Super Bowl Can Get By Without Visit From Bills

Potential Super Bowl matchups to root for:

1. Kansas City-San Francisco. Joe Montana vs. Steve Young. And you thought the Bay Area shook in ’89.

2. Houston-Dallas. For the undisputed heavyweight championship of Texas, with Buddy Ryan vs. Kevin Gilbride on the undercard. Yeee-haw!

3. Raiders-New York Giants. Where Jeff Hostetler, emerging giant among Raiders, attempts to show his old mates that 1990 was no fluke.

4. Kansas City-Green Bay. Where it all started, XXVIII years ago. Many great Max McGee stories worth retelling.

Potential Super Bowl matchups to root against, with all the blood, sweat, passion and vigor a human being can possibly muster:

1. Buffalo-Dallas.

2. Buffalo-New York.

3. Buffalo-San Francisco.

4. Buffalo-Green Bay.

It cannot happen again.

It must not happen again.

It is almost impossible to conceive, considering the back-to-back blowouts against Washington and Dallas, the change in general managers, the defection of six free-agent starters before the season and the fodder they have provided stand-up (and sit-down) comedians for the past 12 months, but there the Buffalo Bills are again, two home victories away from a record fourth consecutive Super Bowl appearance/disaster, the team to beat in the AFC . . . before somebody from the NFC stomps the stuffing out of them.

Single-handedly, the Bills have all but killed off the Super Bowl, rendering the concept meaningless, the point moot.

College football has no credible method of deciding a champion, only a bunch of corporate-subsidized bowl games and a system that disregards a victory by No. 2 over No. 1 while awarding the national title on the basis of which coach the sportswriters like best. Yet when college football looks at the results of the last three Super Bowls--average score: Buffalo 20, Other Guys 38--it straightens its lapels and says, “Uh, thanks, but we’ll stick with what we’ve got.”

Bill Clinton, who hated seeing what Buffalo’s football team did to his good name last January, tried to enact legislation banning the Bills from all future Super Bowl competition, but Bob Dole filibustered it to death.

Don Shula loaded up on old all-stars--Keith Jackson, Keith Byars, Irving Fryar--in an attempt to derail Buffalo before the playoffs, a humanitarian gesture that won him Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year award. But Shula’s best all-star, Dan Marino, blew out an Achilles’ tendon and the Dolphins lost their last five games, enabling the Bills not only to back into the AFC East championship but the conference’s home-field advantage as well.

Can anyone stop them?

For the moment, all hope rests with the Raiders, Buffalo’s second-round opponent on Sunday. Imagine: For one week, for the first time in 34 years of late hits and assorted Al Davis skulduggery, the Raiders have been designated “America’s Team.”

Two days ago, they were “America’s Thugs,” but that was before they completed a three-game sweep of Denver and stepped on up to the icebox. Now, an entire country wishes them well: Godspeed, Art Shell, may the road rise with you--and may the wind-chill factor be conducive to your kicking game.

Even Pete Rozelle is probably pulling for them.

But what chances do these wild-card Raiders have on the frozen artificial tundra of Rich Stadium? Remember the last time the Raiders ventured to Buffalo, for the AFC championship game in January, 1991? Buffalo covered the spread, 51-3.

But that was before Hostetler and before last month’s regular-season meeting in Buffalo. The Raiders won that one, 25-24, triggering a 4-1 stretch run that got them back in the playoffs.

Beyond the Raiders, it’s either Houston or Kansas City. Finally, Joe Montana and Buddy Ryan have something in common--another once-in-a-lifetime proposition.

Houston lost to Buffalo earlier this season, 35-7, but that was back in early October, when the Oilers were so discombobulated by Ryan’s presence that they were losing to everybody who wandered into the stadium, even the Rams.

The reason for Ryan’s presence: That 35-3 lead Houston blew against Buffalo in the first round of the 1992 playoffs. The Oilers hired Ryan, severe personality defects and all, for one express purpose: Don’t let it happen again.

Kansas City owns a better track record than Houston--the Chiefs beat Buffalo in November, 23-7, at Arrowhead Stadium--but the Oilers have the home field. Could Kansas City do it again, in Buffalo, if need be?

The Chiefs have two chances, and two chances only:

If Montana plays . . . and if Montana plays.

In the other conference, Green Bay plays at Dallas and New York plays at San Francisco. Big deal. The outcomes of those pairings are irrelevant. Whoever wins, and wins the week after that, will defeat Buffalo in the Super Bowl. Probably by five touchdowns.

That’s why the only playoff games that matter belong to the AFC. Three challengers left. Two more opportunities to halt the decline of western civilization.

If the Raiders win next week, I say Al Davis gets the Nobel Peace Prize.