Lincicome: Silly Super Bowl pregame hoopla all part of the week's sideshow
I missed covering the first two Super Bowls, but I caught up with the thing before Roman numerals did. The game was not given the same stature as world wars until No. IV. And now we are bearing down — excuse the alphabetical math — upon No. LVII.
Stay with me. This is not going to be a history lesson, a review of Super Bowls I have known and loathed. In fact, the Super Bowl was the most enjoyable of all the big sporting events because it was without a doubt the silliest.
Things are much more formal these days, less fun, doomed by the dreaded “media availability,” but nonetheless odd and overdone.
The game is the game and always takes care of itself, but the preview, from now until kickoff, consistently stretches the human limits of nonsense, enterprise, invention and brass.
One year in Atlanta, a 6-foot tall, walking football, the mascot of a weekly NFL highlights show in Germany, showed up on press day and credentialed journalists tried talking to it.
“The football doesn't speak English,” said a helpful interpreter.
And we thought it only took funny bounces.
This one is missing that perennial moth Tom Brady, drawn to the brightest of lights, who says he's had enough, but you can get odds from any of the NFL's best gambling chums that he has not.
There could be no Super Bowl without the buildup, without the hype, or “hooplala” as Minnesota's Bud Grant called it, adding the extra “la” because one just wasn't enough. And this was before Facebook feeds, the NFL Network and every other person having his own podcast.
The World Series, the Olympics, Wimbledon, almost every other significant championship, is wrapped around action. Until the Super Bowl game, nothing happens. Absolutely nothing. Well, the rare Bears quarterback might moon a helicopter, but otherwise ...
Everything is anticipation, exaggeration, inspection. And when the week is finished, nothing the athletes do on Sunday can possibly justify the promotion. The Eagles and Chiefs, like teams before them, are props in a shameless sideshow.
Quarterback Jim Plunkett was asked what I still consider to be the most outrageous Super Bowl question.
“For the record, Jim,” an impatient and sincere member of the press persisted, “is it blind mother, dead father or the other way around?”
I do not recall Plunkett's answer. I do remember the late Franco Harris' response to the sincere inquiry, “Why do players pat each other on the rear ends?”
“Because that's where your hand hangs,” Harris said.
My all-time favorite question of Super Bowl week was when St. Louis defensive end Jay Williams was asked, “Is Ram a noun or a verb?” A far as I know, Williams is still pondering.
This is just slightly ahead of the classic speculation of another Williams, Doug. “Have you always been a black quarterback?” so I am not discounting an historical inquiry for Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts. “Have you both always ...”
As sports questions go, nothing I've ever heard at a Super Bowl beats a journalist wondering of pitcher Jim Abbott, born without a right hand, “Are you a natural lefty?”
And in fairness, I must admit that none of these inquiries improved on a question I once heard at the World Series. A winning pitcher, and new father, was explaining that his wife couldn't be at the game because she had to feed the baby.
“Breast or bottle?” someone asked without looking up from his notepad.
Fred Dryer, then of the Los Angeles Rams, was asked if the Super Bowl was as big as death.
“Bigger,” he said. “At least it comes in a bigger box.”
The Eagles and Chiefs must learn to roll with all of this, to take it with humor. Teams that resist the hype usually leave their best games at the interview sessions.
“It's like going to the dentist three times a week and having the same tooth filled,” once grumbled Miami Dolphin tackle Manny Fernandez.
Nothing may top the famous Duane Thomas rumination that if the Super Bowl is the ultimate game, they wouldn't be playing it next year. And yet, they do, grander, gaudier and greedier, easily the greatest nonreligious holiday in America.
And my condolences to any who think football is not a religion.