A Play to Remember

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Thirty years ago today, I was here in Dallas, covering the Arkansas–SMU game for the newspaper for which I was working. I was only a few months removed from college, and covering a big football game like that at Texas Stadium was a huge deal for me.

That weekend, I stayed with my parents, who were planning to attend the game with some friends. And, because I was about to observe my birthday later that week, we had to do birthday type stuff during that visit, too — like eating cake.

My point is that there was a lot going on that day — and I completely missed seeing the biggest moment of the day until several hours after it happened.

When I saw it, though, I knew it was one of those clips that would live forever in the sports world.

I am talking about "The Play" — the multilateral kickoff return on the final play of the 1982 California–Stanford game. For more than a century now, that Bay area grudge match has been called the "Big Game," but it may never have been bigger or had a bigger finish that it did 30 years ago today.

Call it the "Big Play."

John Elway had already led Stanford down the field for the field goal that appeared to put Stanford in front for good, 20–19. Eight seconds remained on the clock, and Cal's announcer cryptically told his listeners, "Only a miracle can save the Bears now."

And a miracle is precisely what happened.

Stanford squibkicked the ball. After a lot of scrambling and at least four laterals, Kevin Moen took the ball into the end zone for the winning score, dodging members of the Stanford band who had been prematurely celebrating.

He couldn't dodge the trombone player, though. (Last month, Kelli Anderson shared her memories of being in Stanford's band that afternoon with SI.com's readers.)

Most of the people I have heard speak about fantastic finishes and the history of the Stanford–Cal game seem to agree that "The Play" was the most memorable of them all.

And it may have been.

It was certainly the most costly for Elway. It always seemed likely to me that "The Play" cost Elway the Heisman Trophy less than a month later to Georgia's Herschel Walker. Being a senior, he never had another chance to win it.

"The Play" also cost him what would have been the only bowl bid of his collegiate career; nevertheless, he was taken first by Baltimore in the draft, then traded to Denver, where Elway eventually led the Broncos to five Super Bowls — and two Super Bowl titles.

If most think "The Play" was one of the most exciting finishes ever in college football, then there are some, writes Vytas Mazeika in the San Jose Mercury News, who don't even think it is one of the top finishes in the history of the "Big Game."

But the Big Play was still big.

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.

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.