Category Archives: Football

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

Changes and Broncos

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Encouragement is where you find it, and in the case of the top-lopped Broncos so far it is that no one wants out.

No one wants to play for a contender, as in Kansas City, an insult from inside by both Larry Johnson and Tony Gonzalez. No one wants a different defense, as Julius Peppers in Carolina, is just generally unhappy as Anquan Boldin in Arizona, or is still thinking it over, as LaDanian Tomlinson in San Diego.

Coaching changes inevitably cause this sort of thing, and old sores seem always to need fresh picking.

It would appear that the Broncos are willing to buy into whatever it is that fresh coach Josh McDaniels will have on offer, most importantly, the quarterback.

Clearly, at this point, McDaniels needs a happy Jay Cutler, more so than Cutler needs a new coach. And the Broncos generally must accept the notion that all of this upheaveal was necessary.

Cutler has come around to that conclusion, no longer as bitter a view as that of Jake Plummer, who is now in the duck blind and able to shoot without being shot at.

This attitude change must be taken as wisdom from Cutler, and a sign of maturity as well. It is not wise to stick your tongue out at the new boss.

When last Mike Shanahan spoke to his team there could not have been much satisfaction with a season so ragged at the end. The Broncos had to assume that many changes would be coming, just not the one that did.

Rather than the usual good-byes by this time—Mike Shanahan would have shown half the defense the door by now and started replacing them with others, not necessarily betters—the Broncos remain, and much can be said for it, employed. To still have a job is to still have hope.

Not that it will last long. Except for Champ Bailey, Elvis Dumervil and D.J. Williams, the defense could be put in a sack and dropped off a bridge. No, that’s cruel. Cut a hole in the sack.

Who replaces them? An ideal list of free agents would start with any or all of the Baltimore linebackers, including Ray Lewis, linebacker Mike Peterson of Jacksonville or James Farrior of the Steelers, the aforementioned Peppers, Albert Haynesworth, safety Brian Dawkins of the Eagles, not to overlook running back Darren Sproles of the Chargers or the once-upon-a-Bronco, Bertrand Berry

All are just names now and if one of them is more worthwhile to the Broncos than the rest, it is Haynesworth, the Tennessee defensive tackle. It must be assumed that some of these will end up in Denver.

Another assumption is that by rushing to the head of the line first, the Broncos got the best of the bunch of new coaches. Of the 11 changes in the NFL, two were pre-chosen—in Indianapolis and Seattle—and Tom Cable in Oakland and Mike Singletary in San Francisco were merely kept on.

Eric Mangini shifted shirts from the Jets to the Browns, the Chiefs just picked Todd Haley, leaving McDaniels among a half dozen who have not head coached before, no reason to be pessimistic there.

It is discouraging to assume that McDaniels’ chief credential is that he will mind his owner and not, for a while at least, act like he is the franchise.

One might wonder if a late casualty like Jon Gruden would not be a more useful choice all around, but that assumes that McDaniels is not the next Gruden.

Ideally, what will happen is that Cutler, still too young to have grown stale, will respond to the new challenge and the new crew, when it would be natural for him to resent the changes. Cutler is where Ben Roethlisberger was when Bill Cowher left the Steelers.

And it isn’t as if McDaniels is not thoroughly schooled in offense, as was the case with Cowher’s replacement, Mike Tomlin. Cutler is replacing one expert offensive mind with another, except the new one is more likely to seem a partner than a critic.

More enthusiastic is Brandon Marshall, less vital but nonetheless essential. The Super Bowl is evidence of what a Larry Fitzgerald or a Santonio Holmes can mean, and those moments yet await Marshall.

Just as Cutler can imagine himself to be Tom Brady so can Marshall see the success that came to a settled Randy Moss in New England with McDaniels’ offense.

With, then, the two most notable Broncos on board, McDaniels is free to sort out the rest, and much sorting is needed.

Linebackers. Defensive linemen. Safeties. Running back. Not necessarily in that order. But in some order.

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

This one was all thumb screws and root canals

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TAMPA, Fl — Nevertheless, the Steelers of Pittsburgh will keep this Super Bowl trophy. They can put it with the other five, and tell lies later about how this one was a cinch.

It was not. This one was all thumb screws and root canals, shock and awesome, slap and smack, a duel in the cool tropical night.

“This is for you Pittsburgh!” shouted game MVP Santonio Holmes, raising the Lombardi Trophy over his head as if it were the first one instead of the sixth, as if the town had never seen the others.

This may be the least of all the Super Bowl winning Steeler teams, though the trophy is exactly the same size as all the rest.

They passed the shiny symbol around, from owner to coach to players, toted to the ceremony for some undeclared reason by Joe Namath, the trophy a hard earned souvenir, harder than the Steelers thought. Winners get to leave fingerprints.

Losers—in this case the Cardinals are not losers as much as companions in as gutsy, gut-wrenching, a melodrama as any since…well, since last year when the wrong team won with a helmet catch—are left with highlights.

And the Cardinals had highlights, the highest and lightest a catch and run of 64 yards by Roy Fitzgerald that would have, should have stunned the Steelers into an admission that fate or chance was wearing a Cardinal on its hat.

