In spite of my misgivings, though, I have to admit that the game was rather entertaining.

The Dolphins led by a touchdown at intermission, thanks to a 98–yard kickoff return by Fulton Walker, but the Redskins put a clamp on Miami in the second half, and the Washington offense, behind a line nicknamed "The Hogs," scored 17 unanswered points in the second half.

MVP John Riggins, who rushed for 166 yards, scored the fourth–quarter touchdown that put Washington in front for good.

And I'll say this for Super Bowl XVII.

Even if neither team really belonged in the game, as I say, I have to admit that it was entertaining, especially with all the nicknames for groups (like "Killer Bees," "Smurfs" and "Fun Bunch") and individuals (like "Diesel" for Riggins and "Downtown" for teammate Charlile Brown).

Interestingly, the next time Washington won a Super Bowl was in another strike–altered season five years later.

The Perfectionists

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Forty years ago today, the Miami Dolphins beat the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII, capping a perfect season.

Only one other team since that time, the 2007 New England Patriots, has gone into a Super Bowl with a perfect record, but the Patriots lost that game to the New York Giants. True, the Pats had to win two more regular–season games than the Dolphins did — and, with their two playoff victories, the Patriots were 18–0 going into their Super Bowl.

That means that, when they were 18–0, the Patriots actually had compiled a better record than the '72 Dolphins did, but they failed to win the Super Bowl, and that is how teams are judged.

Not by perfect seasons.

Championships. That's what counts. In the 39 years since the '72 Dolphins' 17–0 season, 39 NFL champions have been crowned. Only one team has gone into the Super Bowl with a perfect record, and it did not emerge with its perfect record still intact.

But a single moment of imperfection on that day, as I have written here before, threatened the Dolphins' achievement.

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The Dolphins led, 14–0, in the fourth quarter when kicker Garo Yepremian lined up to attempt a 42–yard field goal that, for all intents and purposes, could have put the game on ice. Instead, it only put the outcome in doubt.

Yepremian's attempt was blocked, and he chased the ball as it bounced toward the sideline. But instead of falling on it, he picked it up and tried to throw the ball, but it slipped from his grasp and Redskins defender Mike Bass grabbed it in mid–air and ran 49 yards for a touchdown.

More than two minutes were left in the game, but the Dolphins held on to win the game and give Don Shula his first Super Bowl championship.

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To this day, Super Bowl VII is the lowest–scoring Super Bowl — and would have been even lower if Yepremian had fallen on the ball or, better still, made the field goal.

Thus, it was appropriate, I suppose, that a defensive player — Miami's Jake Scott — was named the game's most valuable player. Scott picked off two Billy Kilmer passes in the contest and racked up 63 return yards.

Super Bowl MVPs typically are quarterbacks — or, at least, an offensive player. Only eight defensive players have been named Super Bowl MVP, and two of them (Dallas' Randy White and Harvey Martin) shared the honor in 1978.

In fact, had it not been for Chuck Howley winning the MVP in a losing cause two years earlier (still the only member of a losing team to be named the game's most valuable player), Scott's triumph would have been as ground–breaking — on an individual level — as the Dolphins' team achievement of going through a season without a single blemish.

On this day 40 years ago, it was often suggested that Larry Csonka, the Dolphins' hard–nosed fullback, deserved to be considered. He carried the ball 15 times for 117 yards.

But Csonka's time would come the next year when the Dolphins won their second consecutive Super Bowl.

That was quite an achievement, especially since the Dolphins lost only twice in their 1973 encore. When you consider that everyone on Miami's schedule wanted to beat the team that had been undefeated the previous year, the pressure must have been unrelenting.

Miami's '72 accomplishment was even more impressive in that the Dolphins' starting quarterback, Bob Griese, went down with a broken leg midway through the season and did not return until the playoffs. Veteran backup Earl Morrall led the offense until the second half of the AFC Championship game against Pittsburgh.

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 Longest Day

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Christmas is one of those holidays — like Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July — that inspires memories, both great and awful, that seem to follow you as long as you live.

When you get right down to it, Christmas is just another day on the calendar. It's great for some, not so great for others.

But whatever happens on that day seems to take on more significance, simply because it is Christmas Day. Whatever happens on this day definitely does not stay on this day. It lives on in memory, and its details become, if anything, sharper with age.

Depending upon who you are, I guess, Christmas 1971 was just such a day.

It was, as I recall, the first of three consecutive Christmases my family spent at South Padre Island, Texas.

