SUPER BOWL XXI : THE GAME : Though Prediction Bombs, Game Also Isn’t Real Big Treat

I am sitting in the press tent just west of the Rose Bowl.

Super Bowl XXI is history.

I am sitting at one of a number of long tables at which perhaps 200 other historians are pecking away at portable computers, racing against their far-flung deadlines.

I am bent over my portable computer.

I am thinking that whatever words I add to the torrent now being written about Super Bowl XXI, it will be like going over Niagara Falls in a canoe.

The man on my right, tapping away at a Radio Shack, just turned to me and asked, “What was the final score?”

I know that much, anyway.

Just in case you spent the afternoon in a dungeon, the final score was New York Giants 39, Denver Broncos 20.

It grieves me to say that. As you may remember, I predicted last Thursday that the final score would be Broncos 20, Giants 17.

Look at it one way, I wasn’t so far off. At least I had the Denver score right. How many sports experts can say that?

Also, I noticed that Pete Axthelm, sports columnist for Newsweek, who is in the hierarchy of experts, right up there with Jimmy the Greek, predicted that the final score would be Denver 19, Giants 17. Notice that I was even with him on the Giants, and my Denver score was one point closer than his.

As for the game, it was a case of Tarzan against the elephant herd. Could the young Stanford kid with the slingshot cut down the thundering herd?

As it turned out, he couldn’t.

But they will have to say that John Elway, the Denver quarterback, had his moments.

On the first play of the game, if I remember right, he ran for a first down.

Then in seven plays he took the Broncos in for a field goal.

I say “if I remember right” because, not having instant replay, I rarely knew what had happened. They do have a big instant reply at the Rose Bowl, but the resolution isn’t very good, and they only show the play once.

I’m afraid I’ve been conditioned by too many years of watching football on TV. On TV, time is refracted. You not only see a replay of what has just happened, you see it several times, from various angles. It gives you a sort of God-like perspective.

Not only that, you have John Madden and all those other experts to tell you what happened. Madden even draws instant diagrams, showing what everybody was doing.

It’s a shock to see a play live, so to speak, and realize that that’s it. You aren’t going to get a second shot at it.

Not only that, but I was counting on my wife to be my statistician.

In that first drive, Elway completed a 24-yard pass to the New York 39-yard line, but without instant replay I didn’t know who his receiver was.

“Who caught that pass?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was watching the guards.”

In preparation for the game I had asked her to read John Madden’s latest book. Madden says the only way to know what’s going on is to watch the offensive guards.

Actually, I had meant to watch the guards too, but on that first play I found myself keeping my eyes glued to Elway. He’s a lot more interesting than the guards.

I had an idea my wife wasn’t really enjoying the game. We had almost been late. We’d attended a luncheon party at a restaurant in Pasadena and had come to the bowl by bus. The bus raced over the freeway, then descended into the Arroyo Seco, through those curving streets among live oak trees, and ended up immobile in a gridlock of buses. When we could see the bowl, about three-quarters of a mile away, we got out and walked.

Once through the gate, we walked through the crowd around to our tunnel. I couldn’t understand why everybody seemed to be going the other way. The tunnel was so crowded that I began to feel claustrophobic.

“If there’s an earthquake, there’s going to be a panic,” I said. “Just press back against the wall.”

“You think of everything,” she said.

Our seats were 65 rows up on the southeast side, so that we were looking into the sun. We seemed to be sitting in a row of people who either had to go to the rest room every six minutes or had to go out for fodder.

I suspect that this restiveness is also a product of TV conditioning. We are no longer disciplined enough to watch an event if we can’t get up and go to the bathroom or get something out of the refrigerator every six minutes.

I felt uneasy when the Giants went ahead, 7-3, on a series of passes by Phil Simms and runs by Joe Morris. They looked invincible.

“You’re right on track,” my wife pointed out. “If the Broncos score two touchdowns and kick another field gold, that’s 20. And if the Giants get another touchdown and kick a field goal, that’s 17.”