“The Steelers are a 60 minute team,” said their coach, Mike Tomlin.

This one was won with a classic, almost cliché catch, the kind that is staged in movies or dramatized in sports books, impossible and indelible, the football equivalent of the buzzer beater or the walk off homer. It had everything but slow motion, and it even had that later as it was studied for validity and, probably, for artistry.

“Great players step up in big-time games to make plays,” said Holmes. “I knew that was my play. Ben stuck with me, put it up where it was supposed to be and I made the play.”

Whether Holmes is a great player, certainly he had the greatest game of his life and one of the greatest of any receiver in a Super Bowl, for effectiveness and drama, not that the same wouldn’t have been said of Fitzgerald had Holmes not made The Catch.

Unlike the stadium witnesses, who may have chewed their fingernails down, Holmes had just enough left on his hands to stretch, hold the football, “come down on his toes”, as the referee finally and officially confirmed, and lock down a victory nearly blown from 13 points in front.

And, just like that, David Tyree’s helmet catch for the Giants against the Pats last year was bumped from the top of Great Super Bowl Moments.

“We embrace those moments,” said Tomlin. “We are built for those moments.”

The game did not match the boasts nor beat the spread, and the Steelers’ special torment for the Cardinals was to allow them to think they belonged.

“Nobody expected us to be here,” said Cardinal quarterback Kurt Warner, as if he needed to remind anyone of that. “We exceeded expectations and came close to being world champions only to lose it.”

Fewer penalties and just anyone, Warner having the best chance, tripping up Steeler linebacker James Harrison on the last play of the first half as he was galumphing a record 100 yards with an interception for the longest play in Super Bowl history, and the Cardinals would have had the whip in their hands.

This was a memorable Super Bowl because the Cardinals flirted with the improbable, and the Steelers—except for the plays by Harrison and Holmes—were not good enough to do anything about it.

Arizona could allow itself to believe in destiny even with a half minute to play, until the last five seconds, until Arizona quarterback Warner lost the football, breaking the heart of a perfectly nice place like Arizona.

The Steelers were not going to be lucked out of their birthright, and they weren’t going to be passed or punched or tackled out of it either.

“We back up talk with action,” said Tomlin.

“Backyard ball,” said Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, describing his cobbling together the final, winning drive, and at the same time coining a T-shirt slogan if ever there was one.

“It’s never going to be pretty or perfect,” said Tomlin. “There are no style points out there. But this is a team with great resolve.”

Winners can, and will, say all these things, of course, as Arizona would have said and even more loudly, because the Cardinals would have been the most astonishing winners ever of the Super Bowl, at least since the Jets beat the Colts in the third one.

Maybe that was why Namath was here, to represent audacity and surprise, and it was all there for the Cardinals.

So close. So long.

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

The NFL encourages this annual folly

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TAMPA, Fl — It matters not who wins Media Day, even to the media, but of all the Super Bowl hoo-haw only two of the days really matter, this one and Sunday.

In a close call, Arizona wins this one, complete with voting paddles, as on “Dancing With the Stars.”

That silliness was under the direction of Warren Sapp, the once and no longer defensive lump who always nattered at least as well as he played. He had persuaded two Cardinals of his own ilk, 330-pound defensive tackles Alan Branch and Gabe Watson, to show their dance steps with a spangled beauty.

To music barely audible over the din of the day, the stars danced as stars do. Branch bit his lip and concentrated on his feet. Watson whirled and tried not to hurt his tiny partner.

At the end the paddles declared that Branch had won narrowly over Watson, though the pair of them were about as agile as a couple of front loaders. Handed his prize, a mirrored ball on a mirrored pedestal, Branch raised it over his head and bellowed—“Yessss!”—as if it were the Lombardi Trophy itself.
Sapp put his hands over is ears, slunk away, rolling his eyes back in his head. “Whoa. This is too nutty even for me,” Sapp said, leaving the poor young woman to fend for herself.
Not nutty at all, actually This is relatively mild for Media Day, no costumed brides looking for grooms, for example, as was one asking Pats quarterback Tom Brady for his hand. No costumed gorillas or bottles of Gatorade with feet.
The nonsense was down a bit, which had to disappoint the girl reporter from Austria.

“I ask you a question,” she said, not asked. And I nodded. “Vere ist Kort Vorner?”
I pointed in the direction of the Arizona quarterback, assuming that anyone named Kurt would be a big hit back in Salzburg. She did not say thanks.

The NFL encourages this annual folly, or at least does not discourage it, especially now with its own network to service. To find wisdom is futile, but one has to try.
“Right here is the epicenter of the NFL,” said Arizona coach Ken Whisenhunt, surprising for throwing the word “epicenter” into any football discussion and, at the same time, diminishing the occasion since the grandest game of the greatest sport of the greatest nation surely makes this the epicenter of the world.

Fred Dryer of the then Los Angeles Rams parlayed one Super Bowl experience into a career. Dryer gave the answer to my favorite Media Day question. Is the Super Bowl bigger than death? “No,” Dryer said, “but it comes in a bigger box.”

And now I have to give some consideration to this response to the question of what this all means.

