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.

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.

2003: A Juice Odyssey

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Forty years ago today, my father was finishing up his sabbatical in Nashville, and my family was about to return to my hometown in Arkansas.

I remember that my brother and I had just finished school and been dismissed for the Christmas holiday, and we had been withdrawn from school by my mother. We would enroll in school for the spring term in my hometown in January.

Most of our furniture (except for our beds) was rented because we knew we would only be there four months, but we had many personal possessions to pack.

The plan was to leave Nashville around Monday or Tuesday, drive home and unload all our personal possessions, then (after returning the U–Haul trailer) hit the road for Dallas to spend Christmas with my grandmothers.

We were making progress in packing our things, but on this day, which was a Sunday in 1973, we stopped what we were doing to watch O.J. Simpson of the Buffalo Bills try to do what no one had ever been able to do before — run for 2,000 yards in a season.

Actually, the emphasis was on setting a single–season rushing record. Finishing the season with 2,000 yards was viewed, right up to kickoff, as a still possible but far from probable outcome.

No matter how it may seem from the perspective of 40 years later, Simpson needed nearly 200 yards in the final game of the season to make it to 2,000. He had done that before during the 1973 season but not in his earlier match with the New York Jets, one of the Bills' division rivals and their opponent that day. Two hundred yards didn't seem a realistic goal. His realistic objective that day was to pass the legendary Jim Brown, who ran for 1,863 yards in a single season 10 years earlier.

Simpson needed only 60 yards to match Brown, and common sense said he could get that with ease. Simpson ran for twice as many yards when the teams met back in the third week of the season. Only the defending Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins and their no–name defense had held Simpson to fewer than 60 yards in a game.

Momentum was clearly on Simpson's side. He had run for more than 100 yards in each of the last four games (would have been five, but he fell a single yard short against the Cincinnati Bengals in mid–November).

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As I say, he needed nearly 200 yards to break the 2,000–yard barrier, and most observers dismissed that as unrealistic. True, he had run for more than 200 yards the week before, but that was against another division rival, the New England Patriots, and Simpson had run for more than 200 yards against the Patriots in the season opener as well — but he hadn't managed to do it against anyone else.

In a steady snowfall, it was clear early that Simpson would set a new single–season rushing record. The next obvious question was whether he could reach the barrier of 2,000 yards against the Jets, who were 4–9.

Simpson was more dramatic on that one, going down to the wire before finally notching his 2,000th yard late in the fourth quarter of the last regular–season game.

The argument can be made that the Jets had nothing for which to play, but the same could be said of the Bills.

And, mind you, I make no excuses for anything Simpson may have done since his playing career ended. Forty years ago, he was the hottest thing in football, virtually the Johnny Football of his day. Whatever role he may or may not have played in the murders of his ex–wife and her friend and the crimes of which he was convicted in Nevada, they were still more than 20 years in the future.

Others have broken that 2,000–yard barrier since then. But Simpson is the only one to achieve it in 14 games. All the others ran for 2,000–plus yards in 16–game seasons.

O.J.'s is an accomplishment that may never be duplicated.

All the Way Back

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On this day in 1993, I watched the Dallas Cowboys hammer the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVII.

I was living in Norman, Okla., where I had just started my second semester of teaching journalism, but my thoughts were with my parents and my brother, about three hours south of me in Dallas, Texas.

I had been living less than an hour's drive from them for the previous four years while I pursued my master's degree. I had been working for the newspaper in Denton, and I had covered Jimmy Johnson's first press conference as head coach.

I spent many Sunday afternoons watching Cowboys games with my father. Sometimes my mother joined us, although she was frequently busy with her grading (she was a first grade teacher, as I have mentioned here before). She would sit at the dining table and grade papers — and listen to my father and me as we watched the game.

When something exciting happened, she would stop what she was doing and come in to the living room to watch with us for a few minutes before going back to her grading. If I close my eyes, I can still see her in her bathrobe, a cup of coffee nearby while she graded her papers at that dining room table.

Anyway, the Cowboys were not very successful in those years. They won four games in my first two years of graduate school, then barely missed the playoffs in my third year. (I would have liked to finish grad school in two years, but I was hindered by out–of–state tuition rates.)

The next fall, the Cowboys finally qualified for the playoffs and won their first game but lost their second.

The following summer, I moved to Oklahoma. And wouldn't you know it? The Cowboys made it to the Super Bowl.

I almost felt cheated. After my parents and I had invested all those Sundays in watching as Johnson rebuilt the team, they finally climbed the mountain after I moved away!

The Cowboys were all the way back.

I wanted to go back to Dallas to watch the game with my parents, but I knew I couldn't. The game didn't start until late on Sunday, and I had to teach a class Monday morning.

Had I known that it would be the blowout that it turned out to be, I would have come to Dallas for the weekend, watched the first half and left for Norman around 7 p.m.

