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Super Bowl observations The post-game ramblings of an exhausted man
Posted: Monday January 31, 2000 08:37 PM
On the bus ride over to the dome Sunday I saw the sun peek out from behind the clouds for just a split second. It was the first time all week I had seen the sun and I took it to be a good omen for the game. Then I found my seat and realized that more than two hours before the game they were already showing Kurt Warner's wife, Brenda, on the JumboTron. The graphic they used for Brenda Sighting No. 1 read "SUPER BOWL XXXIV CHAMPIONS" underneath her mug. Another omen, not necessarily a good one. I decided I was going to try and count how many times Brenda was on the tube from then on until the final buzzer. I lost count at 8,762. During the pre-game show Travis Tritt yelled: Long live country music! Tritt was also listed in the pre-game notes as the third most famous Georgian after Jimmy Carter and Martin Luther King Jr. Yeah, no fall-off there. The pre-game blow-up puppets looked like they had been in a closet since the 1996 Olympics. Fireworks nearly set the Tina Turner banner on fire. When will people learn, smoke in a dome is bad. The haze in the place made me think I was at a Grateful Dead concert.
To clear the field of debris, six two-men teams pushed spit-shined, state-of-the-art super-horsepower blowers. All I could think upon seeing this was that somewhere a little league football team is folding for lack of funds while the NFL spends 100 grand on blowers. I'm exhausted. I'm not coming up with a metaphor for this one, but before the game the blow-up, 30-foot Lombardi Trophy went flaccid and had to be ripped down and dragged off the field. The on-field flag for "The Star-Spangled Banner" had 46 stars on it. I'm ashamed to admit this but, shut into my hotel room because of the ice storm on Saturday, I passed the time watching people fall down on the icy sidewalks 19 floors below. I wonder if that scalper is still waiting for me outside? Bonnie in Fair Play, S.C., missed a great game. Remember the halftime show's pagan statue thingy behind Phil Collins? Well, during the rest of the game the dismembered arms of that thing hung from the Georgia Dome ceiling. The best parts of the halftime show were the Bruce Springsteen song "Glory Days" they played while setting up the stage (do you see what kind of influence I have?) and the J. Geils song they played tearing it down. My goal for next year is to be in the halftime show. The Rams defense still hasn't gotten the credit it deserves. You want to know what you miss being on the road for six months? I miss just being able to go to the 'fridge to make a turkey sandwich. Next week's Flem File is going to be solely devoted to the greatness of the turkey sandwich. Which play was more remarkable? Steve McNair's scramble and bullet to Kevin Dyson on the next-to-last play of the game, Eddie George's second TD run where he deked four guys then ran over tackle Jeff Zgnonina or Mike Jones's game-saving tackle on the last play of the game? I say Jones's tackle and how he came around with his left hand and chopped out Dyson's knees. Textbook. I measure great moments in sports by the things I think my grandkids will ask me to describe to them someday. Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic torch will be one of them. Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson will be another. So will watching Barry Sanders run. But never, in my wildest, most cynical dreams, did I think I would have to recall an entire Super Bowl. Sports Illustrated staff writer David Fleming explores the sometimes weird and wacky side of sports every Thursday. Click here to send an e-mail to Flem, or address it yourself: flemfile@aol.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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