SPORTS What’s So Super About The Super Bowl?

This January, the Super Bowl turns twenty-one, and. frankly, it is time the game grew up. Surely by now this event should have hit puberty, perhaps be mature enough to hold hands with, maybe go on a date with, say, the Orange Bowl. The Super Bowl could at least manage a little adolescent ogling with a game close to its own age: baseball’s League Championship Series (LCS), that once painfully pubescent event. After all. for sustained drama and entertainment, the Orange Bow) has long been a glittering beauty queen. The LCS, especially after a dazzling 1986, has matured into vintage Jane Russell, But the Super Bowl is still stuck as a knock-kneed kid with crooked teeth who hides behind all the makeup and wardrobe the media can bestow.

Belittling the Super Bowl may seem like saying God has bad hands, but the question must be asked: what puts the Super in this Bowl?

The Super Bowl is not completely void of anything noteworthy, but it’s too close for comfort. Sports historians can admire the surgical precision and dominance of the Packer teams of SBs I and II. the dramatic significance and future ramifications created by the Jets victory over the Colts in SB III, the legitimizing of “high-tech” offense with Hank Stram’s multiple-set victory over the Stone-Age Vikings in Game IV, and the 4-0 record of the Steelers in the Seventies. But with scarce exceptions, the actual sixty minutes of football that occur annually on the third Sunday in January can be best described as somnolent, not Super. For every great game-Pittsburgh 35, Dallas 31 (1979)-we endure a half-dozen snoozers like Oakland 32, Minnesota 14 (1977). where the only fourth-quarter excitement is in counting the number of times the TV announcers say, “You know it’s not over ’till it’s over!”

Just from the standpoint of semantics, the Super Bowl is the most inappropriately named sporting event of our time. And the problem with the Game is the games themselves. Shouldn’t a “Super” game hold your attention into the fourth quarter? Yes, but that usually requires a close score. Of the twenty SBs played thus far, fifteen have been decided by ten or more points. Only four have been decided by five points or less. The average margin of victory is more than two touchdowns. By my standards. Super Sunday has given us only five good games. No discerning fan can claim more than seven.

Three Super Bowls can be considered excellent: Super Bowls XIII (because it was in all respects) and X and V (the only games in which the team with the final possession was tied or behind with a chance to win). Two games have been very good: SBs XIV (well played and tight, deep into the fourth quarter) and XVII (plenty of big plays on both sides). Two games have been so-so: SBs XVI (a 20-0 half time lead built mostly on mistakes, a tedious comeback interrupted by a fine goal line stand) and III (one case in which the pre-game hype actually made the game more interesting). Twelve have been duds: SBs VII and IX by virtue of complete boredom, and ten others, a decade’s worth, because they were hopelessly one-sided.

One can forgive and forget the first two games, in which the overmatched and intimidated AFL succumbed to one of the game’s great dynasties. Call those the Infant Bowls. The Jets and Chiefs in SBs III and IV may also have been outmatched, but they refused to be scared. Their wins in these Upstart Bowls helped bring about the merger of the NFL with the AFL. As the game developed and began to show potential, we had the Formative Bowls, mostly stumbling but with flashes of occasional dexterity. In the game’s teen years. SBs XVI and XVII made us think we could trust the Super Bowl to be consistent and responsible; these were the Dad-CanBorrow-The-Car? Sure-Son Bowls. Then came the collapse, with the hype now out of control: SBs XVIII, XIX, and XX were rude, self indulgent, immature, and just plain ugly to be around- the Puerile Bowls.

If the Super Bowl is to become the kind of institution that the World Series (the ultimate American sporting event) has become, it must develop a deeper more specific history. For the SB to be mature enough to both vote and drink-except in Irving, of course-let alone have some down-to-earth visceral appeal, it must produce, more often than not, classic games of gut-wrenching tension, not to mention a plethora of trivia questions stemming from pivotal plays; it should have heroes, goats, and spectacular boners that affect the outcome of games-players and plays that will be remembered for as long as the game endures, names that instantly conjure up specific images. Without these, which are commonplace with many other sporting events, it is difficult to take the Super Bowl half as seriously as it takes itself.

