Raiders, Vikings Are the Last Hope for Super Bowl

Al Davis or Art Modell, one or the other, is going to the Super Bowl, 12 months after Georgia Frontiere won the Super Bowl . . . and, hey, Happy New Year, everyone!

On the off-chance that any of the grim lessons of last January had been forgotten, Modell, the man who hijacked the Browns from Cleveland to Baltimore, and Davis, the self-styled renegade who turned his ownership of the Raiders into a endless match of West Coast Ping-Pong, have thoughtfully provided a refresher course.

All together now:

Greed is good.

Loyalty is dead.

Avarice rules.

Carpetbaggers uber alles!

A year after the former Los Angeles Rams defeated the former Houston Oilers for the Vince Lombardi Trophy, either the former Cleveland Browns or the former Los Angeles Raiders will play the champion of the NFC for the same prize--proving once again that the key to getting ahead in the new NFL is getting out of town.

But it will not make you popular, as Modell jokingly conceded Sunday when asked who he thought the country would be rooting for in the AFC title game--him or Davis?

“It’s not much of a choice,” Modell replied.

Which might sound funny, but really isn’t, when you consider what’s at stake in the AFC and NFC championship games--i.e., the future of professional football as we know it.

At the start of the third week of the first month of the new millennium, the NFL will be at a crossroads. Depending on how the ball bounces in Oakland and the Meadowlands, the league is either headed for a Super Bowl matchup that reaffirms its standing as the American pastime . . . or scares half its audience back to baseball, just in time to catch the latest strike, or, worse, sends them screaming to the XFL.

Either the Vikings and the Raiders win and the forward pass lives to see another Super Sunday.

Or the Ravens and the Giants win and the city of Tampa plays host to the world’s most expensive tractor pull, minus the tractors.

This year, the NFL final four features two semifinalists and two teams that are semi-finalized. The Vikings and the Raiders, though flawed here or there, are well-rounded enough to include an offense as well as a defense, with quarterbacks who can pass and receivers who can catch and game plans that aspire to move the ball into the opposition’s end zone.

Not the Giants and the Ravens, who have distinguished themselves as the greatest half-teams in the land, 11 bricks shy of a load. To the Giants and the Ravens, defense is a way of life, a sacred vocation, a higher calling. Offense is when the defense gets a water break.

The Giants and the Ravens make no pretense about it. Sunday, Giant quarterback Kerry Collins completed 12 of 19 passes for 125 yards, which were Unitas numbers when compared against the final totals of Baltimore’s Trent Dilfer: five for 16, 117 yards. Five for 16? Around the NFL, that’s the going rate for a seat on the bench, except with the Ravens, whose coach, Brian Billick, heaped praise upon Dilfer because--bring out the game ball!--he didn’t fumble or throw an interception.

There’s a phrase, borrowed from the sport the rest of the world calls “football,” that applies here: negative football. It is an insidious tactic, intended solely to prevent defeat at any cost, usually involving every defender on the team hunkering in front of his own goal. It is no fun to watch, and it is practiced on the world stage most notably by the Italian national team, which--and I say it is no coincidence--wears the same color blue as Jim Fassel’s Giants.

Viva Azzurri!

Right now, negative football is threatening to swallow the Super Bowl whole. The Giants are one step away after their offense managed six points--two field goals--against Philadelphia. The Ravens are one step away after their offense managed six first downs, 134 yards and 10 points against Tennessee.

The Giants defeated the Eagles, 20-10, scoring their touchdowns on a 97-yard kickoff return by Ron Dixon and a 32-yard interception return by cornerback Jason Sehorn.

The Ravens defeated the Titans, 24-10, scoring touchdowns on a 90-yard return of a blocked field-goal attempt by Anthony Mitchell and a 50-yard interception return by linebacker Ray Lewis.

In their previous incarnation in Cleveland, the team formerly known as the Browns never reached the Super Bowl, despite the comings and goings of Paul Warfield, Leroy Kelly, Frank Ryan, Brian Sipe, Bernie Kosar, Ernest Byner, Mike Pruitt and Ozzie Newsome. Now, as the Ravens, they are on the doorstep with Dilfer and Qadry Ismail?

To make matters worse for the Dawg Pounders left behind with nothing but Spergon Wynn, Modell crowed during the victory aftermath that, “The reason we’re here today is because I moved to Baltimore and have the revenues from the new stadium that have enabled me to go out and buy every piece of talent I could. And I did.”

Which doesn’t sound good for the city of Baltimore, which needs to cough up some more revenues or Modell will go house hunting again. Because Modell got all that money when he moved the first time and still didn’t have enough to buy a quarterback.

NFL final four trivia question: What do the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Carolina Panthers, New Orleans Saints, Minnesota Vikings, Washington Redskins and Kansas City Chiefs have in common?

Answer: All of them, at one time or another, gave up on either Dilfer, Collins or Rich Gannon--who account for 75% of the NFL final four quarterback pool.

The other quarterback in the semifinals is Minnesota’s Daunte Culpepper, a second-year pro who passed for 302 yards in his first playoff start Saturday, the Vikings’ 34-16 victory over New Orleans. Throughout professional football, this was seen as an encouraging sign. So was the fact that the Raiders, 27-0 winners over Miami on Saturday, are quarterbacked by Gannon, who passed for 3,430 yards during the regular season and will start the Pro Bowl for the AFC.

The Raiders and the Vikings. In and around Los Angeles, these are curse words. One team abandoned the city, the other still haunts its playoff nightmares.

Getting behind their causes, even for only a week, borders on an act of treason punishable by Mighty Duck season tickets.

But if the Super Bowl is to be saved, they are the only hopes left.