Guess Who Dominates Spotlight?

“Elvis has left the building,” Kansas City defensive end Neil Smith announced after watching Joe Montana exit stage right.

They were at a hotel ballroom together Friday, shooting the cold breeze about their upcoming AFC championship game against the Buffalo Bills to be played in the arctic outdoor ballroom of Rich Stadium. The outside world cannot wait to find out whether Mr. Super Bowl himself, Montana, will soon be appearing in another one, before he eventually moves on to, well, whatever it is Joe Montana intends to be doing once he is done playing football.

Hmmm. Good question.

Joe, what will you do when you are done playing football?

“I’m going to go join Michael (Jordan) with the White Sox,” Montana answered.

In fine form off the field, where he is not as naturally comfortable as he is on, Joe worked the room with the ease of Elvis. He got laughs. He opened up a little. He did everything but throw a scarf to the crowd. Joe Cool was cool.

Question: “Joe, what would it mean to you to win another Super Bowl ring?”

Montana: “Well, it would mean I’d have to get a bigger storage box for my safe.”

He proceeded to give a more serious answer, because by nature Joe Montana is no more flip than he is glib. He explained that it mattered not “whether it’s your fifth or your sixth or your 10th or your first” Super Bowl, because football players are in the business of winning football championships. Nobody cares if you keep coming back for more like a hog. Nobody sets out to have a nice little season. You crave it all.

“Only one team wins,” Montana said, “and everyone else is going to be looked upon as a ‘loser,’ so to speak. That’s the way the players will look at it, too.

“Winning, that’s all there is.”

He understands the exaggeration, even as he says it. Given the slightest opening, Montana can carry on with the best of them about faith and family coming first. But the man is 37 now and has been asked every question so many times that occasionally he audibles a new answer. He never gets entirely tired of talking about his team, no matter which team it is, but he does get weary of talking about himself.

Question: “Joe, some of the Bills are saying they’re sick of hearing about Joe Montana all the time.”

Montana: “That’s because you keep talking about it.”

Whether psyching themselves up or out or what, the Bills, true enough, have been known to observe how much attention the Chiefs’ quarterback has been getting, whereas here they are, bidding for their fourth consecutive Super Bowl themselves. A man who will be breathing down that quarterback’s neck, Buffalo’s Bruce Smith, was positively emphatic on that point, saying: “All we’ve heard about this week is Joe Montana, Joe Montana, Joe Montana. That’s fine, man, but there are going to be some other people out there, you know.”

Kansas City’s Smith, who has said he idolizes Buffalo’s Smith, can understand why someone would want to get at Joe Montana. After all, the man’s a superstar, a legend, a living one.

“He’s Elvis. He’s the Colonel. He’s a leader,” Neil Smith told some reporters, laughing.

“You guys think he’s God. He’s not God. He’s not that. He’s just everything else.”

A pretty big star himself, as the NFL’s sack leader, Neil Smith nevertheless has never been a Super Bowl superstar. When someone offhandedly wondered whether famous athletes such as himself worry about their safety after seeing the grotesque incidents involving tennis players and figure skaters, Smith said: “You mean Joe, not me.”

Montana’s well-being has always been of concern. It means so much to his team. On the field, because of his tender elbow, back ailments and various other pains, everyone around him worried about reports that the Houston Oilers were putting everything short of a bounty on Montana’s head, hoping to blitz, blitz, blitz and physically knock him out of commission. Football is a rough business, remember, not a rough game.

So, it does not ease Montana’s mind that Buffalo is not much for blitzing.

“Yeah, right, and soon as you say that, they blitz the heck out of you,” Montana said.

What motivates him to succeed this season is not so much a desire for a larger strongbox in his safe, but a desire to, along with his Canton-bound backfield partner, Marcus Allen, show the rest of their new teammates what a Super Bowl actually looks like, firsthand. Kansas City’s owner, Lamar Hunt, helped create and even name the Super Bowl. He personally hands out the conference championship trophy. Should the Chiefs win here Sunday, the Lamar Hunt AFC Championship Trophy will be presented to them by . . . Lamar Hunt.

“The Chiefs have been there (the Super Bowl), but most of these players haven’t,” Montana said. “I’m very appreciative of this opportunity to get back again. You always remind yourself that it may be the last opportunity you ever have.

“I sat there with O.J. Simpson doing an interview the other day, thinking about his great career and how he never made it to a Super Bowl. I never take it for granted. Never.”