Ordinarily, we spent Christmas with my grandparents in Dallas, but, by Christmas 1971, my parents were in the mood to hit the road. They had purchased a popup camper (much like the one you can see at the right) a few years earlier, and we had taken it on family trips in the spring and summer.

(Actually, that picture is a pretty fair representation of the camper we had, except that the bottom part wasn't white, it was green. Frankly, I never thought it was a very attractive shade of green, either, but my mother really liked it. She dubbed the camper the "Big, Bright Green Pleasure Machine" after a Simon & Garfunkel tune.)

In December 1971, we took it about as far south as you can go in Texas and set up our campsite at a campground not far from the beach. It was, as I remember, a couple of days before Christmas when we arrived.

The weather was gorgeous for late December, which wasn't unusual in Port Isabel, Texas. That certainly hasn't changed. Even after it cooled off here in north Texas late this week, it stayed in the 70s in Port Isabel. Temperatures there might dip into the mid–60s today, but I'm sure that still sounds pretty good to many Americans right now.

It was probably like that 39 years ago. I don't remember if I even knew what the temperature was that Christmas. All I remember is that it was warm and sunny.

Just another Bethlehem–like day slightly north of the border.

The campground actually had a putt–putt golf course that campers could play for free. All you had to do was go by the office and get a putter and a ball. It didn't take me long to make a friend and spend hours playing miniature golf with him in the warm south Texas sun.

Anyway, when Christmas arrived, we did our family Christmas in that camper. It was kind of cramped in there for much Christmas festivity for a family of four with a dog so when the gifts had been exchanged and all the rituals had been observed, I exited the camper and hooked up with my new friend to play some miniature golf.

I don't know how long we played. We never kept score, we just putted until we both got our balls in the hole, then we proceeded to the next hole, and we could do that for hours. (It really is amazing how much energy you have when you're a child — and how oblivious you are to extremes in temperature.)

Anyway, at some point, we returned to the campground office, perhaps to turn in our putters and balls for the day.

And I recall that most of the men from the campground — workers and campers alike — had gathered there to watch the AFC playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and the Kansas City Chiefs.

I'm sure no one realized it at the time, but a new order was emerging in professional football.

People seldom seem to recognize such transitions for what they are at the time. It is only with the benefit of hindsight — and a certain amount of distance — that most can see things clearly.

Up to that time, the dominant teams in the AFC were probably the Chiefs, Raiders and Jets, all charter members of the old American Football League. The Colts (still in Baltimore at that time) had just won the first Super Bowl to be played following the NFL–AFL merger, and they had done so as members of the AFC, but the Colts were NFL refugees. They had no history against the AFL — other than their upset loss to the New York Jets in Super Bowl III in January 1969.

By 1971, the Chiefs had been to as many Super Bowls as the Packers and the Colts — and they had won as many, too. The Dolphins, meanwhile, had never been to one before. In fact, they were making only their second–ever playoff appearance that Christmas Day — but they were doing so with the Colts' former coach, Don Shula, and he knew something about getting to the Super Bowl, as he demonstrated that year.

I don't remember what the point spread was, but I'm sure the Chiefs must have been heavy favorites.

And they got off to a fast start. Jan Stenerud nailed a field goal and Ed Podolak scored a touchdown, and Kansas City had a 10–0 lead when the first quarter ended. But Miami rallied with a Larry Csonka touchdown and a Garo Yepremian field goal in the second period, and the score was tied, 10–10, at intermission.

My friend and I, being normal boys who couldn't understand why anyone would stay indoors when it was warm and sunny outside, didn't spend much time in the office until after the sun went down that day. We popped in for a drink of water — and a score update — from time to time, and we heard that the teams traded touchdowns in the third and fourth quarters, and the game went to overtime with the score tied, 24–24.

By that time, if my memory serves me, the sun had gone down, and we remained in the office with our fathers, who were engrossed in the game — so engrossed, in fact, that many of the men remained in the office even after their children came to tell them that dinner was ready back at their campsites.

I recall that my own father was among those who resisted the calls from their wives.

It really seemed the Chiefs were going to put an end to things early in overtime, but the Dolphins blocked what would have been the game–winning field goal, and the defenses, who must have been wearing down, dominated things through the first overtime period ...

... and into the second.

All anyone had to do to win was to score — any kind of score would do, even a safety, and, finally, someone did score. After more than 82 minutes, Yepremian kicked a field goal with 7:40 showing on the clock in the second overtime period, and the Dolphins advanced to the AFC Championship game.

