These Teams Weren’t on Equal Footing

Football--along with building character and keeping America’s couch potatoes from clogging up the jogging paths every weekend--is educational.

Take last Sunday, for instance. I learned a lot watching the Bengals and 49ers beat the Bills and Bears.

Until Sunday, I thought Ickey Woods was where Al Davis has sent his coaching staff for its postseason vacation.

It turns out that Ickey Woods is the running back for the Cincinnati Bengals, the team with the ickey helmets. Woods ran for 102 yards and 2 touchdowns Sunday, despite a condition that the TV announcers referred to as “sticky turf” at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium.

Considered a growing problem rivaling crabgrass, “sticky turf” occurs on an artificial surface when the weather turns cold. Riverfront Stadium became an acre of flypaper. Nobody actually stuck to the sticky turf, but the footing was too good, messing with the natural running style of most of the players.

Apparently, Ickey was less sticky. After each of his touchdowns, Woods went into his Ickey Shuffle, the dance sensation that is sweeping the Bengal roster. Ickey’s teammates joined him Sunday, introducing the Ickey Woo Woo, an offshoot of the Shuffle, patent pending.

The Woo Woo caught the Bills by surprise, illustrating why coaches consider it vital to keep pregame practices closed to the press and public. Had the Bills gotten wind of the Woo Woo, Buffalo Coach Marv Levy would have appealed to Pete Rozelle to outlaw the dance as unsportsmanlike.

But even though Ickey pulled it off, there is concern in Cincinnati that he showed too much too soon. Should Woods have saved his Woo Woo for the Super Bowl? You don’t want to show all your cards too early.

Another theory, however, is that Woods has an even more elaborate dance ready, a conga line anchored by Bengal Coach Sam Wyche and called the Ickey Choo-Choo.

Anyway, by halftime, the Bills were in deep Woo Woo. They saved too much of their intensity for after the whistle and after the game, and they won’t be with us come Super Sunday.

In Chicago, meanwhile, footing also played a big part in the game. Instead of sticky turf, the 49ers and Bears had to contend with no grass at all, a surface that will someday be marketed as Lack O’ Turf. The 49ers and Bears skated around on green dirt that was frozen to the firmness of Italian marble.

The players went through so many shoe changes that this game will go down in history as the Imelda Marcos Bowl.

Some pregame analysts predicted doom for the 49ers, who would be undone by the ferocious Midwest weather. The 49ers, obviously running scared, brought truckloads of foul-weather gear to Chicago. They brought everything but a 22-man hot tub.

The 49ers are a finesse team whose coach plays tennis and whose team mascot is probably a French poodle. The weather, said the experts, would kill the delicate 49er spirit.

One Chicago radio DJ knew better. He realized his team was in trouble and that desperate measures were called for. He urged his listeners to go to the 49ers’ hotel in downtown Chicago the night before the game and keep the players awake by banging trash-can lids.

From this, we learn how much electronic journalism has evolved over the years. I don’t remember this kind of creativity from Walter Cronkite.

As brilliant plans go, the trash-can bit ranked just ahead of Mike Ditka’s idea of starting Jim McMahon at quarterback. If Ditka’s plan was to keep Mike Tomczak fresh for the Super Bowl, it worked perfectly.

The weather in Chicago was “man’s weather,” according to John Madden. When the TV cameras showed the Soldier Field luxury boxes, where fans sit in glass-enclosed comfort, Madden fumed: “Those people shouldn’t even be here! That doesn’t even count! If you can’t take the elements, you should stay home.”

Madden, no doubt, opened his press-box window to let in some fresh, manly air.

Aside from the magic of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, what stood out in this game was the work of the NFL instant replay officials. Once, with the “Instant Replay Delay” clock, superimposed on the screen, ticking past 3 minutes, Madden bristled, “They (replay officials) see the same pictures we do, I don’t know why they’re taking so much time!”

This is why: The replay officials are skittish, indecisive men who are looking for solid evidence that a play should be overruled. If our nation’s judicial system insisted on evidence as ironclad, we would shut down all our prisons and save a lot of money.

On the replay of the Jerry Rice touchdown catch in the end zone, which was ruled (by field officials) no catch, the replay officials should have said: “It’s pretty clear to us that the feller caught the ball despite hitting the ground. He didn’t trap it or bobble it. Give him the TD.”

Luckily, it made no difference. The 49ers poured it on anyway, and by the fourth quarter most of those hardy Bears’ fans were heading out to the Soldier Field parking lot to start their postgame tailgate parties.

The 49ers couldn’t have been more impressive if they had played the second half barefoot. They were easily the best team in action Sunday.

Advice to Bengals: Put the Shuffle and Woo Woo on the back burner and send your equipment man out for trash-can lids.