“People are going through hard times,” said the Steelers Hines Ward, he not being one of them. “But in Pittsburgh if you’ve lost a job or your house you’ve still got the Steelers and you don’t worry about that, the light bill, the rent, stuff like that. When the Steelers play you’re hugging each other without regrets at the bar.”

Now, that’s the epicenter of something. Inflated self-importance for certain.

One shudders to think should the Steelers somehow lose to the upstarts from Arizona, what those bar hugs might turn into.

“There’s an old saying in football,” said Betrand Berry, now a Cardinal once a Bronco. “If you bite when young, you’ll bite when old.”
This is just the kind of gibberish that flows easily from the mouths of football players who are given podiums and microphones for a while. Philosophers, like dancing stars, are not born but made.
“You have to pass failure on the way to success,” said Cardinal punter Ben Graham, the notion sounding more profound because it came with an Australian accent. Austria and Australia in the same day. What a sport.
The NFL itself has operated all season under the slogan, “Believe in Now,” which was, I believe, the same position taken by bankers and brokers.

“I’ll carry this team on my back if I have to,” said Steeler Santonio Holmes.

The Chicago Bears were probably the best example of collective look-at-me-ism at a Super Bowl, but the thing has always had its share of outrageous individuals. The very first one had Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, who was, for his cheek, hammered by Green Bay. Still, The Hammer got the movie contract and his fame subsists.
Todd Christiansen of the Raiders showed up for Media Day with copies of his poetry, which he passed out as press releases. Dexter Manley tried a similar thing by pre-answering questions with a printout, the first public indication that he was functionally illiterate.

This is the one day of the football season when the anxious gives way to the excessive.

“When I retire, I’ll write a book,” said Arizona linebacker Chike Okeafor.

We all say that.

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

Giants spoil the perfect matchup

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The New England Immortals v. the New Jersey Scarecrows.

Or some such.

Well, there have been worse Super Bowls going in, I suppose, not that it mattered who the Patriots got to confirm their greatness against.

Only coronation is left, the anointing of the New England Patriots as the greatest team in the history of football and of Tom Brady as the greatest quarterback, mere trifles what with only those improbable New York Giants in the way.

The least the Patriots should have had to do was to beat the better Manning, and yet they get Eli the Lesser. They could have had Cowboys, if just for the quarterback girlfriend matchup, or best of all and what ended in overtime in subzero Green Bay, the last patrol of Brett Favre.

But, no, the Giants survived on the road again, under the weather again, ruining a perfectly good narrative and allowing the world to wallow in Patriot glory for the next two weeks, as if there are enough superlatives to last that long.
Again and again is proved the old reflection of F. Scott Fitzgerald that there are no second acts in American lives.
That’s what we might have gotten with Favre, if his own and old nemesis, the refusal to believe that he can not throw a football through the eye of a needle, had not gotten him in overtime.

Against the Broncos, we recall, he threw a touchdown pass in overtime. Against the Giants, a careless interception.

Where we are now in the acts of Brett Favre’s life is surely somewhere beyond two, or even three, while Tom Brady is still in a very long first act, greater than Favre already, with the same dignity and appeal at the end yet to be managed.
And of all the possible finishes for a season kissing up to history, when someone had to take the last licks from New England, none could have been more intriguing that Favre and Brady at the end.
Not to take the clunky, ugly, freezer football of Sunday in both Green Bay and New England as an indication of anything other than survival of the thermally fitted, the NFL is the one sport that inevitably comes in from the cold, this time in suburban Arizona for Super Bowl XLII.

Things would have turned out as they did in the tropics or indoors, the Patriots outlasting an injured San Diego team and the Giants riding some kind of serendipitous joy wagon, clearly the least likely Super Bowl finalist since the Chris Chandler Flacons, whipping the Packers in their own ice box.

This was going to be Favre’s Super Bowl, not necessarily in victory but in tribute, the clear, dominating story line until Brady and the Patriots confirm the first 19-0 season.

We were ready to admire a career of courage and distinction and presence, and then when it came to a final defeat, a warm round of applause for the perfect warrior.

When all that history is made by New England, when the greatest single season standard in sports is set, there will be only a sense of conclusion rather than great achievement, a begrudging acceptance that Bill Belichick is every bit as great a coach as his more likeable predecessors.

Yet, the sentiment that would so naturally have flowed to Favre does not drift automatically to Brady, and certainly it will not be wasted on Manning either.

This will be a Super Bowl not of uncertainty nor disbelief but of filling in the blanks, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s as the Patriots confirm the obvious.

What risk there is for New England is that, though they are already the only team to go 18-0, if they do not go 19-0 they will be immortal frauds, the greatest case of false advertising since the free lunch.
Not often does the Super Bowl match quarterbacks who are in the discussion of greatest ever, and that was what was lost when the Giants refused to do the right thing.
Favre against Brady would have been the best matchup since Elway against Joe Montana, at least the equal of Bart Starr and Len Dawson who were in the very first one or when Roger Staubach met Terry Bradshaw.

In fact, Favre lost to Elway when the sympathies were the opposite, Elway then as the well used Favre and Favre as the in-his-prime Brady.