But, in fact, the halftime score was Dallas 28, Buffalo 10. I don't know if I would have regarded that sufficient to leave at halftime — and, if I didn't, I might or might not have felt that the game was on ice by the end of the third quarter, when Dallas' lead was 31–17.

I wish I had the memory of watching that game with Mom, but, in hindsight, it is probably for the best that I stayed where I was.

To put things in context, the Bills had trailed Houston in the opening round of the playoffs, 35–3, before mounting the most incredible comeback I have ever seen. Buffalo won that game, 41–38, in overtime. In January 1993, you simply could not count the Bills out.

The Bills had played in the previous two Super Bowls and lost both. Most NFL fans — myself included — wanted to see someone else — anyone else — represent the AFC. But the Bills were a bit defiant about winning, and they didn't care who pulled against them.

Well, anyway, knowing the road the Bills had traveled to Super Bowl XXVII, it was probably for the best that I stayed in Norman that weekend and watched the game in my home. The Cowboys scored three touchdowns in the final period to cap perhaps the most lopsided Super Bowl I have ever witnessed, 52–17.

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I still would have liked to watch it with my parents — especially my mother, who died a couple of years later.

In a game in which 69 points are scored, it's hard, if not impossible, to identify a pivotal moment. About all you can do, I suppose, is pick out memorable moments.

And Super Bowl XXVII had plenty of those.

I guess the one everyone remembers is the play when Buffalo QB Frank Reich fumbled the ball and Dallas' Leon Lett picked it up and began ambling toward the opposite end zone. The big man started showing off near the goal line, not noticing that Buffalo receiver Don Beebe had overtaken him.

Beebe knocked the ball from Lett's hands; it bounced into the end zone and out of bounds and was ruled a touchback.

The game was out of hand by that time, but it kept the Cowboys from setting a scoring record that would still be standing today. If Lett had scored, Dallas would have eclipsed the number of points the 49ers piled up on Denver a few years earlier.

That was a minor point, really. As I watched the final minutes of that game, I thought of my grandmother, a longtime Dallas resident and the only one of my grandparents who had been alive the last time the Cowboys won a Super Bowl but had been dead only a few years when Dallas routed Buffalo.

She was always proud of the fact that Tom Landry went to her church.

I thought of my other grandmother, also a longtime Dallas resident who died before Landry's second Super Bowl title but lived long enough to see his first.

And I thought of my grandfathers, neither of whom lived to see the Cowboys play in a Super Bowl.

I never really knew my grandfathers, but I think they, like most Southerners, loved football. That goes for my grandmothers, too.

I wondered what any of my grandparents would have said on that occasion 20 years ago — or of the Cowboys' long road all the way back to football's biggest stage.

'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.

Wide Right

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In terms of food consumption in America, only Thanksgiving tops Super Bowl Sunday.

And that makes sense, when you consider how many Super Bowl parties are held every year all across the country. People get together and eat chips, dip, wings, burgers, pizza, brats, nachos, you name it. One year, I went to a co–worker's house to watch the game, and he served brisket to his guests. Man, was it good!

For some people, Super Bowl Sunday really is about crowning a pro football champion. But for many, I fear, it has become a de facto holiday for gluttony.

Only two cities are directly involved in a Super Bowl, of course, but the game has transcended the boundary of sports championship and become an event.

I know some people who don't care for football, but they watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. I even have one friend who records the game every year. He and his wife go out for dinner, maybe see a movie, while the game is being played. Then, after they return home and the game is over, he fast–forwards through the game and watches the commercials.

How many other things can you think of — for that matter, is there anything else — that some people watch strictly for the commercials?

I'll have more to say about the Super Bowl, I'm sure, when this year's edition, in the still–so–new–you–can–probably–still–smell–the–paint Cowboys Stadium in nearby Arlington, is about to kick off.

But today I just want to reflect on one — the Super Bowl that was played 20 years ago today in Tampa Stadium, known as "The Big Sombrero" for its shape, which was demolished more than a decade ago.

(I say that, incidentally, just to give you an idea of where the game was being played. The location doesn't really play any other kind of role in this story.)

I don't know when the Super Bowl became the occasion for massive social get–togethers that it has become. Until I was in high school, I watched most Super Bowls at home with my family, sometimes with a few neighborhood friends. Since my college years, I have been to a few Super Bowl parties.

There have been several reasons why I haven't been to very many Super Bowl parties in my life.

In some years, I didn't go to Super Bowl parties because I was working on the sports staff of a metropolitan newspaper, and most of us had to work on Super Sunday.

Ordinarily, there isn't much else going on on Super Bowl Sunday, and we usually tried to transform the office into a modified football party. Folks brought in dip and chips, other snack foods, soft drinks, and we would watch the game. No cold beer, of course, which might have made the experience more memorable — or perhaps not.