Look at something as simple as SB trivia. There have been two prime Super Bowl moments from which such information springs: the last-second field goal in SB V that allowed Baltimore to beat Dallas; and, of course, the best/worst play in the event’s history, Garo Yepremian’s “pass” attempt in SB VII, in which a blocked Dolphin field goal landed in the hands of the diminutive kicker, who summarily tossed it to a charging Redskin, thus providing the opponents with their only touchdown.

It should be more than just common knowledge that Jim O’Brien kicked that winning field goal, making the young Cowboys a quick 0-1 in Super Bowl play. O’Brien’s name ought to be breathed in reverence alongside Bobby Thompson and Bill Maz-eroski when last-second heroics are the topic, But it isn’t. But has anyone even heard of Jim O’Brien? His feet-uh, feat-as well as his name are mostly forgotten. Yes, one can argue that O’Brien’s later career went nowhere and that he deserves obscurity. But so did the career of Don Larsen, who pitched the World Series’ only perfect game one October afternoon in 1956. Thirty years later, his name is indelibly etched in sporting history, despite a lifetime record of 107-114.

As far as Garo the Cypriot Quarterback is concerned, we all know that he tossed the “pass,” but who blocked the field goal Garo was attempting, thus setting off the ludicrous play and offering seven seconds of redeeming excitement against 59:53 of sheer boredom? And who was holding? And who scored the touchdown? (In order, Bill Brun-dige. Earl Morrall, Mike Bass.) If a similar blunder had occurred in a World Series, every detail would be a permanent part of our sporting memory. Is it just fate, or Garo’s good fortune, that the play is only an insignificant blip in the ebb and flow of the game?

All right, there is Jackie Smith’s agonizing dropped pass in the final moments of the Cowboys’ loss to Pittsburgh in 1979. Surely that play is seared on the memories of all who saw it. But one play in twenty games, 1.200 minutes of football, that both invokes memory and emotion and had a direct bearing on the game? That’s a pretty poor percentage.



Look at some basic comparisons. By the time the World Series was twenty years old. fans had seen the legendary Ty Cobb-Honus Wagner matchup; a four-teen-inning complete game victory by a hard-throwing Red Sox lefty named Babe Ruth; the Chicago Black Sox scandal; and an unassisted triple play. All of these events occurred more than sixty-five years ago, yet many youngsters know about them today. Baseball’s League Championship Series, two years younger than the Super Bowl, also started slowly with some bad mismatches and suffered from being a new event, an automatic sin against the sacrosanct purity of baseball’s ancient system. But the LCS has rebounded to produce the heated Yankee-Royals rivalry in the mid-Seventies and Chris Chambliss’s ninth-inning homer (1976). not to mention the 1986 clash between the Astros and the Mets, which needs no explanation.

What will survive the first twenty Super Bowls other than some former jocks-turned-commentators? The three plays we just discussed may linger in the memory, but we yearn for more. We want heroes.

Essentially, one lasting reputation has been made in the Super Bowl, that of Joe Namath. Skeptics could argue that other things, like Namath’s brashness with the press and his “Broadway Joe” lifestyle, contributed. Of course. Namath’s New York Jets won the game, the first victory by the upstart AFL over the big, bruising NFL. Of course Namath was a first-rate passer. But remove Matt Snell from the Jets backfield, delete his 121 yards (without a carry over twelve yards; I’m talking ball control), and Joe Willie’s induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame might have been postponed a few years.

On the other hand, we have Jim Plunkett. The former Heisman Trophy winner was on the NFL scrapheap when he was signed by the Oakland Raiders. The master of disaster when it came to untimely interceptions, Plunkett had practically been booed off two NFL teams in a disappointing career. In 1980, after a full season on the bench, injuries to the Raiders” starting quarterback forced Plunkett into duty in the fifth game. He led the team into the playoffs and on to win the 1981 Super Bowl, in which he was named the game’s MVP It was the first of two Super Bowls he would quarterback and win. Does he have a place in the mythic lore of fallen heroes who return to lead their team in triumph? Does he even get any respect? Hardly. One would think playing a pivotal role in the sport’s ultimate Game would count for something.

