Even the Titanic Stayed Afloat a While Longer

Well, at least the Bears didn’t eat anybody.

Ever hear of Little Big Horn? Remember the Maine, do you?

How about it, see any of Joe Louis’ early fights? Newsreels of the Titanic?

If you didn’t, don’t worry. Just get yourself a film of Super Bowl XX. Don’t run it in slow motion. Unless you’re the kind of guy who can watch an execution on a full stomach, don’t run it at all.

It was the football equivalent of all the natural disasters you can think of off-hand. It was as one-sided as a flood. If it was a contest, so is a train wreck.

The New England Patriots were as helpless as a canary with the cage open and the cat loose.

It wasn’t a game, it was a mugging. The last time anybody got beat up this bad, one of the sides had rubber hoses. Or claws. It was the kind of pounding you give to somebody you’re trying to make confess. The Humane Society should have gotten an injunction.

The Grabowskis belted the Yuppies out on their $20 haircuts. It wasn’t very scientific. An old-fashioned alley fight with the lights out. If it happened on the streets, they’d call the cops.

The Bears aren’t very genteel. Some teams tend to remove the football from you. The Bears remove you from the football. It’s quicker.

The Patriots weren’t overmatched, they were overwhelmed. They showed up in red, white and blue, but by the first quarter they were black-and-blue. These were the modern equivalents of the Minute Men, all right. That’s all they lasted, a minute. Let Longfellow write a poem about this bunch. Where was Paul Revere when they really needed him?

Their quarterback hasn’t completed a pass yet. To complete a pass, first you have to have the ball. As far as quarterback Tony Eason is concerned, the ball arrived with a 6-5 character named Richard Dent attached. He should have called time out and begged of his center, “See if you can get me the ball before No. 95 gets here. It’s hard to throw him and the ball.” There were times in the shotgun formation when Dent was waiting for it with the quarterback.

Come back, Dieter Brock, wherever you are. All is forgiven. The Patriots’ quarterback left the game in the middle of the second quarter about in the condition of a guy who has just flown 50 missions through flak or seen his own ghost. The Patriot line should have had turnstiles.

The Patriots know what Custer must have felt like. They had arrows sticking out them from every direction. They died with their boots off. And guns holstered. In fact, in their sleep.

The Bears scored on them every way they could except by sea. The human refrigerator scored. But, that’s nothing. A real one could have scored behind that line.

Even by Super Bowl standards, the game was a clunker. I mean, how would you like to have paid $500,000 for a commercial half-minute of the fourth quarter if you were an account executive? How about $1,000 for a pair of seats? You had to be the mayor of Chicago to have liked this game. The game was over as soon as Chicago got the ball. The Bears didn’t appear to know New England had showed up. They should at least have issued the Patriots blindfolds.

Analyzing the victory is like analyzing a lion eating a rabbit. It was like Woody Allen sparring with Larry Holmes. You didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The star of the game is between 6-3 and 7-feet tall, weighs anywhere up to 300 pounds, has 2.7 children, is 12 units short of graduation at some football factory, drives a Japanese car and is either a Republican or Democrat and has a median income of $150,000. It answers to the name Richard or Dan or Steve or William or Mike or Wilber. Its last name is Hampton or Singletary or Dent or McMichael or Perry or Marshall.

In other words, he’s a composite. The star of this game was a six-headed garrison known as a pass rush. It was as unstoppable as a glacier and as pitiless as the noon-day sun in the Sahara, a bunch of guys bearded like apostles who hit you like trucks with the brakes burned out.

They awarded the game ball, so to speak, to Richard Dent as kind of surrogate for the group, but this was one game where victory came by committee. The quarterback, a cocky kid with a million-dollar arm and a five-and-dime attitude had his moments, but this team didn’t need a quarterback. All it really needed was a kickoff specialist.

They have this Star Wars defense put in by this guy who looks like a small town druggist and answers to the unlikely name of Buddy. It’s supposed to be complicated, but it looks about as complicated as a wrecking ball. You get the feeling it works best with a bunch of guys who are built along the general lines of oak trees with legs, but who are we to argue with science?

The New England Patriots were knocked flat enough to mail home. But, for Chicago, it was just another Valentine’s Day massacre. Open fire and step over the dead. You’d think the Capone gang just came back.