The usual Super Bowl quarterback intrigue is wrung out of a Brad Johnson against a Rich Gannon or a Trent Dilfer against a Kerry Collins.
Brady has matched his Super Bowls against Kurt Warner, Jake Delhomme and Donovan McNabb, and for his most significant one he deserved better than the little brother of the other Manning.

Favre won his Super Bowl over Drew Bledsoe, the predecessor of Brady, and how moving that might have been if Favre could have bookended a career over man and boy.

We sigh for what might have been.

Biography, Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional

FLUTIE COMES UP SHORT USFL DEBUT IS LESS THAN A BIG SUCCESS

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Dateline: BIRMINGHAM, ALA. – What might have been, for Doug Flutie, could be reduced to simple mathematics.

“What did we score in the fourth quarter, 21 points?” Flutie asked. “Over a whole game, that’s 84.”

And that would have been ample to overcome the 38 points scored by the Heismanless Birmingham Stallions here Sunday. That many points, or even half as many, may have justified Flutie as an adult quarterback for the New Jersey Generals, if not the most recent savior of the United States Football League.

Alas for Flutie, they still count the actual points scored in each quarter before adding them up, even in the USFL, and he thus will forever have to live with the indelible fact that he was a loser, 38-28, the first time he had a chance to show anyone why he is worth $7 million.

“I made no promises when I came into this league,” Flutie said. “I don’t owe anything to anybody.”

Well, that is not exactly true. He owes a small debt to whoever taught him his times tables, if no one else.

Flutie might just as easily have multiplied his first-half completions by two, which would still have been zero. In fact, he could have gone all the way until two minutes were left in the third quarter and not have projected a completion for himself, unless you count the two he threw to Birmingham.

By the end of the game, Flutie was 12 of 27 for two touchdowns and three interceptions, but until his last futile flurry, he played like a baby with his thumbs on backwards.

“I just wasn’t on the money,” Flutie said, intending no pun.

Other great athletes have had ineffective starts. Someone was mentioning that Willie Mays went 0-for-50 or something when he broke in, but of course, someone was throwing the ball at Mays, not just handing it to him.

“No one said it was going to be easy,” Flutie said.

Of course they did. Everybody said so. Anyone who saw him whip Miami with his miracle pass or applauded him for taking the Heisman without blushing thought so. Certainly Donald Trump, Flutie’s new landlord, who paid him all that money and traded veteran Brian Sipe to unclutter the backfield for him, thought so.

Watching Flutie flail away at his own myth for most of his first game was like watching a shiny new Ferrari turn into just another used car.

The first four passes he threw did not touch another human being. His fifth pass bounced off Herschel Walker, who has a Heisman of his own, and his sixth pass was swatted down by 300-pound tackle Doug Smith, who is big enough to be sliced into several Fluties and frozen.

Flutie’s seventh pass finally found a companion, though it happened to be David Dumars of the other team. No. 8 was a time zone too long and No. 9 came down in the arms of Birmingham’s Chuck Clinton.

Cynics as well as realists were trying to get up a pool in the press box on when Flutie would complete his first pass. I took August.

It wasn’t until Flutie introduced the ball to teammate Clarence Collins that the game ball had anyone’s fingerprints on it but Flutie’s and his enemies’.

Once he completed his first pass, with the score 31-7, Flutie outscored Birmingham by 21-7, but it was still another interception, by Dennis Woodberry of the Stallions with seven minutes to play, that stopped whatever chance Flutie had of working his magic.

On this day, there was nothing up his sleeve, except a rather ordinary arm, shorter than most.

“It was frustrating and irritating,” Flutie said. “I was angry at myself for not getting off to a better start. I just . . . shoot, I just wish I could have done it the whole game.”

Flutie was asked, quite properly, if he possibly had any trouble seeing over the Birmingham linemen.

“No comment,” said Flutie, who was game to talk about everything but why he has never grown bigger than your average placekicker.

He did not alibi on his lack of preparation, a mere two weeks of training with the Generals.

“If I had only one day of practice, I still would have felt I should start,” Flutie said.

And yet . . .

“What I need,” Flutie said, “is more game experience. Week after week, game after game, I will get better.”

The pressure of his debut, he said, was no bother.

“I was relaxed and I was calm,” Flutie said. “I knew what I was doing.”

And yet . . .

“I know what people will say,” Flutie said. ” ‘Flutie didn’t win his first game. When’s he going to win one?’ There will be more pressure.”

But what happened against Birmingham?

“We didn’t have the ball,” Flutie said, which was true. In all, New Jersey had the ball for only 18 minutes, just two minutes in the second quarter and three in the third. “When you make a mistake, you like to get out there and fix it. I didn’t work up a sweat until the third quarter.”

And when Flutie did, a few of the things for which he became notable began to happen.

“We’re a running team,” Flutie said, “but I feel more comfortable when things are helter-skelter. When I have to think on my feet, I react better. I don’t feel like a robot, just handing the ball off.”

That is a matter for his coach, Walt Michaels, to solve. The fourth- quarter Flutie was much preferable to the first-, second- and third-quarter Flutie, and if he is to be anything close to what the USFL imagines him to be, Flutie may have to play the game on the edge, as he did in college.

