Memories of Refrigerator Perry running, Paul Brown dancing, Bill Beichick scowling, the persistent presence of John Elway, and the Super Bowl Buffalo needed, but Dallas got.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - In the immortal words of Duane Thomas, "If the Super Bowl is the ultimate game, how come they're playing it next year?"
As a sportswriter, I came to America's food-o-rama and unofficial national party at the wrong time. It was the mid-1980s. The game was usually a mismatch.
What the L?
The Roman numerals struck me as more appropriate to world wars, kings or popes. As we approach Super Bowl 50, it's obvious that the NFL decided either that "L" would simply not do for the golden anniversary, or possibly that fans who fell off the beer wagon were too dim-witted to get it, anyway.
By any counting method, I covered 11 (or, XI) Super Bowls. As rated in "Super Bowl Gold - 50 Years of the Big Game," a coffee table book by Sports Illustrated, four were in the top six, three were in the 20s, three in the 30s, and one in the 40s among the 49 that have been played.
In the book, the editors explain their five criteria for ratings as: lead changes, fourth quarter dramatics, underdog triumph, historical significance and memorable plays.
No. 1, fairly obviously, was Super Bowl XLII after the 2007 season, decided for all purposes by the helmet catch of David Tyree. The latter had caught just four balls all season, but he made one of the great, pre-Odell Beckham Jr. stunt receptions of all time to fell the unbeaten Patriots.
I wasn't at that game.
Going in chronological order, here are my Super 11, one for each player in the lineup. Plus a 12th game I don't even like to think about.
1984 season, Super Bowl XIX, 49ers 38, Dolphins 14.
S.I, ranking: 28.
Hello, Dan. Goodbye, Dan.
It was my introduction to the big game and its serious potential for letdowns. The Joe Montana vs. Dan Marino shootout never materialized. Everyone was excited about the offense, but the big stat was points allowed. The 49ers had the fewest in the league at just over two TDs per game and played like it.
Marino never made it back to the big game. Maybe that was because Don Shula never supported him with the personnel Troy Aikman or Tom Brady had around them.
Or maybe, to repeat the persistent rumors about Marino, the quarterback sometimes choked.
Championships can't be the be-all and end-all, though. Marino's statistics were staggering in his rookie year in 1983, and they kept the mind reeling until he retired after the 1999 season.
He played his whole career with Miami. There was no Joe Namath in Los Angeles or Johnny Unitas in San Diego finish.
Marino made the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
But he should have won more.
Or, actually, should have won any.
1985, Super Bowl 20, Bears 46, Patriots 10.
Ranking: 24.
During the week, Bears quarterback Jim McMahon mooned a news helicopter hovering over the practice field.
In the game, he wore a headband. The only lettering on it that reporters could see from the press box consisted of the letters, "J.D." It turned out to read "JDF Cure," meaning the "Juvenile Diabetes Foundation." It was a cause dear to McMahon's heart.
But those of my generation, certain it meant "Juvenile Delinquent" for the punkish McMahon, channeled Marlon Brando in the movie "The Wild One":
Mildred: What are you rebelling against, Johnny?
Johnny: Whaddaya got?
The biggest memory, however, was of Mike Ditka's offense. You've heard of the Monsters of the Midway? This was the Carnival of the Midway.
In the previous season's NFC title game, San Francisco's Bill Walsh used lineman Guy McIntyre as a backfield blocker to blow open a hole in the goal line defense of the Bears. The play stuck in Ditka's considerable craw.
The next season, Ditka unleashed the 350ish-pound William "Refrigerator" Perry. It isn't pretty when appliances run wild.
In addition to being a wrecking ball as a blocker, Perry ran six times for eight yards and three touchdowns and caught a 4-yard touchdown pass. Included was a 1-yard touchdown run in the Super Bowl into which the Bears pranced, doing the "Super Bowl Shuffle" before they had even qualified for the game.
The song was released three months before the Super Bowl, reached No. 41 on the Billboard Top 100 list, and reeked of the absolute confidence of a team that knew it would not be denied unless Hell freon-ed over.
1986, Super Bowl XXI, Giants 39, Broncos 20
Ranking: 42.
It would really tick me off in those years to see John Elway all but jump into a phone booth and emerge as a superhero (lower case "s") in conference championship games against the Browns, only to go out supinely in the Super Bowl against the big, bad NFC.
Most of the nation's football writers had hoped for a Browns-Giants match-up, the Jim Brown vs. Sam Huff thing all over again.
