Football Four-Pack: Familiar Ring to It

T op 20 things about this year’s NFL final four field:

1. Buffalo didn’t make it.

2. Dallas-San Francisco, Round III. It has become the Lakers-Celtics, the Dodgers-Yankees, the Canadiens-Bruins of our generation, except for the fact it is always held in the semifinals. An NFC West division featuring the Atlanta Falcons, the New Orleans Saints, the Carolina Panthers and the St. Louis Rams is one argument for NFL realignment; moving the 49ers or the Cowboys to the AFC--one or the other--is a better one still.

3. Most likely, someone is about to win An Unprecedented Fifth Super Bowl Championship. San Francisco and Pittsburgh are 4-0 in Super Bowl appearances, Dallas is 4-3, and no other team has won more than three. So you have the three heaviest Super Bowl heavyweights of them all, plus San Diego, whose Super Bowl history is precisely five words long: It hosted the 1988 game. Got to start somewhere, though. Theme for this weekend: Natrone In The Land Of The Giants.

4. Neil O’Donnell tackles the “It Takes A Great Quarterback To Win The Super Bowl” myth. To date, Jeff Hostetler, then an emergency replacement for the injured Phil Simms in Giants-Bills XXV, remains the lone shred of evidence against. If successful, O’Donnell will be remembered forever as the first and only Super Bowl championship quarterback to be benched in the middle of the season for Mike Tomczak.

5. Steve Young is here; Joe Montana is not. These are tough days for the cult. Go easy on the Kool-Aid up there.

6. Great Ram sidebar angles almost everywhere, beginning in Pittsburgh with Kevin Greene, who was signed as a free agent in 1993 after Chuck Knox deemed him unnecessary in the Rams’ glutted 4-3 defense and was probably the AFC’s most valuable defensive player in 1994.

7. Or in Dallas, where Ernie Zampese went in one season from coordinating T.J. Rubley-to-Todd Kinchen to coordinating Troy Aikman-to-Alvin Harper.

8. Or in San Francisco, which used two regular-season victories over the Rams to clinch the home-field advantage during the playoffs and rebuilt its defensive line around rookie Bryant Young, whom the 49ers were able to draft after Knox traded down in his relentless pursuit of Wayne Gandy.

9. Ex-Ram pickings are slim in San Diego, aside from starting guard Joe Milinichik, although Mark Seay did play for George Allen at Long Beach State. And, Bobby Ross was available the last time the Rams had a head coaching vacancy.

10. So was Bill Cowher.

11. A San Francisco-Pittsburgh Super Bowl would pit the Team of the Eighties against the Team of the Seventies in the middle of the Nineties and isn’t it about time we decided this thing?

12. A San Francisco-San Diego Super Bowl would prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that professional football does, too, exist in California.

13. A Dallas-Pittsburgh Super Bowl would rekindle fond memories of those two great games the Cowboys and the Steelers played in ’76 and ‘79, and test the true loyalties of the Fox in-studio football team. Who’d pull harder for a Steeler victory--Terry Bradshaw or Jimmy Johnson?

14. A Dallas-San Diego Super Bowl would mean a lot of interview requests for Lance Alworth.

15. San Diego’s Ross, Pittsburgh’s Cowher, San Francisco’s George Seifert and Dallas’ Barry Switzer all debuted as NFL head coaches in 1989 or later. The torch has been passed, as Don Shula (No AFC Title Since 1984, No Road Playoff Victory Since 1972) was reminded again Sunday at Jack Murphy Stadium.

16. No one was jobbed by the officials, although the Chargers came perilously close. Shawn Jefferson had both feet in bounds, replays showed, on a touchdown catch that was waved off in the fourth quarter. Then again, Means was out of bounds at the two on his “touchdown” run in the third quarter. So the striped shirts giveth and they taketh away and everything is equalized in the end and today that crew is very, very fortunate that Pete Stoyanovich sliced wide right.

17. The NFC Central will sit out the Super Bowl for the ninth consecutive year. The Black And Blue And Back On The Sofa By The Last Sunday In January Division.

18. Both semifinals will be played in inclement weather, as all proper NFL playoff games should--Steelers-Chargers on the frozen Astrotundra of Three Rivers Stadium, 49ers-Cowboys in the Candlestick Park wading pool.

19. There remains a very good chance Yancey Thigpen will play in a Super Bowl.

20. Two more victories and Steve Young gets his Super Bowl ring and coffee-house conversation in the Bay Area then switches from “He sure ain’t no Joe” to “Let’s see him do it four times.” To Young’s ears, that’s the sweet sound of progress.