SUPER BOWL XXX / Cowboys 27, Steelers 17 : Viewers Get Swarmed Under by Maguire

The Super Bowl is usually the only television program during which you actually want to watch the commercials and mute everything else.

For once, the game was as good as the commercials--maybe even better.

The only thing you wanted to mute was Paul Maguire.

Now Maguire is a jolly fellow with a good sense of humor who usually makes good points.

His problem Sunday was he never shut up. NBC’s other two announcers, Dick Enberg and Phil Simms, barely got a word in. At least it seemed that way.

This was Maguire’s first Super Bowl, so maybe he was wound a little tight. Or maybe he has been hanging around Bob Trumpy too much.

Not that anything Maguire said was all that bad. There was just too much of it.

It’s a fine line between being a Frank Gifford and not saying anything and being a Dan Dierdorf and saying too much. Maguire crossed that line Sunday.

Trumpy used to cross that line all the time, and you saw Sunday what has happened to Trumpy. Two years ago he was with Enberg in the Super Bowl booth. Sunday he got about 30 seconds on the pregame show.

Generally, we like Maguire. He just had a bad day. Everybody has a bad day. Ask Neil O’Donnell.

Maguire got off a few good lines, such as this one after NBC showed Coach Bill Cowher yelling at Steeler punter Rohn Stark for punting into the end zone: “I’ve said before that kickers should get 50 bucks. Well, these two punters today should get 25 cents.”

Maybe Maguire’s problem was that he thought NBC was paying him by the word.

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A question going into Sunday’s game was, would there be any expletives from any players during the postgame show?

Well, viewers didn’t have to wait for the postgame show to find out. They got a healthy dose of colorful language during the pregame introductions.

The first Steeler introduced, defensive end Brentson Buckner, a Clemson man, ran out onto the field yelling an expletive.

An NBC microphone barely picked it up the first time, but then Buckner, obviously not your most intelligent human being, looked right into a camera and yelled it again, loud and clear for all the world to hear.

The interceptions O’Donnell threw to MVP and former L.A. High star Larry Brown may have been dumb, particularly the first one. But Buckner’s pregame antics were even dumber.

Maybe he’ll hear from Irvin’s mother.

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The pregame show, or “Kickoff Show,” as NBC called it, was too long. They’re usually two hours, and too long. This one was 2 1/2 hours.

Too bad it was so long because there were some excellent taped pieces mixed in with the live commentary.

At least the postgame wasn’t too long.

NBC, as we were told at least thousand times during the day, had a one-hour “Friends” special coming up after the game.

So there was no need to waste too much time on silly Super Bowl interviews, which too often these days contain embarrassing expletives anyway.