But most of the experts also thought the immobile Bernie Kosar would be a sitting duck in the cross hairs of Lawrence Taylor's pass rush, compared to the more elusive Elway. They thought the Super Bowl would have been even more one-sided had the Browns won "The Drive" game for the AFC Championship.
I disagreed.
I noted the death of safety Don Rogers in the off-season; injuries to Earnest Byner and Kevin Mack, which sent the rush-based offense of 1985 down the tubes; and the death of well-liked publicity aide Chuck Fisher in a car-train accident. I thought the Browns had coped with more adversity than any team.
The Browns might not have won if they had been there. But they sure wouldn't have quit.
1988, Super Bowl XXIII, 49ers 20, Bengals 16
Ranking: 6.
Cris Collinsworth, now an NBC analyst, said it best: "We had them on their 8 with three minutes to go. Someone came to me and said, 'We've got them now.' I said, 'Have you seen who's quarterbacking the 49ers?' That's what it comes down to. Joe Montana is not human. I don't want to call him a god, but he's somewhere in between."
The expert voting panel gave the MVP award to Jerry Rice, the 49ers wide receiver. I thought somebody had to throw Rice his 11 passes for 215 yards. I would've voted for Montana if they had given me a ballot.
Veteran Plain Dealer reporter Chuck Heaton's wife cried because Paul Brown didn't get his Super Bowl victory.
It was the only time I spent much time around PB. Bengals running back Ickey Woods had made his end zone dance, the "Ickey Shuffle," a big fad.
Said Brown, 80, "Why, anybody can do the Ickey Shuffle," whereupon he broke into the hoppity-hoppity moves to a roar of laughter and a round of applause from the assembled reporters.
"Humor and substance," I said to former colleague Tony Grossi as we filed out of the interview room, contrasting Brown to the owner of the team named for PB, who had fired him.
1989, Super Bowl XXIV, 49ers 55, Broncos 10.
Ranking: 38
What I said about Elway in his early Super Bowls.
1990, Super Bowl XXV, Giants 20, Bills 19.
Ranking: 3
Former Giants back-up quarterback Jeff Hostetler was starting, because the Giants had played well after Phil Simms got hurt.
Assistant coach Bill Belichick took that lesson to heart and kept Drew Bledsoe on the bench after he lost his job through injury to Tom Brady in the Patriots' first Super Bowl season years later.
After the Giants victory over Buffalo's up-tempo, no-huddle offense of the future, Hostetler, who was beaten like a pinata by the Bills' defensive line, said the first half was "kind of a blur," that he felt "woozy," and had "a pretty bad headache."
No one had heard of Dr. Bennet Omalu, who in the future would tell the world of the effects of head trauma on NFL players, but it's obvious today that "Hoss" had played most of the game with a concussion.
Belichick's defense got plenty of praise, but the Giants won behind running back O.J. Anderson and a keep-away rushing game. The Bills had the ball for only 19 minutes, 27 seconds and still scored 19 points.
Before the game, Belichick, the Browns soon-to-be head coach, sat at a table in a hotel ballroom and spent a miserable hour, for both him and his inquisitors, talking about his career and football philosophy.
It was so uncomfortable that a friend of mine, Michael Gee, then with the Boston Herald, tried to break the tension by citing his school ties with Belichick, who had been a center in his collegiate football days.
Gee said that he had gone to the same liberal arts college, Wesleyan in Middletown, Conn., in the same years as Belichick.
Of all the available retorts -- including "Did you ever see me play?" and "Do you remember (Insert professor's name)?" and "Did you know (insert fellow student's name)?" -- Belichick chose, after an agonizing silence, this reply:
"So?"
1992, Super Bowl XXVII, Cowboys 52, Bills 17.
Ranking: 27.
Talk about bittersweet.
It was the only time I covered my boyhood team, the Cowboys, in the big game.
My father-in-law and a friend from Buffalo got tickets and spent the night before and after the game sharing my hotel room. It was fairly easy to get tickets in those days if the venue was a big stadium, and this one was at the Rose Bowl.
As much as I loved the Cowboys as a boy, I knew Buffalo and Cleveland were Rust Belt sister cities. The late political commentator Tim Russert, Buffalo-born and raised and John Carroll-educated, wrote in his tribute to his father, "Big Russ and Me," published just before the second Dallas-Buffalo Super Bowl:
"Dallas doesn't need another Super Bowl. They've already won three. They have the big oil, big bucks, and big hair. Why in the world do they need another Super Bowl? There is a powerful, simple strength to Buffalo and when the Bills win, it feels like an affirmation of our way of life."
