Here’s How to Have a Good Super Bowl

Super Bowl games are usually like a fight between two cautious, overweight, old heavyweights. B-o-r-r-r-i-n-g. Dull. Uninspired. Or they’re as one-sided as Tyson-Spinks.

Just try to picture in your mind’s eye a Super Bowl game that lived up to the hype. Try to recall a great play, a great moment. What the game needs is someone running the wrong way, someone heaving a desperation pass out of his end zone as the clock runs out--even an overtime. But the Super Bowl this year has a chance to be Saturday Night at St. Nick’s for a change. A barn-burner. Dempsey-Firpo. Two teams that are short on science but long on desire and belligerence. Two palookas leading with their rights, a regular he’s-up-he’s-down donnybrook. That’s because we could get two teams that are surprised to find themselves in this heady position. All we got to do is knock those San Francisco 49ers out of there. What we got then is a glorious free-for-all. Maybe even baggy-pants comedy. All it will need is a pneumatic blonde and a rubber bladder.

Have you taken a look at the cast of characters still in the running for the Super Bowl? Take the playoffs. Please. In the AFC, there are only three teams that are assured of finishing over .500. And one of them could be 8-7-1. This is the biggest cast of club fighters ever assembled in one place since the Holyoke Arena went out of business. The over-and-under could be 100 with this slap-happy crew. Infinity.

It isn’t as if the NFC is offering only quality merchandise. It has seven teams that will definitely finish above .500. The rest are treading water.

In the AFC going into the final week, only one team has clinched a playoff berth. In the NFC, only two. This may be the Mystery Guest Super Bowl.

Only one wild-card team has ever won a Super Bowl--the 1980 Oakland Raiders. And they were an 11-5 wild-card team, tied for the division lead and ruled runner-up (to San Diego) only by the complicated league formula for separating photo-finishers (best net points in division games, if you can believe that as a far reach in tiebreaking).

Only two other wild-card teams even got to a Super Bowl. Both lost. The 1975 Dallas Cowboys finished 10-4 behind St. Louis in their division, and the 1985 New England Patriots finished in an 11-5 tie with two other teams and got in on a better record against common opponents (next step would have been a coin flip).

The team with the worst record ever to get in a Super Bowl was the 1979 Rams, at 9-7. What the Rams had going for them in the postseason was a quarterback, Vince Ferragamo, who was so new to the league--he had played behind Pat Haden and Bob Lee most of the season--that the opposition had no book on him, no idea what he was going to do next. That was understandable because, frequently, Vince had no idea what he was going to do next. He surprised his own team as much as the opposition.

But it made for a lively Super Bowl. The Rams went in there like sailors on shore leave hitting a dance hall and very nearly upset the lordly Pittsburgh Steelers. The final score, 31-19, was closer than it computed. The dotty Rams had the Steelers looking over both shoulders at once at the end.

Listen! When you go to a golf tournament do you like to see all these popinjays in purple sweaters walking through the sun shooting birdies and eagles? Or do you like to see a whole bunch of guys panicking in the deep rough and trying to save par with wild shots out of parking lots? Do you want Seve Ballesteros--or Nick Faldo?

When you go to a ballgame, do you like to see two guys hook up in an impeccable pitching duel, mowing down batter after batter in a 1-0 yawner? Or do you like to see a 12-11 brass-knuckle brawl? Do you want Duran-Leonard--or Ali-Frazier? Yankees vs. St. Louis Browns--or Yankees vs. the Koufax-Drysdale Dodgers?

If you like studied excellence, nonchalant perfection, root for the ’89 49ers. They have even survived a coaching change. Not even the Lombardi Packers could do that. If you’re into Rolls-Royce football, go with the Niners.

If you want to see an Irish picnic in cleats, go for one of those teams struggling to make .500. Teams that make more mistakes than a boss at the office party. Teams that play heart-in-the-mouth football. What-will-they-do-wrong-next? The Unpredictables vs. the Disrespectables. Rated R.

You can have San Francisco-Denver. Give me Indianapolis-Green Bay. What’s wrong with Houston in a Super Bowl? A team that’s lost, 61-7, 38-7 and 34-0, a coach that got bit by a water moccasin? Think they’d be loose? Let’s hear it for all those 8-7 teams. What do you want on Super Sunday, grand opera--or a rock concert?