But I remember attending a Super Bowl party on this day 20 years ago — and what was noteworthy about that occasion, what makes it stand out in my memory, is not the fact that I went to a party but the fact that it was one of the most exciting Super Bowls I've ever seen.

Of course, the company with whom I shared that experience was special, too. But what happened on the field is what everyone remembers today.

I've seen most of the Super Bowls, even going back to the time when they didn't call it the Super Bowl. Much of the time, unfortunately, the Super Bowl hasn't lived up to its hype. Most of the time, it's been over by halftime. There was just that formality of playing the final 30 minutes.

But a few Super Bowls have been exciting, and the one that was played on Jan. 27, 1991, certainly was.

I was in graduate school, and Kyle, my classmate, friend and co–worker at the local newspaper, invited me to a Super Bowl party at his house. He, his wife and a friend of theirs had invited me to join them in their annual ritual of predicting weekly NFL games that season, and Kyle's wife and I were tied for the lead going into Super Bowl Sunday.

(By the way, I don't think Kyle and I have ever watched another Super Bowl together, either before or since. But even though we're separated by nearly 1,000 miles now, we'll share a bond or two in this year's Super Bowl. We lived, worked and went to school a short distance from where this year's Super Bowl will be played — and our favorite teams are facing each other. Kyle, you see, is a Steeler fan, and I have always been a Packer fan.)

That party was a fairly intimate gathering, as I recall. Only a handful of us, really. Lynn served a multi–layer Tex–Mex kind of dip — one of those dishes with lots of beans and olives and onions and peppers and cheese and sour cream and salsa and all that tasty stuff — and we all nibbled on it while we watched the game.

Anyway, since we were tied for the lead, Lynn and I decided to use the Super Bowl as our tiebreaker. One of us would take one team, the other would take the other team.

Lynn asked me which team I wanted.

I decided to be chivalrous, and I told her to choose.

She took the Buffalo Bills, who were the seven–point favorites. That left me with the New York Giants.

I figured she would be on the winning side. A lot of people did. I don't think anyone — maybe not even the Giants themselves — believed they could stop the Bills' no–huddle offense.

And the Giants' offense, with backup quarterback Jeff Hostetler filling in for the injured Phil Simms, was suspect as well. They were often criticized for failing to score a touchdown in the NFC Championship game — but it was seldom mentioned that the Giants had to beat the two–time defending Super Bowl champions on the road in that game.

Five field goals had been enough to win on that occasion, and that was what it was all about. Winning.

It was ironic, really, that field goals figured so prominently in the Giants' victory in the NFC championship game — because a field goal attempt is what people always remember about Super Bowl XXV.

Buffalo's Scott Norwood came on to attempt a 47–yard field goal in the final seconds that would have won the game for the Bills. But he famously missed the kick and the Giants prevailed.

Last year, just before the Super Bowl, I wrote about an article that I had been reading in TIME about the top 10 Super Bowl moments of all time.

It mentioned Norwood's kick — and I agreed then (and I still agree today) that it belongs on such a list. But the author called it "a kick to forget."

I took issue with that.

"Unless you were a fan of the Buffalo Bills," I wrote, "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."

I can still remember ABC broadcaster Al Michaels exclaiming, "Wide right!" as Norwood's kick sailed a few inches outside the goal post.

That's about the size of it. I've watched replays of that kick many times in the last 20 years. I have yet to see anything that was amiss on that play.

The snap still looks good to me. The kick still looks normal. I haven't even seen anyone on the defense commit a penalty that could have allowed the Bills to try it again.

He just missed it. S**t happens.

I'm sure Norwood doesn't like to be reminded of that kick. He had other achievements in his career. He helped the Bills get to the Super Bowl for the first time. He became their leading scorer, eclipsing O.J. Simpson.

But he is remembered for that one field goal attempt in Tampa 20 years ago today. It truly lives in infamy.

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It has become a cultural flash point, of sorts. It served as the inspiration for an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond in which Raymond and Debra, while celebrating their wedding anniversary, decided to watch the video tape of their wedding — only to discover that Ray had accidentally taped over it.

He had taped Super Bowl XXV.

Debra sat there, stunned. "Did you hit something?" she demanded.

"No, it's still going," he replied.

"Then why am I seeing football?" she asked.

And a fight ensued that seemed to mark the beginning of the end for their marriage. But Ray wasn't giving in that easily.

To make it up to her, Ray went to elaborate lengths so they could renew their vows. Naturally, some people were curious about why they were renewing their vows, and Ray confessed that he had taped over their wedding video.

After the ceremony, Ray, the priest and most of the men sat down to watch the tape of the game. Some of them ranted about what a great game it had been.

As I recall, one of the characters — it might have been the priest — said he had never seen the ending. He had only heard about it, and he was excited to finally be seeing it.