“I don’t give a damn about stats,” Flutie said. “If I was 0-for-30 and we won the game 6-0, I would be happy.”

That would make one. PHOTO: AP Laserphoto. Doug Flutie, New Jersey’s $7-million man. PHOTO: AP Laserphoto. Doug Flutie passes under pressure Sunday during his first regular-season game with the New Jersey Generals. He completed 12 of 27 for 189 yards and had 3 interceptions.

Chicago Tribune, Football

SPRINGING ANOTHER USELESS IDEA ON US

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If you think of the United States Football League at all, think of it as a cucumber sandwich. It was a bad idea to start with, it was hard to digest and here it comes again.

Yes, spring football is with us once more. Not us, exactly. Not Chicago. The late and unlamented Blitz is somewhere in the ether, or the mind of Eddie Einhorn, which can be counted as twins.

The expiration of the Blitz removed the USFL from the Midwest, where folks know how to read the calendar, if not always without moving their lips.

In fact, the USFL is no longer where anybody lives, except for Los Angeles and New Jersey, if you call that living. It has essentially become a southern suburban league, following the example of soccer, a sport that at least knew what time of year it was most likely to be ignored.

The USFL has been argued out of playing in the spring next year, though the discussion is not over, so this could be the last time we are likely to have lilacs and punt formation at the same time.

It may be noticed that while nowhere in the heartland will be heard the sound of linebackers breaking something essential on themselves or others, the state of Florida has three USFL franchises, along with Lee Corso and his travel agent.

What can be made of this odd circumstance is not quite clear, except that the seasons in Florida are indistinguishable one from the other, as are the natives, and that every second person there sells real estate, which is how most of the USFL owners got their start.

The first two USFL champions are no longer in business where they started, Michigan having merged with Oakland, and Philadelphia having migrated down the road to Baltimore. It is assumed that this year’s winner will get a trophy and a bus ticket to Albuquerque, one way.

It has been reported that the USFL lost upwards of $70 million last season, which was reason enough for the players to threaten a strike recently. After deliberating the notion soberly and briefly, the players concluded that if they were to be responsible for the USFL’s committing suicide, they would wait until their bosses could afford the rope.

The league is down to 14 teams from 18, but that is still two more than when it started three years ago. Having now tried both addition and subtraction, the USFL is mostly interested in trying division. That is how it hopes to survive, by dividing up the $1.3 billion it hopes to get by suing the National Football League for being older, better and richer.

Failing that, multiplication is a possibility, the formula being 14 times yes equals four, or the number of teams it is willing to contribute to the NFL to stop being a nuisance.

As a grand plan, this scheme has as much chance of succeeding as a mule has of leaving an heir.

For collateral, the USFL can offer the last three Heisman Trophy winners, two on the same team, Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie of the New Jersey Generals. In between, Mike Rozier resides now in Jacksonville and will line up next to Archie Griffin, a more distant owner of two Heismans (Heismen?) all by himself.

In gratitude for stockpiling the most visible of college stars, the USFL may play football on Saturdays in the fall, or at the same time future Heisman winners are collecting votes. College football has yet to say thanks.

ABC-TV, the network of contract, has decided to show only one game a week, leaving assorted others to cable. And it will not regionalize the telecasts, thereby saving a few bucks on multiple crews and getting whatever it can out of the $15.5 million it pays for its burden. That’s $15.5 million to the whole league. Each of the 28 NFL teams makes as much alone.

The most notable game of the first weekend will feature young Flutie Sunday in his paid debut. Birmingham will be the opponent and the site, and ABC-TV will be in attendance, though not all of its outlets are enchanted with the prospect of watching Flutie make a small fool of himself.

Either that or they prefer to wait until Flutie learns to ride the bicycle before showing him in a race.

Flutie is this year’s only significant acquisition by the USFL, and the NFL is privately delighted to be free of him. On misguided fan appeal alone, Flutie would have cost some NFL team a high draft choice that can better be spent on a cornerback from Howard Payne.

Or for the money the USFL paid Flutie, Howard Payne himself. PHOTO: Lee Corso

Biography, Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional

SUBSTANCE LOST OUT TO NAMATH’S STYLE

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JOE NAMATH WOULD not be much on our minds these days except for two astonishing developments. First, he got married, and second, he joined pro football’s Hall of Fame, only one of which, as far as is known, required a vote.

Namath as a groom may be more intriguing than Namath as an all-time hero, since his reputation as a bachelor always exceeded his fame as a quarterback. Namath had one great moment on the football field. The number and intensity of his other accomplishments will have to wait for his memoirs.

I suppose he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for no other reason than that magic afternoon in Super Bowl III, when he brought the American Football League from tourist to first class. But he never did anything with a football before or after that day that warrants enshrinement in Canton, Ohio, the last place anyone nicknamed Broadway would be expected to be found anyhow.

FOR THOSE WHO have forgotten the legacy of Namath, he once represented a generation, right up there with the Beatles and Muhammad Ali.

His last game, if memory serves, was a losing playoff encounter six years ago between the Los Angeles Rams, for whom he lurked in the final year of his career, and the Minnesota Vikings.

