No Matter That Score, No Regrets

Now what? An apology? Must I be sorry for picking the Rams? For being stupid enough to pick against the San Francisco 49ers?

Sorry, I’m not sorry.

Better to be a believer and wrong than to be a critic and correct. Isn’t that the way it works?

Into each life, a little rain must fall. No, make that a lot of rain. The Rams have never won a Super Bowl, true. Neither have the Broncos, Browns, Buccaneers, Bengals, Bills, Chargers, Cardinals, Oilers, Falcons, Patriots, Seahawks, Saints, Eagles, Vikings or Lions. Did I leave anybody out?

It really poured on the poor Rams Sunday in San Francisco, wouldn’t you say? On the soggy sod of Candlestick, John Robinson’s boys got swamped. Squish family Robinson.

I was rooting for the Rams, from afar. Made no secret of it, either. Sat there in Denver watching Cleveland get orange-crushed, certain that the same thing could never happen to ol’ Ramsters.

Then they went out and lost by 27 points. That’s four touchdowns. The Rams got treated like Miss Daisy. They couldn’t drive themselves. And they got run right out of town.

They couldn’t even pass. The only points the Rams got all day were scored by a guy wearing one shoe. Even Flipper Anderson didn’t get his feet wet. He just floundered around, same as everybody else.

Oh, well.

Thanks for a nice season. Nobody can say the Rams weren’t interesting. They hit some speed bumps along the way, but they made an impact.

Thanks, Jim Everett, for good leadership and good fellowship. Thanks, Greg Bell and Robert Delpino, for making us miss Eric Dickerson less and less. Thanks, Willie Anderson, for every flip, every flop. Thanks, Doug Smith, Jackie Slater, Tom Newberry, all of you, for every blockbuster block. Thanks, Mike Lansford, for all your sure-footed barefootin’. Thanks, Mean Kevin Greene, for being a wild man on the field and a mild man off it.

Next year, we check out Cleveland Gary in the backfield, we bump the cornerbacks back to safety, we do a nip here, a tuck there and see what happens. See if we can’t do something about this hold San Francisco has on everybody’s throats.

Meanwhile, we’re left with San Francisco and Denver for Super Bowl XXIV, and fair is fair. They deserve to be there.

Joe Montana, John Elway, they’re Hall of Famers in the making, the two best quarterbacks in the game today, two of the best ever to take a snap. You can sit there and rave all day about Tittle, Unitas, Baugh, Graham, Layne, Namath, Tarkenton, Bradshaw, whoever, but you will never convince me that any of these men played the position any better than Montana and Elway do.

Both came back from forms of adversity. Both deserve a lot of credit for it.

For Montana, it was a bad back, an injury that could have--should have--put him on the shelf for life. He worked, worked and worked some more, returning to become not merely as good as before, but better. When Montana is on his game, you swear there was nothing ever wrong with him, and nothing he can’t do.

For Elway, it was a bad scene, a “suffocation,” as he called it, that kept him from enjoying life in Colorado. The Bronco quarterback began to feel there was too much expected of him, too many demands on his time, too many intrusions into his privacy. He even took up residence in Palm Springs, to get some peace and quiet. Well, we wouldn’t want to intrude any more than necessary, but Mayor Sonny Bono ought to throw a parade for him.

Watching the warfare between Montana and Elway in the Battle of New Orleans should be worth the price of admission, for those willing to pay it. Jim Everett vs. Bernie Kosar wouldn’t have been bad, but this is better--or, at least, should be better.

Super Bowls have a habit of bringing out the boring in even the most exciting football players. So, we’ll see. The final score will probably be something like 21-10.

I only know one thing for sure.

I know now that it’s crazy to pick somebody to win when nobody ever really knows how something is going to turn out.

Premature predictions are not wise to make, even when you know, you absolutely know, that San Francisco doesn’t stand a chance of beating Denver in this game, not a chance.