Yanking the Monkey Off Young's Back

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For a long time, the knock on Steve Young was that he couldn't win the Super Bowl.

"Couldn't" really isn't the appropriate verb, though. He never had the opportunity to win or lose one until this day 20 years ago when he led the San Francisco 49ers into Super Bowl XXIX against the San Diego Chargers. It was to be his only opportunity to win a Super Bowl — and, boy, did he take advantage of it.

Young began his professional career 10 years earlier in the ill–fated United States Football League with the Los Angeles Express. In 1985, he signed with the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who traded him to San Francisco in 1987, and Young spent the next four seasons as Joe Montana's backup. In that role, he was a participant in Super Bowls XXIII and XXIV. But he didn't get to play in Super Bowl XXIII, and he came in for mop–up duty after Super Bowl XXIV was a foregone conclusion.

In Tampa Bay, he had been judged a failure, but he showed his potential when subbing for Montana. Young became the 49ers' starter when Montana went down with a season–ending elbow injury in 1991. He was the 49ers' starting QB for the rest of that season, and he started every game for the next three seasons as well.

But the 49ers did not return to the Super Bowl until January 1995.

They were huge favorites when the game began. If you were betting on the 49ers in that game, you had to give the Chargers 19 points — the widest spread in Super Bowl history.

The 49ers led by 18 points at halftime and went on to cover the spread in a 49–26 victory. Young completed 75% of his passes for 325 yards and six touchdowns. He was, of course, the game's MVP

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It was a joyous scene on the 49ers' sideline as the final seconds ticked away, and sideline cameras brought it into America's living rooms. Young and his teammates engaged in some play acting in which Young invited them to pull the monkey from his back — a shot at those who had said and/or written that he couldn't win the big one.

There are two thoughts, really, that cross my mind when I think of that game two decades ago.

The first is that it was the last Super Bowl of my mother's life. I don't know if she was ever the football fan that my father and I are, but she enjoyed watching the Super Bowl — especially if the Dallas Cowboys were playing in it. I was living in Oklahoma at the time, and I remember calling my parents early on Super Sunday and chatting about the game. I had no way of knowing it would be the last football game of my mother's life. She would be gone in less than four months.

So when I think of that day, I think of the phone conversation I had with my parents. I really don't remember the specifics of the conversation, only that we had one. We talked for about 20 minutes, then we signed off. Mom and Dad did whatever they did during the game, and so did I.

My other thought is of San Diego's Junior Seau, one of the finest defensive players I have ever seen play the game. It was his only Super Bowl, and, considering that he ended up taking his own life, presumably because of head injuries he suffered during his playing days, I really regret that he couldn't have had the experience of winning an NFL championship once in his life.

Telling It Like It Was

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I don't know whether Howard Cosell listened to and enjoyed the music of Frank Sinatra — in hindsight, it seems odd not to know that because we knew Cosell's opinions on just about everything else.

But when considering Cosell's life, matching him with anyone else seems inappropriate.

They were contemporaries, quite close, in fact, to the same age (Sinatra was a little more than two years older). And, while Sinatra sang about "doin' it my way," that was how Cosell lived his life.

If someone ever does a film about the life of Howard Cosell, I think Sinatra's music should be the soundtrack.

Cosell certainly did things his way. Or, to paraphrase his own catchphrase, he told it like it was.

We knew that Cosell liked his ten–dollar words, which tended to make him come off as elitist, aloof. He couldn't resist the temptation. Maybe it was his legal training. Maybe he just always had a fondness for big words. But he just couldn't restrain himself, even on the most somber of occasions.

Like Dec. 8, 1980, when I and millions of people who were watching Monday Night Football learned from Cosell that John Lennon had been killed.

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"Remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all of The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival."

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"Unspeakable" struck some people as a bit much, but that was just Cosell expressing himself. Besides, to those of us who were Beatles fans, the murder of John Lennon really was unspeakable.

No other word was adequate.

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Cosell definitely had his own style, and he was really famous, I suppose, for two things — his longtime affiliation with Muhammad Ali and his years with Monday Night Football. The stories of each could be books in themselves.

Ali and Cosell had something of a symbiotic relationship. Cosell did the ringside duty for most of Ali's early fights, then he made a name for himself as part of the Monday Night Football broadcasting crew.

But Cosell often seemed to be on top of the American sports scene — long before ESPN.

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His astonished call during the Frazier–Foreman fight — "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!" — has become part of sports lexicon. He also covered the Bobby Riggs–Billie Jean King "Battle of the Sexes" and Olympics competition for ABC, including the murders of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Games.

When the subject was Cosell, you seldom found fence sitters. People either really liked him or really hated him, but it was a funny kind of hatred. People didn't hate him to the extent that they wouldn't watch Monday Night Football. Instead, they tuned in in huge numbers, hoping to witness the rare moments when he was caught unprepared. The meticulous Cosell brought the kind of in–depth reporting to sports that once was the hallmark of hard news coverage, and he was rarely unprepared. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, some enterprising bar owners sponsored contests, with winners getting the chance to throw a brick or something else that was big and heavy at Cosell's image on an old TV.

It's hard to believe it was 15 years ago today that Cosell died. In all honesty, I think his death was overshadowed by the Oklahoma City bombing four days earlier and the memorial service for the victims that was held only hours after Cosell's death.

Cosell's death may not have received the attention it deserved, but his absence has been felt.

He was one of a kind.

And he definitely did things his way.