Eerily, the Super Bowl seems to be a Bermuda Triangle, not a showcase, for the game’s greatest players. Reggie Jackson is justly renowned as “Mr. October” for his World Series feats. But where is football’s “Mr. January”?

Consider Super Bowl XX and the 46-10 pounding Chicago gave New England. The stage seemed set for Walter Payton, the game’s all-time leading rusher, about whom it is weak praise to say he is rewriting the record book (he is writing his own book, and it will sit alone on a shelf above all others). Almost all the elements of myth and grandeur were there. For much of Pay ton’s career, he was all the Bears had to offer. He gave of his body in a way that had ruined runners before him. And now he had finally made it to the Super Bowl.

Naturally, Payton did not have a particularly good game. He gained sixty-one yards on twenty-two carries and scored no points. In the third quarter, when the only thing in question was the Bears’ margin of victory, the Bears twice had the ball inside the two-yard line, and it seemed that Payton would at last have his shot at Valhalla. But no; on the first occasion Jim McMahon, the Bears’ NewWave quarterback, took the ball in himself. On the second goal line attack the call went to William “Refrigerator” Perry, the media man-child of 1985, a blubbery defensive tackle who had been inserted into the backfield earlier in the season for short yardage situations. The chance was there to allow the modern game’s greatest player to shine in what should be the sport’s showcase event, and instead, a lumbering media event gets the call. A super game by Walter Payton would have been memorable and poignant. And, true to form, it didn’t happen.

Of course one can cite reasons why the Super Bowl is such a non-spectacle. The fact that it is one game instead of a series, for instance. But so are the Orange Bowl, the Final Four Championship game, and myriad other sporting events that provide more excitement. One can argue that the true thrill is in reaching the Super Bowl, a feat that takes the edge off playing well and trying to win. But why climb to within 100 feet of the summit of Mount Everest, then turn around and go home? And then there is the ever-present hype. How can players have two weeks of distractions and still play well? How can a game meet the expectations of a media barrage more suitable to a Papal visit?

Looking at the factors that have made the few Super Bowls good-and made other historic football games great-we can isolate the two elements that make for great Super Bowls: horrible playing conditions and the Dallas Cowboys.

Probably the most famous NFL game of all time was the championship game of 1967, the “Ice Bowl” game played in -13°F temperatures in Green Bay. The Packers beat the Cowboys 21-17 as Bart Starr scored with only seconds remaining.

The Ice Bowl was drama itself, a struggle of titans against each other and against nature. But you will never see a game like that in the Super Bowl, which is played only in southern climes or indoors, removing almost all possibility that the elements will affect the game. This is a mistake. Overcoming the elements has been a part of the NFL since its beginnings. Think of the old NFL, and you think of the frozen tundra of Metropolitan Stadium in Minnesota, or Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. By sterilizing the game environment the league has robbed the SB of legendary performances like Gale Sayers’s six touchdowns in the mud against San Francisco, or Paul Hornung’s ghostly dismantling of Baltimore in the Maryland fog. Everybody knows Savers was a great back, but those who saw him dance and swerve, so supremely nimble in the worst playing conditions, perhaps know it better than others. The Super Bowl could use some of this magic.

My proposal is simple: send the game around the league in alphabetical order by team name (Bears. Browns, etc.).* If it’s Cleveland, 12° and sleeting, then play the damn thing in Cleveland. Brian Sipe produced more excitement in that stadium in two years than SBs have created in twenty. If the league would rather pick a permanent site, then so be it. There is a great little stadium about two miles south of Juneau that would be perfect.

The second missing factor may take a little more tinkering with the game, but it willpay huge dividends. Of the three games thathave provided any last-minute excitement,the Dallas Cowboys, a team to which I haveno particular allegiance (go Packers!), havebeen involved in all three. Unfortunatelythey have lost all three, but the Cowboys’presence was integral in keeping spectatorsawake into the waning minutes. If only tosave the integrity of the game, a systemshould be established in which the AFCchamp would play the NFC champ (assuming it’s not the ’Boys) some Tuesday morning in Butte, Montana, Then the winnerwould be shipped off to Juneau to face thewaiting Cowboys. This format is 100 percentguaranteed to produce more excitement thanthe series of ho-hum drubbings we’ve endured over the last two decades.