A perfect storm has blitzed the country
By STEVE KING
So, just did we get here to this Super Bowl Sunday?
No, not Paul Brown’s Cincinnati Bengals and the former Cleveland Rams. Those stories have been recounted a thousand times — a day — these last two weeks leading up to day’s big game, which is No. 56 for those of you scoring at home.
No, rather, how did the NFL get to this point?
Good question.
The answer is some excellent forward thinking, good risk-taking and, most important of all, a perfect storm.
The NFL and AFL owners who hatched this out in the mid-1960s — guys like Halas, Mara, Hunt, Rooney, Rozelle and, yes, even Modell, most definitely Modell, because he was a huge player in this — never saw all this coming.
Indeed, for all they saw was a game — a championship game, to be sure, the be-all and end-all in pro football. They wanted it to possibly someday rival the much bigger World Series in what was then the much bigger sport, baseball.
Never, ever, ever, ever in their wildest dreams did they foresee the game eventually dwarfing the World Series or, even more so, their sport dwarfing Major League Baseball, passing like a jet would a Model-T. It didn’t seem possible that it could happen. There was too far to go, too much ground to make up.
The perfect storm came when the Super Bowl arrived at a time when the sports populace and the country was ready for something that had more pizzazz to offer to a nation and even a world that began embracing, and valuing, pizzazz in a big way.
They never could conceive that Super Bowl Sunday would be not just a game, but rather a holiday that would attract the attention of nearly everyone, including people such as the grandmother from Peoria who wouldn’t know a football if it her in the head, but watched the Super Bowl because she liked the halftime show.
And lo and behold, there are still people like her, and because of that, the halftime show is an event unto itself.
Who knew?
Somewhere, all those football guys from 5½ decades ago are shaking their heads and smiling.
