Yesterday NFL Films, teaming with Warner Home Video, released “America’s Game,” a 40-disc collection, each one telling the story of a championship run-from Super Bowls I to XL-and priced for your holiday gift consideration at an NFL big-ticket price of $199.98. For those whose lives have been substantially defined by those years and those Super Bowls, it’s a bargain. (As an added bonus for us Patriots fans, the set was produced last season, so we get to miss out on the Indianapolis Colts’ title run, with the Pats’ painful fold in the AFC Championship.) Each chapter includes a central 45-minute documentary narrated by a revolving cast of maturing Hollywood males (Donald Sutherland, Martin Sheen, Morgan Freeman, etc.) and bolstered by fresh interviews with three key players on that championship team. Each also features supplementary material.
Only my interest in extending my marriage past its current quarter-century mark has me rationing my viewing. After one day with this treasure trove I have relived only three Super Bowls: I, when my namesake quarterback extended the Green Bay Packers’ dynasty; III, the Joe Namath-led New York Jets upset that changed pro football history, validating the merger between the NFL and the upstart AFL; and my personal favorite, XXXVI, when my hometown Patriots won it all in perhaps the most unusual and surprising title run of the Super Bowl era.
What I am struck by in the retelling, particularly in the surprisingly candid interviews, was not how much I remember, which is quite a bit, but how much I either forgot or never really knew in the first place. In recalling the legendary coach Vince Lombardi, it is not really surprising to hear the great defensive end Willie Davis say, “We played out of fear.” It is far more surprising to hear Bill Curry, who went on to be a head coach at three major college programs, talk about how much he hated Lombardi and recalling how he told Bart Starr that he didn’t believe Lombardi’s claim that he went to church daily. Starr assured him it was true, adding, “The man needs to go to church every day.”
Lombardi produced enough tension for any team, but in 1966 there were also racial tensions and tensions surrounding big money paid to rookie running backs Donnie Anderson ($600,000) and Jim Grabowski ($250,000), to keep them out of the grasp of the American Football League. Davis recalls the so-called “million-dollar fumble,” his strip of Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas that propelled Green Bay to the NFL Championship game, and notes with acid good humor, “It was orchestrated by a $10,000 player.”
The famous tale of Max McGee has special poignancy now, just a few weeks after his death in a home accident. Lombardi had warned his players before the Super Bowl that anyone violating curfew would never play in the NFL again. Starr recalls seeing McGee, a notorious ladies’ man and free spirit, strolling into the team hotel at 6:30 a.m. the morning of the game. It probably was not a factor in McGee’s decision, but he didn’t expect to see much action, at least not in the football game. However, an injury propelled him into the lineup and McGee caught seven passes for 138 yards and two touchdowns. More poignant, certainly at that time, were shots of McGee’s teammate and playmate, Paul Hornung. “The Golden Boy,” aging, battered and in his final appearance with Green Bay, was the only Packer player who didn’t step onto the field.
III may be the biggest Super Bowl win ever. In rooting for New York-yes, for New York-I and fans in cities like Boston, Denver, Oakland, Miami and Buffalo were rooting for the legitimacy of our oft-mocked AFL. The retelling may lack the poignancy of I but-thanks to interviews with Namath, receiver Don Maynard and defensive stalwart Gerry Philbin-it’s often hysterical. The playboy theme is again central, revolving around how the team tried to get “Broadway Joe” to grow up and accept his responsibilities.
Namath’s talent was undeniable, perhaps singular, but for three seasons he had been frustrating his coaches and teammates with his erratic play. In desperation the team decided to elect him offensive captain at the start of the ‘68 season in the hope that it would force the issue. Namath becomes almost teary-eyed reminiscing how that show of respect for his leadership still means more to him than all the other accolades. The words are barely out of his mouth when Philbin is seen saying, “Joe to this day thinks he was elected because he was a leader. It was just the opposite.”
Everybody, of course, recalls how, despite the Jets being almost three-touchdown underdogs to the mighty Baltimore Colts, Namath guaranteed a New York victory. Namath reveals that it wasn’t quite the cocksure public pronouncement history has made it out to be, rather more of an offhand remark-was he supposed to say they were going to lose?-overheard by one Miami Herald reporter. While the mythic is almost always an improvement on the real thing, Maynard provides the perfect reality counterpoint, reminding us how different that era was. “I could care less about the ring,” says the hall-of-fame receiver. “I want the $15,000.”
XXXVI will be the most familiar to most fans. It was a season that spanned much, starting with 9/11 and the strange, if forced, metaphor some found in the ascension of these Patriots. But in football terms alone there were remarkable events. Lightly regarded New England endured a near-fatal injury to their starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe that wound up launching the Tom Brady era; a quarterback controversy when Bledsoe returned with the team at 5-5; “the Snow Bowl,” with America’s introduction to the “tuck rule”; Bledsoe’s return in the AFC Championship at Pittsburgh after a knockout of Brady; and a Super Bowl upset to rival the Jets’-courtesy of a last-second Adam Vinatieri field goal-over a St. Louis Rams team dubbed “the greatest team on turf.”
The Patriots, at least to most of you, will seem far more charming then than they do now. Coach Bill Belichick is actually caught on camera smiling (and not only after wins). He doesn’t look anything like the antichrist as he reveals how his philosophy led him to stick with Kid Brady. “I’m going to make the decisions that are best for the team,” he says. “T-E-A-M!” I delighted in Lawyer Milloy discussing the home-field advantage in the “Snow Bowl” against Oakland: “I didn’t feel it was a home-field advantage. I was cold.” And Brady on the vagaries of the season-saving “tuck rule”: “I’m not going to pretend that I had any idea the ruling would come out that way.” Vinatieri’s game-tying field goal, through the white sky and at the gun, seems every bit as amazing to me now as it did back then. And just like in the “Snow Bowl,” the season and Super Bowl came down to Vinatieri’s leg. Before he ran onto the Superdome field to attempt the 47-yard game-winning field goal, Vinatieri, with supreme confidence, told the Pats’ equipment manager: “Get your butt down the field and get this ball for me.”
Third down and 37 to go. I suspect, for me, this collection will give new meaning to Thanksgiving football.
