How Could Sunday’s Losers Come So Far Yet Play So Poorly?

In slight shock, you are reflecting on the championship football games Sunday and find it incomprehensible that two of the four principals could come so flat to events of such impact.

You are not going to minimize the skills of the two winners, Denver and San Francisco, but you are going to question the consummate pratfalls of the two losers, Cleveland and the Los Angeles Rams.

How could teams with such credentials humiliate themselves with what was tantamount to non-performance?

Cleveland played sporadically, but the Rams scarcely at all. With the Super Bowl beckoning, how could this team suffer a total flameout against an opponent it has played so close during the season?

Nothing about the Rams’ functions indicated we were looking at the Rams. Their quarterback was intimidated. Their receivers were, too.

And it was charity on the part of San Francisco that it didn’t beat the Rams worse than 30-3.

In the last stages, the 49ers played under wraps.

The Rams are not a young team, crystallizing in the precinct of the enemy. But, moving into San Francisco, they lost their rhythm wholly on attack, and on defense they couldn’t even tackle.

What happened to this troupe?

The Rams were so woeful on offense that they couldn’t even be victimized by crowd noise. They didn’t pose enough of a threat for San Francisco fans to bother.

In Denver, folks bothered plenty when Cleveland had the ball, giving the Browns some fleck of an excuse, but their plan for dealing with John Elway was almost comical.

You aren’t going to say that the Rams and the Browns lucked into the finals because they didn’t. Both dispensed good seasons.

Nor are you going to say that the 49ers and Broncos don’t impress you. All you’re trying to point out is that even if the best teams are going to the Super Bowl, the runners-up shouldn’t have made it as easy for them as they did.

Losing to the 49ers is no hanging offense, but the Rams were pathetic. The way they performed, you were thankful, at game’s end, that no one told them there was a bridge nearby.

Addressing the subject again of crowd noise at professional football games, you find that officials no longer show intention of enforcing the rule as it appears in the book.

Clearly, officials are winking at it. They have, in fact, done this ever since an exhibition game last summer when, in New Orleans, the Cincinnati quarterback asked for, and got, concessions from the ref three times.

Fearful the sport might get farcical, Pete Rozelle informed officials to water down judgments on noise infractions, and the upshot has been a sidestepping of the rule almost entirely.

When Bernie Kosar asked for relief at one juncture in Denver, the ref actually penalized Cleveland for delay of the game.

Anxious to avoid farce, the league now had turned the sport into broad burlesque.

The league must now decide whether it wants a crowd noise rule or doesn’t. It can’t keep the rule in the book, and never enforce it, if it wants to create the impression it is making sense at all.

Watching the 49ers perform against the Rams, you reached for your rule book to explain an extraordinary circumstance.

As a Los Angeles tackler clutched his leg, Roger Craig of San Francisco threw, and completed, a pass. It was negated on the ground that Craig was “in the grasp.”

But the rule book doesn’t provide for running backs in the grasp, just quarterbacks. How would officials escape from this one?

Creative little fellows, they announced the play was blown dead before the pass.

For a long spell now, we have been looking for the people in television responsible for what is called the “crowd shot” at football games.

What we are trying to find out is what motivates their choice of subject.

The crowd shots we see feature guys whose faces are painted blue and orange. They feature guys with ape faces, dog faces and hog heads. They feature guys stripped to the waist in temperatures of 30 degrees.

And they feature guys wearing hats, atop which sit propellers.

Looking at television, one comes to surmise a football stadium is populated only by the deranged. Don’t normal people go to games?

We may take a poll on this issue. For 95 cents, you will be invited to call a 900 number, answering the question, “Is America tired of looking at fruitcakes?”

There are two ways to judge Joe Montana’s passing against the Rams on Sunday. You can commend Joe for completing 26 throws.

Or you can applaud the Rams for stopping the other four.

It’s like Michael Spinks going against Mike Tyson. Spinks acknowledged he was knocked out in 91 seconds but reminded us, with pardonable pride, that Tyson didn’t kill him.