Though baseball has long been considered the national pastime, professional football has captured the imagination of many during the last 40 years.
While today’s football teams have intimately detailed offensive and defensive schemas requiring a playbook resembling a city’s phone directory, there is a certain gladiatorial primitiveness about football that engages viewers. Quite simply, the game can be thrilling.
As in all sports, the playing season ends in a series of championship games. This final game in the playoffs is the Super Bowl. Interest in the Super Bowl began to build prior to the inaugural game in 1967 and over the years has evolved into a passionate fervor.
The Super Bowl is today the most widely-viewed event in the United States. Where did all this enthusiasm come from? Mark Stewart attempts to answer these and other questions in his highly readable book entitled "Super Bowl."
In 1967, professional football is divided into the National (NFL) and American (AFL) football leagues. The question of which league has the better players becomes a source of national conversation. Vince Lombardi’s famous Green Bay Packers are the champions of the NFL and the Kansas City Chiefs are the champions of the upstart AFL. With bragging rights and reputations on the line, the game is played in the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Numerous future Hall of Fame players are on each team. Then in one of the curious foibles that happens so frequently in the Super Bowl, an unexpected player rises to the occasion. Early in the game, Boyd Dowler, a starting end for the Packers, goes down with an ankle injury. His replacement, Max McGee, enters the game.
McGee is known as much for partying the night before games as he is for catching passes. In fact, before the first Super Bowl, McGee went to a number of pregame parties and tumbled into bed in the early hours of the morning. Not feeling exactly rested, McGee gets to the stadium just before kickoff. His coach, the stern disciplinarian Vince Lombardi, now has little choice but to insert the freewheeling McGee into the game.
Though his mind is still foggy, McGee somehow begins running precision pass routes and makes a sensational one-handed catch for a touchdown. Before the game comes to an end, McGee torches the Kansas City secondary by catching seven passes for 138 yards and two touchdowns. McGee later admits that he did not feel very perky at game time because of his self-induced illness. But he starts a trend that continues throughout the history of the Super Bowl of unusual players having the game of their lives at the contest.
Which Super Bowls are the most memorable for you? Do you have a favorite player you follow during the post-season playoffs?
Have you ever witnessed some play that is clearly bizarre during a Super Bowl? One of my favorite plays comes from Super Bowl XXVII when the speedy Buffalo Bills split end Ron Beebe runs down a Dallas Cowboy lineman showboating his way to a touchdown. Beebe causes a fumble and restores some pride to the Buffalo team getting trounced by the Dallas Cowboys. It is one of the most remarkable plays in any Super Bowl.
Do you have a favorite play? What is it? For fascinating information about the first 36 Super Bowls, go to the library and check out "Super Bowl" by Mark Stewart
This is a fun-filled story about the first 36 Super Bowls. There are interesting stories of each game and brief accounts of many famous plays and Most Valuable Players. This is your book if you or one of the other family members is interested in professional football. It has concise accounts of all the Super Bowls through 2002. Check it out of the library; you’ll be glad you did.
