Local Fans Demand That XXII Live Up to Excitement Quota

Enough about airport welcomes, flowers in rooms, congenial chats with the media, sleeping through team meetings and arranging book deals.

It’s now time for the Washington Redskins and Denver Broncos to address the area of responsibility.

You see, San Diego is spoiled. And it has nothing to do with the weather. Heaven knows, it’s not spoiled by the weather, because heaven knows what it has wrought this winter in terms of rain, frost and wind.

San Diego is spoiled by bowl games. It has been served 10 courses of an event known as the Holiday Bowl, and all but one have been zesty and tasty down to the last drop.

This point is of consequence because the Redskins and Broncos are here for the Super Bowl, which generally has had about as much drama and uncertainty as a Soviet election. The first XXI such games have more often than not gone all the way down to the opening kickoff before deteriorating.

Indeed, a Super Bowl highlight film probably would last about as long as the commercials at the two-minute warning. Entire games have not provided as much excitement as Joe Namath poolside before Super Bowl III.

San Diego simply will not tolerate one of those 39-20 or 46-10 or even 14-7 contests. San Diego is not accustomed to watching two teams more concerned with not making mistakes than with making plays. San Diego would rather see these guys come out wearing lamp shades. It’ll take exciting buffoons over boring perfectionists.

Let the Broncos and Redskins match what the college kids have done all these years.

How about a game that goes something like this:

One team scores a touchdown to go ahead, 45-25, with 3:57 to play. It makes no difference which team. Visitors from Denver and D.C. and Madison Avenue, the uninitiated when it comes to bowl games at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, head for their private planes. However, San Diegans, the 100 who have tickets, will sit tight. They know better.

The team on the short end scores a touchdown, and the score is 45-32. The airport-bound visitors listen in their limousines, thinking it is much too late to be of any significance. Drive on, Jeeves.

But the team with 32 recovers an onside kick and scores again, and suddenly the score is 45-39 with 1:58 to play.

This was now a San Diego-style game building toward a San Diego-style finish, as made famous during the Chargers’ days of Air Coryell offense and Error Coryell defense.

Meanwhile, the visitors, some of whom had paid $3,000 for a seat, are now watching from the cheapest of seats in an airport saloon.

San Diegans are smirking. They knew all along it would come to this.

The team with 39 points blocks a punt to regain possession . Then comes the last play of the game with three seconds on the clock and the ball on the enemy 41-yard line. The ball is in the air as time expires. It’s a Hail Mary pass floating downward toward a forest of hands, arms and bodies.

Touchdown!

Bedlam. The formality of a PAT wins the game, 46-45, for the team that was so hopelessly, helplessly behind. More bedlam.

This scenario is a reasonably precise recollection of the 1980 Holiday Bowl. Jim McMahon threw exactly such a pass to culminate exactly such a comeback and give Brigham Young a 46-45 win over Southern Methodist.

And this was not an uncharacteristically exciting Holiday Bowl.

A quick rundown:

1978--Navy rallies from a 13-point second-half deficit to beat BYU, 23-16.

1979--BYU loses to Indiana, 38-37, after it misses a 27-yard field goal with seven seconds to play.

1983--BYU quarterback Steve Young catches the winning touchdown pass with 23 seconds to play to beat Missouri, 21-17, and give the Cougars the national championship.

1984--Robbie Bosco, BYU’s latest quarterback sensation, limps and gimps on a severely injured ankle but throws a touchdown pass with 1:23 to play to beat Michigan, 24-17.

1985--Arkansas’ Kendall Trainor kicks a 37-yard field goal with 21 seconds to play to beat Arizona State, 18-17.

1986--Iowa’s Rob Houghtlin kicks a 41-yard field goal with no time left to beat San Diego State, 39-38. (SDSU had scored with 47 seconds remaining to take the lead.)

These are tough acts to follow, but these are the kind of high-wire acts San Diego has come to expect in a bowl game. It doesn’t want Shakespeare in the stadium. It already has that in Old Globe Theatre.

This stadium, to be sure, brings out the wild and crazy in bowl games. This is a football Fenway. This is where anything can happen . . . and always does.

It’s up to the Redskins and Broncos to carry on the tradition of San Diego bowl games. It’ll help if John Elway catches a game-winning touchdown pass . . . or George Rogers throws one. Rich Karlis or Ali Haji-Sheikh can win it with a field goal, but only with 0:00 on the clock. However, it should be stressed that the eventual winning team should trail by two to three touchdowns at some point.

That is the way bowl games are played hereabouts. If the Redskins and Broncos can pull this off, this will be a Super Bowl finally worthy of the name. What’s more, San Diego will probably want the thing back.