Broncos Fit Nicely Into Louisiana Scenery

Making a cursory inspection of Bourbon Street, you open with the logical question. “Why did we purchase Louisiana in the first place?”

Then for Super Bowl XXIV, they boost the price of seats to $125, up 25% from the year before. No reason is advanced, except you figure the NFL has earmarked the money for the savings and loan bailout.

The visitor is fleeced by hotels, restaurants, bars, and ticket brokers, establishing an appropriate environment for a counterfeit game, won by San Francisco, 55-10, in a golden edifice called the Superdome.

The match is dedicated to Terry Bradshaw, former Pittsburgh quarterback, who opens Super Bowl Week by labeling Denver’s John Elway a nobody.

He also says, in effect, that anyone ignorant enough to pick Denver would look for the Continental Divide to cross Scranton.

Long ago, Bradshaw lost most of his hair, not needed, listeners conclude, by one talking as if he has no head to be covered.

But the sagacity of this philosopher isn’t reckoned with. Nor is that of Bill Walsh, Maven of Market Street, who proffers his prediction. Quoth the Maven: “San Francisco by 35-17.”

Next heard from is Dick Vitale, arriving on the scene not knowing a football from Bananas Foster.

“Blowout City, folks!” cries Vitale. “The 49ers laugh all the way.”

With all this erudition volunteered beforehand, it is little wonder the game is watched in this country by more than 100 million, including viewers at the federal lockup in Miami where the game is seen by the international sportsman, Manuel Noriega.

Manuel asked for bail but gets only the Super Bowl, showing the kind of luck he is having.

But, in his depression, he is still happier than Denver, which blows its fourth Super Bowl in four attempts and has the misfortune of meeting a standout team on a day Denver couldn’t have been less gifted.

As the game goes on, Elway can’t hit the side of the Old Absinthe House. His receivers can’t catch and his secondary can’t cover.

Denver would have to train diligently to come up worse for a championship game than it did. Roughly 35 minutes are played and San Francisco already has 41 points.

Suspense now develops concerning whether the Broncos will shoot for the Super Bowl record of 46 points given up by a team in one game.

New England posted this mark against the Bears in 1986, and is eager to see it wiped from the books.

“Records are made to be broken,” announces Denver, and, with a flourish, permits the 49ers to run up 55.

It is the rawest kind of humiliation and it becomes necessary to remind Denver that if one can’t play football in New Orleans, one at least must play the clarinet or piano.

Otherwise, there is no place for one in this town.

San Francisco comes into the game claiming Joe Montana has a sore elbow, Ronnie Lott a bruised thigh, Tom Rathman a pinched nerve and Roger Craig the flu.

Thank God, Denver mumbles, the 49ers weren’t in good shape.

The Broncos depart the scene with only one triumph. They buy something in New Orleans known as a biegnet, a doughnut without a hole.

“It was a good deal,” the Broncos allow. “The way things went here, they could have sold us the hole without the doughnut.”

Now, of course, it is left in the afterglow for connoisseurs appraising this 49er team to decide whether it is better than the ’27 Yankees.

The ’27 Yankees are always the standard by which championship teams are measured, meaning you are asked to judge whether Joe Montana has posted marks that will make the world forget Babe Ruth.

In the NFL playoffs this season, San Francisco decimated the Minnesota Vikings and the Rams. It decimates Denver worse, leaving you to wonder where the San Francisco skill factor ends and the Denver pratfall begins.

Is San Francisco that good, or did Denver perform in such a way that you asked children watching to leave the room?

“In our mature judgment,” Denver may tell you, “we saw flecks of encouragement in the game with San Francisco. In none of the four quarters did San Francisco score 35 points against us, as Washington did in the second quarter of the 1988 Super Bowl. That was a Super Bowl record for giving up points in a single period.”

“Was your plan to space it out this time?” Denver is asked.

“We worked on it all week. In no quarter did San Francisco score more than two touchdowns. Now you tell us whether that isn’t encouraging?”

The fact that the 49ers couldn’t break the Washington scoring record for one quarter may keep the owner of the club, the Family DeBartolo, from boosting the payroll, already the highest in the league.

Shopping mall builders and operators, the DeBartolos boast 64 million square feet, ample room for Mrs. Fields to sell all her cookies.

The way the Broncos looked Sunday, they should have been home baking them.