The end was not what his legend demanded. For those who believed he was everything romantic and compelling in sports, Namath should have gone down under a fierce pass rush, pinpointing one last touchdown pass to win the big game. He should have been carried off on his shield, thumbing his nose at the world in one final, glorious act of defiance.

Instead, the man who once joked about sleeping through college sat alone on the bench of a team most of us can’t remember he ever suited up for while Pat Haden, a Rhodes Scholar, swept up in front of him.

The man who once saved a league with the New York Jets was not asked to save a single game for the Rams.

IT WAS AN END not uncommon in sports. Babe Ruth ran out his string with the Boston Braves, leaving his team in a pique because it wouldn’t give him the day off. Ali fought pygmies for money, losing his last fight in front of foreigners because they were the only ones who could watch without turning their heads. Billie Jean King hung on and on, willing to lose tennis matches to children.

And like them, Namath was always bigger than the game he played. He has managed to remain with us, more or less, as a fitful actor, a celebrity bowler or some such.

It takes a Hall of Fame endorsement for us to remember what he was. Namath’s real importance and his real credentials for the Hall of Fame were his influence on his sport and on his time. What he was and what he did linger still like a locker-room odor.

He was the first to give football players an exaggerated value of their own worth, getting nearly half a million dollars as a rookie and immediately jacking up the wages of combat.

Any sports contract that does not begin on the fat side of $1 million these days is not worth mentioning.

NAMATH’S LIFESTYLE, outrageous in his day, is commonplace now. Not that booze and women were ever out of fashion with athletes, but Namath made both a status symbol for the successful jock. Booze has been replaced by more exotic mindbenders, a not surprising progression.

A more trivial example of a Namath affectation that became routine is white shoes. It is difficult to find an athlete south of Minnesota who wears basic black on his feet instead of white. And are we all too young to remember when Namath was the only one who wore them?

Namath’s long hair set a style not only in sports but also in the larger arena. Executives who would have been the first to yell, “Get a hair cut!” in 1968, became shaggier than Namath ever was, and like the original he was, Namath showed his ears again long before they showed theirs.

Namath was the first athlete who got away with being different. “Do your own thing” became a catch phrase for a generation.

BY BEATING THE establishment in the Super Bowl, and by challenging it when he quit football in dispute over ownership of a bar, he set the tone for much of the later rebelliousness of athletes everywhere.

Namath’s demand for freedom was echoed in player strikes in both football and baseball. For better or worse, the roots of almost all athletic unrest can be traced to Namath’s trend-setting belligerence.

It was no accident that Namath’s greatest glory came in the ’60s. He was the kind of hero an uncomfortable nation was looking for–arrogant, self- confident and a rebel.

And it is worth noting that, as the turbulent ’60s gave way to the complacent ’70s, Namath gave way also. Here in the causeless ’80s, he is just another Yuppie whose only rebellion is against polyester.

Now he is being honored by the establishment he once taunted, going into the Hall of Fame at the same time as no less than the high commissioner of the game himself, Pete Rozelle, which proves what we’ve always suspected: Young pioneers have a way of becoming old proprietors.

Biography, Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional, Quotes

Montana the Best? No Argument Here

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WHAT A RELIEF it will be to pass through the approaching NFL-less months without having to worry about who the greatest quarterback in football is.

We now know that it is Joe Montana of San Francisco, an issue that was settled clearly in Super Bowl XIX and the only reason to remember the game at all, unless you count the human American flag that boogied during the National Anthem.

Montana is the best quarterback, and a more reluctant hero we have not had in football since last year, when Jim Plunkett mumbled his way into our hearts.

“Joe is the greatest quarterback in football today,” said his coach, Bill Walsh, and if you can’t trust a guy who always dresses in white, who can you trust?

“Joe Montana is the best that ever played,” said Dwight Clark, who used to be Montana’s roommate and still serves as Montana’s landlord between brides.

“Joe has established himself as maybe the finest quarterback to play,” said Paul Hackett, who is only Montana’s personal coach.

There we have three perfectly objective endorsements, and, of course, our own eyes.

SUPER BOWL XIX was just the latest chapter in the Joe Montana (Montagna in the original Italian) story. The beginning was back in Monongahela, Pa., in the back yard where an only child already burdened with the designation of junior after his name caught footballs thrown by a father determined to make him a great athlete.

The story moved to Notre Dame where, from seventh string, Montana became a college legend. Montana brought the Irish from behind no less than half a dozen times in his three seasons of play there, from a 20-point rescue against Air Force, to a 35-34 victory over Houston in the Cotton Bowl with no time left after Notre Dame had fallen behind 34-12.

And now to San Francisco, where in just six years Montana has won two Super Bowls and has been the outstanding player in each one.

“I don’t know how I’ve been able to do these things,” Montana said. “I just go out there and try to win.”

You don’t learn much about Montana from Montana. For a young man consistently described as fiercely competitive, he is absolutely timid in public.

In any gathering, he would be the one most likely to pass for a sarcophagus.

