Commentary : After Blowout, Are Giants’ Prospects Bleak?

Something in the nature of pro football doesn’t love a close Super Bowl game and wants it blown open. Just as curious, there’s also some perverse force that doesn’t love the team that wins such a runaway.

What everyone has noticed for XXI years is that Super Bowl games seldom have a fourth quarter. The issue’s been settled by then. Rival TV networks even anticipate this and schedule hot movies to begin an hour before the Super Bowl’s due to end. Grab the channel switchers.

While we all know that 15 Super Bowls have been decided by double-digit margins and that only four have been settled by less than seven points, there is an unknown Super Bowl corollary: The larger your margin of victory, the worse you perform the following season.

The New York Giants should enjoy their hour of inflated, perhaps even grossly exaggerated glory. Here’s why:

The last 10 teams who did what the Giants did--win a Super Bowl by more than two touchdowns--fizzled the next season. Not one of the 10 (spread over the last 20 years) repeated as champion. Far more shocking, only one of the 10 even reached its conference championship game. Two had losing records the next season. Another missed the playoffs. Four were eliminated in the first round as meek wild cards.

When you win the ultimate game in ultimate fantasy fashion, when you’re not only the best but head-and-shoulders best, what do you do for an encore?

Usually, you rest on your laurels, become a multi-media celebrity, grow stagnant strategically, and fall flat on your rich and famous face.

Was that Lawrence Taylor in a Superman suit in the Giants’ locker room? Think that towel-waving Phil McConkey will get a few endorsement offers? He and Phil Simms already have signed deals to tell their life stories. What about those boogeying Giants at midfield after the final gun? Could they be talked into a Super Bowl Shuffle II video?

The Giants may live in Jersey now; they may shop at 7-Eleven and drive RVs. But they can see Manhattan, and perdition, on a clear day. Abandon hope, all ye who come under contract here.

Perhaps Chicago’s William Perry is the best illustration of what Super Bowl success does to marginal players who attract attention because of quirks.

Perry did print advertisements for Alberto-Culver, Georgia Pacific, Mr. Big Paper Towel, Long Underwear, Hair Care Products, Duke Manufacturing, Levi-Strauss, Shakespeare, Drexel Burnham and Carrier Transicold. The 300-pound Bear banked $300,000 for an appearance at Wrestlemania 2 where he was--hold your breath Bill Parcells, this could be L.T.--picked up and thrown out of the ring by Big John Studd (6 feet 10, 367 pounds).

The Refrigerator even got $7,500 for attending a bar mitzvah. They say everybody has his price. But The Frig was a one-man closeout sale.

A whole team doesn’t have to go for the greed to lose its collective edge. It’s enough if a few key folks forget their diets or their weightlifting.

From the days of Hank Stram and the Kansas City Chiefs (“The I formation’s The Offense of the ‘70s”) to Mike Ditka and the Chicago Bears (whose 46 was supposed to be the defense of the ‘80s), the NFL has followed this pattern.

“It’s really tough to handle great success and come back with the same hunger,” said Washington Redskins General Manager Bobby Beathard. “I picked the Giants to win big, and I’m glad they did. I’ve told myself they won’t be able to handle it either. From what I saw Sunday, they might be the first team so good that they can. But I hope I’m wrong.”

Coach Parcells is the man who kept the Giants’ hat size in check all year. “I heard Parcells really laid into them the minute they got in the locker room after they beat us, 17-0,” Beathard said. “He chewed them for everything they did wrong. He’s got a knack of knowing how to keep them on edge.”

But how do you chew out a team that wins the postseason, 103-25? Will these Giants among men listen when reminded that 12 of their regular season games were decided by 10 points or less?

The only good excess is utter excess. And that’s been the Super Bowl’s calling card. The pre-game hype is only approached by the post-game analysis. However, what we’re just beginning to suspect is that these Super Bowl distortions may have a ripple effect.

Is it possible that huge buildups contribute to huge blowouts? And, in turn, can these routs lead teams down the primrose path of self-infatuation?

We’ll never prove this, but let’s pose it anyway. Good NFL teams show remarkable resiliency in crisis. They don’t just give second effort. They give 10th or 12th effort. Every time a team suffers any body blow--a turnover, a failed drive, a score by their foe--they must regroup and attack again.

Isn’t it possible that two weeks of ballyhoo, plus the very real pressure of a championship game, leave teams with far less than their usual resiliency? When one team makes a strong midgame surge, the way the Giants came from a 10-7 deficit to a 16-10 lead, the other club is simply not able to respond as it usually would in the regular season.

Given two weeks to wind themselves into subliminal knots, Super Bowl teams play on the edge of emotional control like manic depressives swinging between joy and despair. Our old football friend, momentum, becomes Mr. Momentum, Sir. Once an excellent team draws blood in such a setting, its ears just na’cherly lay back against its head.

This Blow-Out-To-Bust syndrome has been around for 21 Super Bowls. It’s probably here to stay a while. So, don’t worry too much about the Giants next season. They probably took care of Denver, and themselves, too, last Sunday.