Bills Can’t Kick About Outcome

Well, if Bruce Smith goes to the next “Show,” as he chooses to label the Super Bowl, he will be asked to make his way to an old fur-trading post at the top of the Mississippi, where the 1992 match is booked.

The location is called Minneapolis and the average daily temperature in January runs 12 degrees, which is beside the point, if you want to consider other locations run colder.

Why Minneapolis was selected for this extravaganza is a long story, the essence of which is an argument that develops between NFL factions favoring a northern city for the Super Bowl, contrasted to those favoring southern or western.

The northern guys cite but one kill, namely, Pontiac, Mich., in 1982, and they complain the voting isn’t fair, especially since places in the so-called north offer stadiums with roofs.

In Pontiac, the Siberian Express visited the area in the week preceding the game, leaving the countryside under a layer of ice.

Driving conditions were so bad that Bill Walsh, then coach of San Francisco, a principal in the Show, ordered his troops to abandon their team bus and walk the last quarter-mile to the stadium.

Bidding for the ’92 game, Minneapolis guaranteed a better arrangement, and neighboring St. Paul generously invited visitors to its Winter Carnival, featuring ice carvings chiseled by artists using chain saws.

When square dancing also was promised--”quick-step your way through winter”--the owners opposed to northern Super Bowls were unable to resist, and they agreed to a compromise.

If northern advocates would vote Super Bowl XXV to Tampa, southern and western advocates would yield to Minneapolis the next year.

With this stroke of political horse trading, the deal was struck, grudgingly on the part of some. One owner confides:

“Take a good look at Minneapolis in ’92. That’s the last northern city the majority will go for.”

One is sorry to hear this, because Minneapolis might be cold but makes up for it with an annual average snowfall of 43.4 inches.

OK, so Tampa is warm. But one strolls through town, looking about, and says to himself: “I have been coming here every year for the last 35 years and never expected Tampa to die before me, but it did.”

The way things developed in Super Bowl XXV, the offense of the Buffalo Bills passed away, too, a fact acknowledged readily in the aftermath by their erudite coach, Marv Levy, slightly staggered that the blame should be laid on his kicker, Scott Norwood.

As you will recall, Norwood missed a 47-yard kick on the next-to-last play, leaving Buffalo to expire, 20-19.

Giving thought and reflection to events of that evening, Levy concludes:

“When one team (the New York Giants) holds the ball 41 minutes and the other (the Bills) holds it 19, the team holding it 19 has no business winning. Don’t blame the kicker.”

There is still another point Levy wishes to advance in behalf of Norwood.

“We didn’t blow the game in the last eight seconds,” he says. “We blew it long earlier by missing tackles and dropping five passes. Why must it be reported that we lost because the kid missed a kick at the end?”

It usually is reported that way for reasons of convenience, giving the author an easy handle by which to grab an issue noticeably more complicated. It is more dramatic, too.

Baseball often is reported in that fashion. A 10-10 tie is broken in the 12th by Mickey Hatcher’s pinch-single. His team wins, 11-10. Mickey did it.

But how were the first 10 runs scored and what about the six pitchers Mickey’s team used?

For reasons of convenience, the guy batting in the last run gets the credit, or the pitcher yielding it gets the blame, despite a multitude of other events that shaped the outcome.

Still, Ralph Wilson, owner of the Bills, feels Norwood is luckier than a kicking predecessor at Buffalo, Booth Lusteg, who once missed a field goal from the nine-yard line on the last play, costing Buffalo a game against San Diego. Wilson recalls:

“Driving home from the stadium, Lusteg was forced off the road by a car carrying three angry Bills fans. They beat him up. Afterward, we asked Booth if he reported it to the police. He answered: ‘No, I deserved it.’ ”

The Levy theory would hold that he didn’t, in the light of what happened during the first 59 minutes 59 seconds.

But since logic doesn’t always dictate the thinking of Buffalo fans, it may be advisable for a while for Norwood to stay out of his car.