The punch line was that somehow Ray's recording of the game stopped just before Norwood's kick — and the tape was showing the wedding footage again.

(That was funny but bewildering — for a couple of reasons, which I will explore briefly. For one, most football games take more than three hours to play, and Super Bowls usually go longer because of the lengthy halftime shows and the additional commercial time that is sold. When was the last wedding ceremony you attended that went for 3½ hours?

(Second, it was never really explained how the recording stopped. Perhaps the writers should have had Ray say something like, "Oh, yeah, now I remember. So–and–so accidentally hit the button on the VCR, and it stopped taping just before Norwood's kick!")

I'm sure Norwood wishes he could erase the memory of that kick as easily. But he's linked to it forever now. I predict that, whenever he dies, the first paragraph of his obituary will say, "Scott Norwood, whose missed field goal in Super Bowl XXV cost the Buffalo Bills a world championship, died ..."

It will be that way even if he wins the Nobel Prize. That might not be mentioned until the second paragraph.

S**t happens. Kickers miss field goals. Some husbands accidentally erase wedding videos.

Deal with it. Have some dip.

Football is Back

Tomorrow night's preseason game between the Buffalo Bills and the Tennessee Titans is nothing special — other than the fact that it is the game that is being played for the NFL Hall of Fame's induction weekend and it is a homecoming, of sorts, for Buffalo's Dustin Fox.

But, other than that, it doesn't mean anything. Unless something unexpected happens, it would be surprising if very many people remember much about Hall of Fame weekend by the time the regular season begins.

I expect they will remember it in Buffalo, though. Two of today's six inductees, defensive lineman Bruce Smith and the team's 90–year–old owner Ralph Wilson, played prominent roles in the Bills' glory days.

The other four inductees are Bob Hayes, Randall McDaniel, Derrick Thomas and Rod Woodson.

Obviously, the game won't count in the standings. The players have only been working out as a group for about a week. And what is probably the most intriguing storyline — Terrell Owens and his adjustment to upstate New York — is unlikely to have any additional chapters written tomorrow night. If you see T.O. at all tomorrow night, my guess is he will be on the bench, available only if absolutely necessary.

It will be nothing more than a scrimmage between the backups for two teams. And it may be a bit uncomfortable. Tomorrow's forecast calls for a high of about 90° in Canton, Ohio. With an 8 p.m. (EST) kickoff, much of the first half is likely to be played in daylight and it may be awhile before it really cools off, even after the sun goes down. The forecast low for tomorrow night is 70°, which sounds pretty good here in Dallas but I would expect that the game will be long over by the time the mercury falls to that figure.

The weather isn't as cool as most football fans probably want it to be. And the recognizable players won't be playing.

But it is still football.

I'm more of a college football fan myself. But it is football, and I'm ready to watch some football.

So tee it up and let's go.

Owens Lands in Buffalo

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Well, we didn't have to wait long to find out who was willing to pay for Terrell Owens' services as a wide receiver.

The Buffalo Bills signed him today, making Owens' tenure on the unemployment line one of the shortest — if not the shortest — of the current recession. The Bills gave him a one-year, $6.5 million contract. Not bad for a 35-year-old wide receiver.

I must admit, I wasn't sure what to think when I heard the news. I had lunch today with an old friend, and we talked about Owens, who had just signed with the Bills within the hour. I observed that Owens loves atmospheres where he can get a lot of media attention, like San Francisco, Philadelphia and Dallas — and there just isn't much media in Buffalo.

Of course, the media will follow Owens to Buffalo and, as long as he and the Bills are winning, the media will stay on the story. But if Buffalo reverts to form and starts losing games in bunches, the media will leave Buffalo rapidly. Who wants to hang around upstate New York with winter starting to move in to cover a football team that isn't going to the playoffs — again?

Clark Judge of CBS Sports thinks Owens and the Bills are a bad match. "Owens joined a team that makes less sense for him than he does for it," Judge writes, "and we're left with one inescapable conclusion: There just wasn't a market for the guy."

Ross Tucker of Sports Illustrated thinks the one-year deal makes sense. Owens typically behaves himself in the first year with any team, and coach Dick Jauron faces "likely his last year in Buffalo" unless he can produce a winner.

Nevertheless, Tucker wonders, "how is T.O.'s flash gonna play in blue-collar Buffalo? I mean, picturing T.O. in Buffalo is kind of like imagining the Queen of England at a monster truck show. Just doesn't seem to fit."

Clearly, Peter King writes for Sports Illustrated, the Bills think Owens is worth the risk.

And he agrees that Owens' history is an argument that favors the one-year deal. "One year is smart," he writes. "More than that, history tells us, is stupid."

Time will tell if the Bills are smart or stupid.

And, while we're waiting for the answer to that one, remember what Forrest Gump said.

"Stupid is as stupid does."