All signs are for a crummy Super Bowl. Undistinguished, anonymous football teams. Bad town. Lousy weather. Picnic food. This place is not a destination, it’s a reprimand.
Madonna bailed early. The Material Girl knew something.
Phil Collins, the foreign singer, offered his credentials to be part of Super Bowl Sunday, the second greatest American holiday:
“I played rugby at school. That’s a real man’s game.”
I’m not going into who are real men and who aren’t. Only one Dick Vermeil column per Super Bowl. But when you get dissed by the halftime act, you might figure you’ve got an image problem.
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Let’s start with the basic flaw of this thing. Too many underdogs. No one to root for. No one to root against.
In all the great dramas, any one of which never received the attention this thing has, there are good guys and bad guys, haves and have-nots, heroes and villains, the Christians and the lions. Here you’ve only got the Christians. You can’t swing a notepad without hitting one.
Oh, one of the Titans gave it a try. Defensive end Josh Evans evoked for the Tennessee defense the shadow of that most evil of bullies.
“We’re like Mike Tyson in his prime,” Evans said. “We are going to deliver the blow. If you can stay with us, fine. If not, you’re going down.”
See, his heart wasn’t in that. The later Tyson, the convicted rapist, ear-eating, head-butting, after-the-bell-punching Tyson, maybe we could sink our teeth into that.
Then his coach, Jeff Fisher, said: “We’ve come this far. We’re not going to double-bogey the 18th hole.”
A player says it’s a fistfight and the coach says it’s a round of golf. Vermeil says it’s the last leg of a marathon. What kind of Super Bowl can it be when you can’t get a consensus? You knew what any Super Bowl was that had the Raiders in it. It was an alley fight without rules.
You knew where you stood with Dallas. You were against them. You rooted for Denver like you rooted for Georgia Frontiere’s seventh marriage. You just knew they had to get it right sooner or later, crazy kids.
What’s this we have here? Two teams not only from nowhere but from somewhere else. These two sides have the roots of a toupee.
A guy asks me, “What’s a Titan, anyway?” And I answer, “Prometheus was one.” And he says, “Is he the wide receiver or the cornerback?”
It is a Super Bowl without anyone to watch. You’ve got a better chance of finding a celebrity at the Laundromat than on the Rams or the Titans. Michael Jordan shows up in the middle of the week and jaws drop. Eddie George is around every day and has to show his ID. The wrestler Goldberg draws a bigger press crowd than Orlando Pace, the tackle.
One of the Rams, receiver Az-Zahir Hakim, tries to evoke Joe Namath by guaranteeing a victory.
“A case of overloading the rear end with the mouth,” said Vermeil, ever the wet blanket.
This is all too abrupt, too jarring to make sense. Jacksonville was heir to Denver. It had put in its time, taken its lumps. Minnesota was the natural and rightful successor to the 49ers/Packers/Cowboys.
If the world as we knew it was going to fall apart, then the Redskins, or even the Bears, the Dolphins or, yes, even the Bills, would have brought order out of chaos. Some suffering is required.
Neither of the new towns of these two teams can match a single ache in Buffalo, will ever know the torment that Cleveland endured, can’t begin to deserve the glory invested by generations in Houston and Los Angeles.
For Tennessee and St. Louis to be left standing is like the last two survivors being the guys who held the coats. This is the triumph of the designated drivers.
“This is a classic story, a heartwarming story,” Rams defensive end Kevin Carter said.
What, Cinderella Meets the Little Engine That Could? This is like a happy childhood to Frank McCourt, hardly worth bothering with. Give me “Angela’s Ashes” and you keep “All Things Bright and Beautiful.”
Not that there aren’t bad guys. But the bad guys don’t have a chance to get their noses bloodied. Bud Adams, the owner of the Titans, and the widow Rosenbloom/Frontiere, proprietress of the Rams. Now that would be a game: backstabbing at 100 yards.
I’ll take Georgia’s inheritance over Bud’s exploitation. Rams 28, Titans 17.
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