Name-Droppers Have a Field Day

Cruising down Super Bowl Lane, past Lombardi’s garage, Bradshaw’s trailer, Montana’s manor, Elway’s ranch.

Stop at this year’s place, a nice-looking dome once owned by Emmitt Smith.

Knock on the door.

Matt Willig answers.

I know this because he is wearing a name tag.

He may be the first player in the history of media day to show up for interviews wearing a name tag.

“I’m not taking for granted that anybody knows me,” says the St. Louis Ram.

Smart thinking. Whoever you are.

He doesn’t think this is funny and walks away.

This being Atlanta in January, the snow is falling like confetti, the wind chill dips below zero, it’s not fit for man or beast or the smiling southern gent selling the $80 commemorative T-shirt.

So I remain inside this year’s place looking for a familiar face.

I happen upon somebody from the Tennessee Titans, No. 23, two earrings, confused smile.

And you are . . . ?

Now he’s not smiling.

“Nobody knows us,” he says. “It drives me. It drives a lot of us. Nobody knows us, but here we are.”

Fine. Now could you please turn around so I can see the back of your jers. . .

Oh, OK. That’s Blaine Bishop, Titan safety, tied for the team lead in tackles.

Now he’s mad, and he’s changing the subject, and I need help.

Up walks Nate Newton. The former Dallas Cowboy lineman. Thank goodness. For several years, this delightfully funny and round man was his own super bowl.

Now a member of the media, he’s as lost as anyone.

“Hey,” he says, “do you know what the Titans’ record was this year?”

I don’t even know any of the players.

“Oh,” he says, and now he points to a guy with a big smile and a baseball cap on backward.

“I think that’s Steve McNair,” he says.

Of course. The Titan quarterback. Or is he their running back? Maybe both?

“We don’t care about respect,” McNair says. “We’re not trying to make people respect us.”

It’s not that we don’t respect you. It’s that we don’t know you.

For the first time in nearly 20 years, the Super Bowl’s light may be on, but few have any idea who is home.

For the first time since the relatively unknown San Francisco 49ers played the relatively unknown Cincinnati Bengals in the first Super Bowl for either one, in 1982, this country’s biggest sports event has no face.

It is missing the stubble of Brett Favre, the smile of John Elway, the wince of Thurman Thomas.

It lacks the squint of Lombardi, the jaw of Shula, the hair of Jimmy.

Super Bowls are afghans the NFL carefully tosses over the nation each year during the dead of winter.

Most years, there is something in the cloth to remind you of past years, something sentimental, something comfortable.

But this one looks new. This one smells funny. This one itches.

Neither team has an enduring hometown hero, such as John Riggins in Washington, or Franco Harris in Pittsburgh, because each team is still establishing a hometown.

Each team has good players. But because both teams were such surprises, and the league has an inflexible TV plan, none of those players appeared on a national non-cable network telecast before the playoffs.

Eddie George of the Titans is one of the league’s best running backs, but not its most famous George.

Nobody could beat the Rams’ Kurt Warner in passing, but a retired running back beat him to his name.

One head coach, Jeff Fisher, is young enough to sometimes be mistaken for an assistant.

The other coach, Dick Vermeil, is still mistaken for a broad-caster.

The NFL is the most successful business in sports. But it’s best-selling product has reached a crossroads.

Sunday’s path could lead to the inauguration of a new set of heroes, similar to what occurred in 1982.

What they say about Joe Montana now, they could one day be saying about Kurt Warner.

Ronnie Lott’s reputation could one day belong to the Titans’ Jevon Kearse. Dwight Clark’s could belong to the Rams’ Torry Holt. Who knows, maybe people will one day talk about Jeff Fisher the way they talk about Bill Walsh.

But Sunday’s path could also lead to another season with two different teams and an entire set of little-known players.

What has started the league down this road is free agency. The thing that has given the league such parity could be the very thing that dilutes its best game.

In football, more than any other sport, tenure creates stardom. The longer a player plays the same position for the same team, the better chance he will become a great player.

In the past, one Super Bowl victory often meant at least another Super Bowl appearance or two, which meant stars were being successfully created and sold.

As the Cowboys and Packers and Broncos will tell you, not anymore.

One of the reasons the Titans and Rams qualified during the same season is that past champions have been depleted by not only retirements, but free-agency defections.

The Broncos have lost not only a quarterback, but linemen and defensive backs. The Packers have struggled to keep a team despite playing in the most traditional atmosphere in the league. The Steelers have simply given up.

How long before Sunday’s winner suffers the same fate?

Next year, will we be writing this same story again?

Whatever, on Sunday, for the first time in years, Super Bowl parties will be strictly BYOS.

Bring your own scorecard.

I run into another big guy, and another big guy answers, and he’s wearing sunglasses, and I have no idea who he is, only that he plays for the Titans and his last name appears to be Salave’a.

Sunglasses? Indoors?

“I’m trying not to have anybody look at me,” he says.

It won’t happen again.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.