Failure Dilutes Success of Bills

All right, class, what do William Jennings Bryan, Harold Stassen, Sam Snead, the Minnesota Vikings and Denver Broncos have in common?

Answer: They couldn’t win the Big One.

They are that saddest of history’s figures, successes who come into focus as failures.

Lots of golfers haven’t won the U.S. Open. In 100 years, only 79 have. But few players have finished second four times without winning.

Lots of teams have never been to a Super Bowl. But Minnesota has been. Four times. Denver has been. Four times. That’s just the trouble.

Is it honor enough just to have been at Thermopylae? Not in the age of “Just win, baby!” or “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”

The Buffalo Bills are now standing on the threshold of infamy. They have done what only one other team in history has done--gone to three consecutive Super Bowls. The catch is, the other team (the Miami Dolphins) won two of its three. The Buffalo Bills have a chance to lose all three. In fact, the gamblers expect it. You like the Bills, you get seven points.

The Bills have one thing in common with the Super Bowl’s other flops--an all-world quarterback. Minnesota had Fran Tarkenton, Denver had John Elway--and the Bills have Jim Kelly. So far, it hasn’t been enough.

Fear of failure is probably the most insidious emotion you can bring to a sporting event. Or anything else. It can manifest itself in two ways: Either you play defensively, you try to cut your losses, protect yourself from humiliation, make up your mind that, if you lose, you will lose with dignity. Or, you can play recklessly, take cancerous chances, behave like a cornered animal with nothing to lose.

Neither game plan carries with it much potential for success.

A team that goes into a Super Bowl with a great quarterback and not much else is risking wipeout. It is like a fighter going in the ring with a great right hand but no jab or footwork to back it up. Elway’s Broncos lost Super Bowls by scores of 39-20, 42-10 and 55-10. That’s go-get-false-whiskers-and-a-fake-name-and-sneak-out-of-town stuff. The prevailing opinion was, the Broncos were like the Abominable Snowman. Ferocious at altitude, comatose at sea level.

The Vikings lost more respectably, but not much--23-7, 24-7, 16-6 and 32-14. They brought a dogged defense to the party. The Purple People Eaters more or less dominated the line of scrimmage--until they got to the Super Bowl and got ate.

Buffalo can bring credentials of its own. Pass rusher Bruce Smith is a people eater all by himself, but he has Cornelius Bennett, Shane Conlan and Darryl Talley to hold his coat, i.e. take care of the non-pass plays.

Buffalo is going to have one advantage: This is its third consecutive Super Bowl. Ergo, it has experience. Dallas has not been to a Super Bowl since 1979, but experience does not make a zebra a match for a lion.

If Buffalo goes into the game like a guy entering Dracula’s castle, trying to look over both shoulders at once, nervous, skittish, given to silent screaming, suddenly noticing his host sleeps in a coffin, the game will be what Yogi Berra called “deja vu all over again.” The NFC will roll to its ninth in a row and the point spread--now 297 to 125--will get wider.

The competition between the two conferences has begun to look like tanks vs. horses. But are the Cowboys the maneaters the NFC usually fields this time of the year?

Mark Rypien was not exactly the second coming of John Unitas--or even Joe Theismann--in last year’s Super Bowl, but the Washington defense forced Kelly into passing the ball 59 times. And we all know what that means. Even though he completed 29 of them, he was intercepted on four of them and sacked five times.

If Kelly has to go back to pass 64 times this week, everyone but the Dallas cheerleaders will have gone home by the third quarter.

Buffalo has a date with history. Teams have lost four but no one has ever lost three Super Bowls in a row. That takes a degree of concentration on ineptitude few can bring off. That puts the Bills in a category with the Vikings, the Broncos and every guy who ever turned over a hole card and it was a trey.

Denver was a good, game loser. It kept trying to get back to this haunted house as recently as four Super Bowls ago. Minnesota more or less threw in its hand after the Oakland Raiders’ wipeout of 1978.

William Jennings Bryan ran for President three times. The closest he got score-wise was 271-176 (electorally). Stassen ran perpetually, some say even posthumously.

When Adlai Stevenson lost twice in a row (to Dwight Eisenhower), he declined to run a third time, saying “I do not wish to be the William Jennings Bryan of this generation.”

Buffalo might consider issuing a decline-to-run on the same grounds. On the other hand, this is a team that had the perfect opportunity to skip this appointment in Samarra. The Bills were down, 35-3, with only about a quarter left to play against Houston. They could have gotten out of going to Super Bowl XXVII right then and there. But these goofy guys didn’t understand the situation. They went out and won, 41-38.

Let’s hope they don’t regret that next Sunday afternoon.