She always sees the brighter side of things.

Then Elway put together that beautiful drive that took the Broncos from their 42-yard line to a touchdown, Elway going in for the score himself on a four-yard run. That put the Broncos up 10-7 and I began to have fantasies of utter vindication.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that was high tide for the Broncos.

Fortunately I didn’t see it when Rich Karlis missed that first of two missed field goals for the Broncos in the second quarter. A young woman wearing a blue sweater and tight tropical print shorts squirmed by in front of me just as Karlis stepped into his kick. She ground a heel on my foot. I heard my wife say “Ouch” as the woman passed her.

I couldn’t believe it when I saw the officials signaling that the kick was a miss. I knew the Broncos couldn’t afford to miss any field goals.

The Broncos held the Giants on their next series, but got the ball back at their own 15.

“That’s bad field position,” I told my wife. “They’ve got too far to go.”

“I sensed that,” she said.

I had an idea she was catching on.

I was proved all too right in a minute or so when Elway was sacked behind the goal line for a safety. That cut the Bronco lead to 10-9.

Also, it made it very difficult for the Giants to wind up with a score of 17.

Of course they could do it if they got another touchdown but failed to make the extra point, then got another safety. Somehow I didn’t think it would go that way. Anyway, I was smarter than Axthelm. He had actually picked a final score of 19.

The woman in the tropical shorts came back. She stepped on my wife’s foot again and my wife said something. “Watch it!” I think it was. The young woman glared at her, stepped on my foot and squirmed on to her seat, glowering.

There was definitely bad blood between them.

A female colleague of mine was sitting two seats to the right of my wife. A man was between them. He had had too much beer and kept falling asleep, his head falling on the young woman’s shoulder.

I leaned over and asked her how she liked the spectacle.

“I’d rather be at home,” she said. I had an idea she echoed my wife’s sentiments.

With 18 seconds left to go in the second quarter, Karlis missed another field goal.

I groaned. “They can’t give up six points in a Super Bowl game and hope to win,” I said.

“They’re still going to win,” my wife said, not sensing the avalanche that was about to fall on the Broncos.

Still, the halftime score was promising. If both teams scored the same in the second half, the Broncos would win, 20-18, and I would be only one point off.

There is no point in trying to describe the halftime show. It was indescribable.

“Busby Berkeley must be spinning in his grave,” my wife said.

In the second half, the woman in the tropical shorts made three more trips, in and out, including her final departure. I could sense that the hostility was growing between them.

Finally my wife complained. “Why do you have to step on my foot every time?”

Grinding a heel into my toes, the woman turned on her. “Why do you have to be so rude?” she said. “You’re a very rude lady.”

“At least she called you a lady,” I pointed out.

Early in the second half the sun went down. So did the Broncos’ hopes.

The Giants got the kickoff. Somewhere near midfield, they were down to fourth and one. They went for it. They made it.

That was the end of the game for the Broncos. The Giants went on to score and take a 16-10 lead.

Somewhere in the third quarter my colleague left for the day. The man who had been leaning on her shoulder fell over.

The Giants kicked a field goal, making it 19-10. So there was a way to get Axthelm’s 19 points after all, but it was the wrong team.

When the Giants went ahead, 26-10, my wife was still optimistic. “All we need is two touchdowns and a field goal,” she pointed out.

Looked at that way, it didn’t seem so hopeless. But before long it was 33-10 and people started leaving. The young woman in the tropical shorts was among them. She stepped on my foot as she went by, but when she passed my wife she stumbled. I realized with a shock that my wife had tripped her.

Her antagonist turned angrily. She said, “You are rude and crabby, and what’s more,” she added, with a flip of her derriere, “you’re uncultured.”

“If this is culture,” my wife said as we were caught in the mass of bodies surging through the tunnel when the game was over, “then I’m uncultured.”

We had survived our first Super Bowl

I have an idea it was our last.