He speaks softly, though he always fixes the questioner with his clear blue eyes, and he always stops his answer short of anything revealing, though he did confess after this Super Bowl that the one thing that most upset him was being called a wimp by “a writer from Miami.”

OF COURSE, NO ONE in San Francisco would call him that, no matter how tempted by Montana’s hermit instincts. In fact, Montana was declared God for a Day by one group of sign painters who watched the 49er victory parade that Montana skipped.

In all candor, Montana does not look like a quarterback. What he looks like is somebody who carries your groceries to the car.

“The good Lord did not put him together like Dan Marino,” said 49er guard Randy Cross, “but he can run, pass and get out of the way of problems. Marino is the best thrower in the league. Joe Montana is the best quarterback.”

“He is not a flamboyant person,” said Walsh. “He’s like a great writer or musician. There’s something internal that you just know.

“People will play alongside him more smoothly than someone who attracts a lot of attention. He doesn’t have that bravado that certain people who are less smart have.”

What Montana has are results. Notre Dame used to cheer when Dan Devine would finally put Montana into a game, usually when it appeared lost. Devine likes to take credit for discovering Montana, but there is a story around that, during Montana’s junior year, after two Notre Dame quarterbacks had been hurt, Devine whirled angrily and yelled at his assistants, “Get me a quarterback!”

Montana was sent into the game. He brought the Irish back to beat Purdue, causing Devine to ask, “What’s that kid’s name?”

WALSH AND MONTANA are an ideal pair, kind of like a professor and his puppy. Here’s a new trick, Joe. Roll over and stand on one leg. Isn’t he cute? “He is extremely coachable,” said Walsh, “and he is very inventive.”

Walsh first saw Montana when Walsh was working out UCLA running back James Owens before the 1979 draft. Owens had brought Montana along to throw the ball to him, and Walsh was impressed enough to forget Owens and make Montana the 49ers’ second selection.

The choice was high enough to startle NFL scouts. “They questioned his consistency,” said Walsh, “but I felt that was the fault of Notre Dame. I wondered why, if he could have one great game, why not two, or three? They said his arm wasn’t strong enough, but it is as strong as Dan Fouts’. I put his arm in the 90th percentile.

“Joe has leadership, instinct, resourcefulness, maturity. We have the most detailed offense in the league. The quarterback is our limit. But with Joe, we don’t have a limit.”

End of argument.

Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional

Marino, Dolphins Just Babes Against Bullies

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Dateline: PALO ALTO, CALIF.

Uh, about that wing being built at the Pro Football Hall of Fame to celebrate the accomplishments of Dan Marino of Miami.

Put away the hammer and saw for a few more years. Pack up the spotlight and send back all those autographed footballs collected from assorted end zones with Marino’s fingerprints on them.

Rent out the space for something useful, like a used-car lot. Wait until Marino grows up and wins a couple of Super Bowls, like Joe Montana of San Francisco.

Or until Marino learns to throw the ball lying on his back, or only to his own receivers, or until he gets a defense that doesn’t think it is against the rules to get in the way of the other team.

IN ONE MISTY afternoon on the campus of Stanford University, Marino was exposed, not as a boy wonder, but merely as a boy, befuddled by the adults of the 49ers, who allowed him only one touchdown pass and none after the first quarter.

“Marino had only a fair game, but he’ll be back,” said 49ers’ coach Bill Walsh. “He’s a brilliant quarterback.

“He’s a great quarterback, a great young quarterback.”

The longer the game went, the younger Marino got. By the end, you expected Marino to curl up in the huddle with a pacifier in his mouth.

“It was our poorest offensive game of the year,” said Miami coach Don Shula. “Our defense never stopped them. We just didn’t have the answers.”

What was supposed to be the greatest Super Bowl ever ended up being the greatest mismatch.

THIS WAS BABIES against bullies. The 49ers even looked better during calisthenics.

And this wasn’t just a bunch of overweight guys with fish on their hats who wandered into Stanford Stadium on stolen credentials. These were Shula’s Dolphins, the most prolific offensive menagerie on record.

They could score so fast the stadium clock needed to be a stopwatch. You had to take off your shoes to count the touchdowns.

This was the team with the state-of-the-art passing attack, inexhaustible and indefensible.

“All we heard all week,” said Montana, “was about their offense. We knew we had an offense, too.”

WHAT SAN FRANCISCO had was more weapons than Miami. Not only was there Montana, the game’s most valuable player, but Roger Craig, who scored three times for a Super Bowl record, and Wendell Tyler, who did not fumble, and Dwight Clark and even a third-string running back, Carl Monroe, who caught the first of Montana’s three touchdown passes.

Montana was as nimble as Marino was inert, dashing away from a timid Dolphin pass rush, running once for a touchdown and, at one point, posing the question of whether he could rush for as many yards as Marino could pass for. Anyone without a microscope would have thought the Miami defense had missed the team bus.

“Montana had a lot to do with that,” Shula said. “He was outstanding in every way. When you get beat the way we got beat, you just take your hat off to the victor.”

If this had been a prize fight, the 49ers would have been given the decision on a TKO, just as soon as Montana found Craig for a 16-yard touchdown late in the third quarter.

