Day Had More Surprises Than Best of Cartoons

Stop this crazy thing! --George Jetson

At least I think it was George Jetson yelling on my television set as Joe Montana rolled out in the first half of Sunday’s Super Bowl.

George Jetson doing TV play-by-play? Apparently it was a problem with my cable company, a glitch that tragically wiped out the audio on a Merlin Olsen flower commercial and spilled over into the actual game telecast.

Why did we hear the Jetsons’ theme song and then George’s desperate plea, instead of the regular play-by-play? Are George and his family lost in cartoon outer space, trying to make contact with us?

That was just one of the mysteries and surprises of Super Sunday. There were many others.

For instance, there was the startling innovation unveiled in the first half by Bill Wyche and Sam Walsh, or whatever their names are.

Instead of the no-huddle offense, both teams came out featuring a no-offense huddle.

Who woulda thought that bottles of beer, which don’t have arms, let alone hands, would hang on to the football better than Roger Craig?

But the surprises started even earlier, in the stupendous, fabulous, no-huddle, 2-D pregame show.

Some people may have thought that NBC would bow to National Football League pressure and duck the sensitive issue of the Miami riots. The Miami inner-city neighborhoods had settled down since the riots earlier in the week, but when your Super Bowl city is smoldering, only a long field goal away from one of the teams’ headquarters, that would seem to rate a mention on the pregame show.

And it did. It rated a mention. Pregame host Bob Costas kicked off the 2-hour pregame show by quickly mentioning the riots that “rocked the city several days ago.”

Then Costas announced that at last we can all get down to enjoying the game, “remembering, of course, that it’s just that--a game.”

That brief mention got the riots out of the way, and the subject never again reared its ugly head.

This was a little surprising, considering that NBC’s executive sports producer is Michael Weisman, who also called the shots at the Olympic Games in Seoul and enraged the entire nation of South Korea with his extensive coverage of a bunch of Korean boxing officials getting a little worked up.

Yet the riots in Miami merited less news coverage during Sunday’s Supercast than did student riots in Seoul, which rated film footage at halftime. To his credit, however, Weisman did not show replays of the Olympic boxing riot.

Look, I know sports is supposed to be our island of escape from the cares of the world. But in a 2-hour pregame show, you’d think NBC could send a mini-cam crew to Overtown to give us a brief update on the situation there.

Fortunately there was time for a scintillating 5-minute skit by NBC’s “Golden Girls,” discussing matters like football players’ cute rear ends.

There was even time for a segment on how Super Bowl commercials are filmed.

Those important features, and other bits, such as Marv Albert’s wacky blooper clips, served their purpose, which was to give TV viewers a chance to use the restroom and get refreshments and not miss any of the commercials.

The only memorable segment of the pregame show was the NFL player talent contest, in which five players really did show some talent. However, emcees John Candy and Ahmad Rashad couldn’t have been sillier, or flatter, had they joined the Golden Girls in discussing rear ends.

When talent contestant John Scully mentioned to Rashad that Scully’s wife had gone into labor during the week, Rashad said, “This is sort of like labor, performing for these people.”

Using Lamaze breathing techniques, I made it through the Rashad-Candy segment without much discomfort.

Then the Bengals and 49ers played a game. Olsen, in his pregame analysis, said the gusty wind at Joe Robbie Stadium was most likely to bother finesse-thrower Joe Montana.

Evidently Olsen missed the 49er-Bear playoff game, when Montana shot down the Bears in a Chicago storm with the single most brilliant quarterback performance of the NFL season.

The only real danger the wind posed to the 49ers was that a rogue gust might slip under the oversized shirt collar of Bill Walsh and sail him out of Joe Robbie Stadium like a human hang glider.

Olsen, possibly upset because his flower commercial had been fritzed, occasionally babbled.

“There is a sense of emotion being magnified in this game,” Olsen said at one point.

And: “You have a sense of this being a day of missed opportunities for the 49ers.”

Missed and blown. The wind or the emotion or something got to Bill (The Genius) Walsh in the first half, when he made the bonehead call of the season. The 49ers had fourth and one at the Bengal two, and Walsh went for the field goal, which failed.

Two yards away from kicking the Bengals in the teeth, Walsh elected to bring the game’s most dangerous 1-2-3 backfield--Montana-Roger Craig-Tom Rathman--off the field in favor of a rookie field goal kicker.

Maybe George Jetson was jamming Walsh’s headset. Walsh, seeking to establish his place in football history, was the last guy you expected to suffer an attack of Super Bowl-induced nervous conservativism.

You sensed a sense of Walsh wimping out here, losing faith in his offense.

It would have cost him a Super Bowl, were he not bailed out by the only true genius there--Montana.

Three Super Bowls, two MVP awards and one assist, three Super Bowl championships. . . . You get the sense that Montana, if he wasn’t so old and so frail, such a finesse player, so vulnerable to adverse weather, would be a pretty good quarterback.

The final irony: After a completely unpredictable week, in the most unpredictable event in sports, the Super Bowl was decided on the most predictable and reliable play in sports--Montana to Rice and Friends.

Nobody could stop ‘em. Not the Bengals, not Walsh, not Olsen, not George Jetson.

There was a sense that, in the end, it all made sense.