Russert would later say on an ESPN documentary about the Bills' quartet of Super Bowl losses, "Buffalo needs the Super Bowl. "
With all the cultural and recreational resources available, with a white elephant of a stadium open for business only 10 times a year, with a national joke of a team for all but two of the past 17 seasons, I disagree about the centrality of the Browns in Cleveland. But I know that's a minority opinion.
1994, Super Bowl XXIX, 49ers 49, Chargers 26.
Ranking: 38
Hey, if the Niners are going to do unexpected stuff like hit a 44-yard Steve Young-to-Jerry Rice touchdown pass in the first minute and a half, well, how can the Chargers prepare for that?
Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic, San Diego.
1997, Super Bowl XXXII, Broncos 31, Packers 24.
Ranking: 2.
Elway gets his ring! To be followed by Elway gets another ring the next season!
He won both as a game manager, not a dominant quarterback, and maybe his employee, Peyton Manning, can do the same Sunday for the Broncos against Carolina in the Golden Bowl.
Although running back Terrell Davis won the MVP award, a big move to bronze Elway for Canton on the spot was apparently in the works among his star-struck media admirers at this game.
I admit that the Broncos sprang a huge upset on the defending champions, and that the most memorable play was Elway's red zone third-and-6, 8-yard scramble. It ended in the kind of "helicopter" landing that knocked Josh McCown out of the opener of the recent Browns season.
Still, Elway's run did not win the game. Brett Favre gunned the Packers right back into a tie.
My biggest memory, however, was of how Green Bay simply let Davis score the winning touchdown from the 1 with 1:47 to play.
At the time, I thought it was a gutsy bet on Favre's arm to whip the Packers back down the field and get into overtime, rather than hoping for a missed chip shot field goal in the waning seconds.
I mean, how often (Blair Walsh) does (farther left than Bernie Sanders) that (Minnesota loses) happen (against Seattle)?
But, actually, Green Bay coach Mike Holmgren lost track of the downs. After the gift touchdown, Favre moved the Packers to the Broncos' 31, where they turned the ball over on downs.
Later, as the Browns' chief football man, Holmgren would lose track of his senses in the draft picks and hires that were made on his way to a beach and some umbrella drinks.
2001, Super Bowl XXXVI, Patriots 20, Rams 17
Ranking: 4
More than the game or anything in the game, I remember the huge banners that fell from the Superdome rafters, enumerating the dead in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, during a moving halftime performance by U2.
Normally, I was too busy at halftime, writing furiously, to watch the show, but how could you not share the sorrow as the monstrous banners kept unscrolling? So many names. So much horror never to be forgotten or forgiven. So much healing to come.
History will record that Belichick won it by not playing for overtime with his second-year quarterback, Tom Brady, and no timeouts left.
At the time, Brady was still known more for being the 199th player taken in the draft than for winning drives. But he drove the Pats from their own 17 to the heavily favored Rams' 31, setting up Adam Vinatieri's 48-yard field goal on the final play.
History will also record that 11 years later, the Rams' multi-purpose back Marshall Faulk stated his belief that the Patriots illegally taped St. Louis' practices in a precursor of the 2007 "Spygate" scandal. "I'll never get over being cheated out of the Super Bowl," Faulk said.
2004, Super Bowl XXXIX, Patriots 24, Eagles 21
Ranking: 22
Let's just say that if Eagles coach Andy Reid and quarterback Donovan McNabb had been in charge of getting the Declaration of Independence signed, we would probably be celebrating the fourth of August every summer.
Trailing, 24-14, the Eagles sauntered and strolled through a four-minute touchdown drive that began with 5:40 to play.
I thought of Charlie Chaplin's silent movie masterpiece, "Modern Times," in which the "little tramp" gets carried off on an assembly line into the massive cogs and gears of the factory clock.
Belichick called his assistant coaches in the press box. Refuting his motto of "I can only go by what I see," Belichick said, "The scoreboard is correct, right?"
2000, Super Bowl XXXV, Ravens 34, Giants 7.
Ranking: 49.
This only belongs here because it rounds off the list. This game was rated dead last on the Sports Illustrated list. It deserves every bit of that.
I didn't have to cover it, thank God. I was on the phone, getting reaction from one of the most outspoken critics of Art Modell, the late Browns Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver, Dante Lavelli, as the victory ceremony was telecast.
When Modell started to accept the Vince Lombardi trophy, a string fireworks went off. A frightened Modell flinched and then ducked.
"He looked scared, didn't he?" Lavelli said.
What a hollow victory, I thought.
Another movie line came to mind, a twist on Hyman Roth's cynical acceptance of crime in "Godfather II":
"This is the business he's chosen," I said.