THE 49ERS COULD pass and run, often at the same time. Miami couldn’t even walk. So insecure was Miami’s running game that the Dolphins tried it only nine times, with little effect.

Miami had one bullet, Marino, and on this day it was only good for shooting itself in the foot.

Marino threw the ball 50 times, a Super Bowl record, and completed 29 to friends and two to San Francisco, one each to Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson, who weren’t supposed to have the speed or the savvy to stay with the Marks Brothers of Miami, Duper and Clayton.

Duper caught only one pass, and while Clayton caught six, none was ultimately of consequence.

Marino’s most effective pass was a dump-off to running back Tony Nathan.

“We knew we were the key to beating these guys,” said Wright. “It would all come down to what kind of day we had.”

THE SECONDARY and the pass rush, led mostly by Fred Dean, Gary Johnson and Dwaine Board, tested Marino’s noted quick release as it had never been tested in his young career.

To get the ball off in time, Marino would have had to throw it back between his center’s legs.

There can be no doubt now that San Francisco is the best team in football, complete in all phases, while the Dolphins are only as good as Marino can make them.

“This team is one of the best of all times,” said Walsh.

Instant history is dangerous. Just a day before, we would have believed that about Marino. PHOTO: UPI Telephoto. San Francisco running back Roger Craig is upended by Miami cornerback William Judson after a short gain. Craig scored three touchdowns to set a Super Bowl record.

Chicago Tribune, Football, Prediction, Professional

Trying to Figure the Super Winner

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Dateline: PALO ALTO, CALIF.

I’m a numbers guy when it comes to picking football winners and here are the most important numbers to consider in choosing a winner of Super Bowl XIX. The odds of an earthquake actually destroying either the Miami Dolphins or San Francisco 49ers on Super Sunday are 10,000 to 1, reported to be the same as the last time nature tried to shake this city into the bay.

A lot less was at stake in 1906, of course, there being no Super Bowl but merely the infancy of the future Paris of America, which has since been more or less restored, to the eternal gratitude of hairdressers everywhere.

The odds are considerably more promising that Stanford Stadium will be rattled around a little bit, something like 500 to 1, which the 49ers may be counting on to stop the passing of Dan Marino of Miami. It is the only defense that has not yet been tried.

THE OPPORTUNITY to witness this Super Bowl in person has been sold for as much as $1,000, the most impressive number ever associated with football ticket scalping. This would seem to confirm the opinion that this is the most desirable Super Bowl ever concocted, when all it really means is that folks around here never pay less than $1,000 for anything, including bread that tastes like it has already been chewed and a ride on a noisy cable car during which you feel as secure as a scab on a child’s elbow.

Parking places are selling for $100, which I believe is only by the wheel, and TV is hawking without blushing one minute of time for a cool million, the same number as Joe Montana’s salary for a whole month.

This is a Super Bowl that will be won or lost by the quarterbacks. The numbers on each of them are revealing.

Montana of San Francisco leads Marino in marriage proposals 3-1 and in weddings 2-0, making him clearly the veteran bridegroom.

Marino’s inexperience in these matters has been of considerable concern to observers who have watched the two all week, trying to determine which one is most adept at handling pressure.

Every question concerning each man’s marriage plans met with severe irritation, with Marino being the more testy, though Montana seemed to have the edge in regret.

MARINO LEADS Montana in number of flashy sports cars, having had three Corvettes to Montana’s two Ferraris. If either one should become most valuable player in the game, he will not win a new automobile, but a bumper sticker that says, “My other car is a Dodge.”

Bill Walsh, the 49ers’ coach, is very big on numbers, as one would imagine about a man who works for a team whose last name is one.

Walsh begins every game with 25 plays called “the script.” The script is never violated until all the plays have been run in numerical order, no matter the down, distance or situation.

Walsh does this to prevent stereotyping of his offense, and to keep Montana’s mind clear to consider more important numbers, such as the address of the church this time.

It also allows Walsh time to dash to the locker room and change in case he should discover himself wearing in public any piece of clothing that does not have a crease.

DON SHULA DOES not bother with scripts other than the one he read a long time ago which told him that any point is made clearer by screaming.

When considering the numerical influence of either coach, one should not look at the sideline but at the roadside. Shula is part owner of five hamburger franchises in the Bay Area, while Walsh is part owner of none.

The most annoying number is nine, that being the total of Miami defenders whose last names begin with the letter B. This oddity is responsible for Miami’s defense being known as the Killer Bees, or on occasion the Beefense.

The Dolphins and their sunburned faithful take great delight in pointing out how clever they are with nicknames, giving an identity to a defense that would be better off hiding its face behind a hat.

SAN FRANCISCO has the much better defense but has no identity except the one it left behind when its pass rush moved north from San Diego. All four of its defensive backs will be in the Pro Bowl, but so will all three important members of Miami’s offense, whose names all begin with M.

There is no telling how good Miami could be if it used the whole alphabet.

The only number that really matters in all of this is No. 13. That is Marino’s jersey number, or the number of touchdown passes he threw last week. I forget which.

Marino is the only reason anyone should pick Miami, but in all the history of Super Bowls, there has never been a better reason.

I make it, by the numbers, Dolphins, 31-24.