It remains the longest professional football game ever played.

No one knew it at the time, but that was the last time anyone would see Kansas City in the playoffs for more than a decade, and it would be two decades before the Chiefs would win in the postseason. Miami, on the other hand, was about to go to the first of three consecutive Super Bowls. In all, the Dolphins have been in five Super Bowls since that Christmas Day 39 years ago. The Chiefs haven't been to any.

No one knew that on this day 39 years ago, but everyone did know it was the last time the Chiefs would play in Municipal Stadium. The Chiefs were scheduled to begin playing in Arrowhead Stadium the next year so when their 1971 season ended, so, too, did Municipal's existence.

In addition to serving as the home to the Chiefs' two Super Bowl teams, Municipal hosted Kansas City's baseball teams — the American League's Athletics (before they moved to California) and the Royals in their early years, the Negro Leagues' Monarchs, the minor leagues' Blues — for half a century.

The times they were indeed a–changin'. But no one seemed to know it.

Not yet.

A Moment of Imperfection

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A little while ago, I was reading an article on the TIME website about the "Top 10 Super Bowl Moments."

"In the buildup to Sunday's football finale," read the subhead, "TIME takes a time out to review the greatest catches, tackles, passes and runs in Super Bowl history. As well as a kick to forget."

I could only think of two kicks in Super Bowl history that could fit that description — Scott Norwood's near–miss in Super Bowl XXV and Garo Yepremian's blocked kick in Super Bowl VII. Turned out, TIME was referring to Norwood's miss (by the way, you can see videos of all 10 Super Bowl moments if you read TIME's article).

Unless you were a fan of the Buffalo Bills, though, I don't think I would say that Norwood's kick was one to forget. It was a dramatic moment. The snap was good. It didn't sail over the kicker's head or anything like that. The kicker made a clean kick. No one blocked it. It was long enough. It just didn't go through the uprights.

And the Bills lost the game.

If I had been the one making the list and I had to pick a kick to forget, I would go with Yepremian's kick in a heartbeat.

Now there is a kick that lives in infamy.

The 1972 Miami Dolphins, of course, are the only team to go through a regular season, the conference playoffs and the Super Bowl without losing a single game. But it wasn't easy. They had some real cliffhangers that year — a two–point win over Minnesota in the third game, a one–point win over Buffalo in the sixth game, a four–point win over the Jets in the 10th game. What's more, all three of the Dolphins' postseason victories (including the Super Bowl) could have been lost or tied if the opponent had made one more touchdown.

The Dolphins also had to overcome the absences of several injured defensive linemen and quarterback Bob Griese, who broke his ankle in the fifth game. He missed the rest of the regular season and the first–round playoff game, then returned as a backup for the AFC Championship game. He was ready to return as the starter by the time of the Super Bowl.

In spite of the narrow escapes and the adversity of losing their field general, the Dolphins persevered and entered the Super Bowl with a 16–0 record. They needed only to beat the Washington Redskins to cap a perfect season.

But one moment of imperfection threatened to undo what they had accomplished.

In the fourth quarter, with Miami leading, 14–0, Yepremian prepared to attempt a field goal that seemed likely to put the game away, but the kick was blocked and Yepremian chased the bouncing football, picked it up when he should have just fallen on it and made a feeble attempt to throw it to Larry Csonka. The ball slipped out of his hands and he tried to bat it out of bounds, but, instead, it went up in the air and was picked off by Mike Bass, who ran it back for a touchdown.

With just over two minutes left in the game, the Redskins were within a touchdown of tying the score. On the Miami sideline, defensive lineman Manny Fernandez, considered by many the game's most valuable player, said to Yepremian, "You son of a bitch, we lose this game, I'm gonna f***ing kill you."

To just about everyone's surprise, Washington opted to kick deep instead of trying to recover an onside kick, then used up all of its timeouts before getting the ball back. But the Redskins did have one last chance, with 1:14 remaining in the fourth quarter. Miami's defense stopped Washington, and the legendary perfect season was in the books.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, I would rate Yepremian's botched kick as the one to forget, not Norwood's. And, apparently, Yepremian wanted to forget it right away, even though it didn't cost his team the game. From what I have heard, he was so depressed that he went into virtual seclusion for two weeks after the game.

However, "Garo's Gaffe," as it was known, made him famous and brought him speaking engagements and commercial endorsements.

What could have been the costliest mistake of his life turned out to be a blessing in disguise.