Commentary : San Francisco Is Full of Jerks--Go With Miami

Once again, tens of millions of Americans must take a stand, make the hard choice. By Sunday afternoon, we must pick a team to cheer for in the Super Bowl.

For those who live in the competing cities, the decision is easy. They will be swept up in an outburst of mindless loyalty to a horde of mercenary thugs who happen to work a few months of the year in their towns.

But for the rest of us, whose favorite mercenary thugs didn’t get this far, we have to choose between cheering for the employees of the Miami and San Francisco football franchises.

Sure, we could ignore the entire affair. But that would border on the un-American. Even the President is going to take time out from his inauguration weekend to flip the coin for the opening kickoff. This is the first time a President has ever flipped the Super Bowl coin. It leads us to hope that if wrestling ever becomes popular enough, maybe the commander-in-chief will referee a tag-team match.

Anyway, let’s consider the options, which are not ideal. I’m not talking about the teams, both of which are outstanding, but the cities.

I never choose a team on the basis of its players. Instead, I consider the cities they represent and which population I would like to see happy or miserable.

Neither Miami nor San Francisco is a real football city. In a true football championship, you would have Chicago playing Pittsburgh, or Cleveland against Detroit.

In other words, smokestack cities, cities of tattoos, broken noses, missing teeth, bottle scars, shots, beers and soot-covered snow.

A football game should be played in mud and snow, with a wind-chill factor of 20 below, the blood freezing on the noses and lips of the combatants, and the fans staying alive through regular transfusions of Jim Beam.

But we must make do with what we have.

There’s no question that San Francisco is the loveliest city in the United States. It is to this continent what Paris is to Europe.

Besides their beauty, San Francisco and Paris have something else in common. They are both populated by a remarkable number of insufferable jerks.

An example of this jerkishness could be found in the writings of a San Francisco sports columnist after his city’s team beat the Bears in the recent playoff game.

Did he conclude that the victory simply meant that his team was better than our team?

No, he announced that the victory proved--more than anything else--the superiority of the California life style over the Midwestern life style.

That from somebody who lives in a city where many of the male fans view the quarterback standing behind the center as an erotic experience. It’s enough to make me an earthquake fan.

So the choice has to be Miami. While it is not a traditional American football city, it’s moving in that direction. It regularly has minority riots, the local drug kings fill the air and each other with bullets, the politicians are developing a rich tradition of corruption, and the Mafia is involved in all kinds of civic activities. All it needs is some snow and sleet, and it would be a pretty good town.

Besides, there’s a little bar a couple of blocks from the Fontainebleau Hotel that is a hangout for a crowd that averages about 80 years of age. Most of them are retired garment moguls from New York.

The last time I was there, a guy named Sol, who was wearing a purple shirt and light-green slacks, was sitting with his girlfriend, who wore two pink hearing aids, and they were cheering for the Dolphins on TV.

When the game ended, the Dolphins had lost, and the girlfriend was so depressed that she ordered a double Tokay wine.

But Sol just smiled very knowledgeably and said: “Hey, there’s nothing to be sad about. It must have been fixed, so our guys made a bundle.”

That’s always the mark of a real champ--being a good loser.

BD Mike Royko is a columnist in Chicago.