Maybe Football Is Hell for a Buffalo Fan

Marv Levy is the host of a radio talk show in Buffalo, and the Bills’ coach told Steve Jacobson of Newsday about a man who called him every week.

Said the caller: “Coach, I want you to know you’re not doing the right thing. You’ve got to tell your players this is war; football is war, it’s war, I’m telling you.”

So Levy decided to tell the caller about Art Donovan, a defensive lineman of the Baltimore Colts who knew both war and football.

“And,” Levy said, “Artie told me, ‘Believe me, football isn’t war.’ But the caller kept it up and kept it up. So last week, I finally told the guy, ‘I’ve done you a disservice. I checked back in history and interviewed a bunch of guys who landed on the beaches of Iwo Jima and Normandy. And when they went in, they were all yelling, ‘This is football!’ ”

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Trivia time: What was unusual about USC’s 1976-77 basketball season?

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Surprise guest: Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman will be on the “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno tonight, which is no great surprise. He was on after last year’s Super Bowl victory.

The surprise came Monday night. While Leno was reading a joke about Gatorade sales dropping because no one would drink anything that dissolved in Cowboy Coach Jimmy Johnson’s hair, Leno acted as if he hadn’t seen that one. Then he noticed that Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly was holding the cue card.

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Pleasant interlude: Among the top 10 things Buffalo Coach Marv Levy said to his team at halftime of the Super Bowl, according to David Letterman.

No. 10: “We won! Woo! We’re Super Bowl champs!” and No. 7: “Now get out there and rest on your laurels.” There were also No. 5: “What do you mean there’s two more quarters?” and No. 4:. “Let’s plan exactly how you’re gonna dump the Gatorade on me.” And No. 1? “Hey, fellas, more fudge?”

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Still painful: As soon as Buffalo won the AFC championship and was headed for the Super Bowl, former Minnesota quarterback Fran Tarkenton was ready for the onslaught of telephone calls. Tarkenton was the quarterback in three of the Vikings’ four Super Bowl losses.

“No other sport puts a negative connotation on its players the way football does,” Tarkenton told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It’s promulgated by the media, who hear it from the idiot coaches. What offends me as a football person and a football fan is not just the idea (about) the Buffalo Bills, but that any team that loses the Super Bowl is worse than any team that hasn’t been there.”

Suppose Tarkenton got more phone calls Monday?

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More pain: Phil Jackman of the Baltimore Sun believed that NBC laid it on a little thick in the late going of Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast, repeatedly invading the private misery of Thurman Thomas. Jackman wrote: “It seemed like the perfect spot for someone to utter, ‘The Bills should get rid of this guy,’ but then there would be no ‘drive for five’ next year, would there?”

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This is reality? In the 15,000-seat MGM Grand Garden arena Sunday, fans could pay $10 to watch what was billed as a “virtual reality Super Bowl.” While the game was being shown on a large TV screen, Hall of Fame quarterbacks Dan Fouts and Bob Griese and former kicker Mark Moseley passed and kicked footballs around.

Some of the Ram cheerleaders were there, and every time a pass was completed on TV, a fan got to come out of the stands to catch a pass from Fouts or Griese. Moseley kicked to fans after each kick in the real game.

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Trivia answer: The Trojans won 11 of their first 12 games and then closed out that season with 15 consecutive losses.

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Quotebook: Michael Jordan, on his attempt to become a professional baseball player: “I am about to turn 31 years old. I am not a child. I know what I’m doing. I know there are people who have said: ‘You retired from the Bulls, so just go away and let us remember what used to be.’ If these people are tired of hearing my name, then they ought to quit saying it so often.”