THE SUPER SHOW
Super Bowl. It is the Great American Time Out, a three-hour pause on a Sunday afternoon in January that is--as sheer, unadorned spectacle--an interval unique. For 70 million Americans, life compresses to the diagonally measured size of a cathode ray tube. Work goes undone, play ceases too; telephones stop ringing, crime disappears, romance is delayed and, in all the land, there is just one traffic jam worthy of the title--on highways leading to the Super Bowl site. If it is not literally McLuhan's global village, the Super Bowl certainly is the national town, and all the inhabitants have gone to watch a game on the community screen.
The scale of the Super Bowl happening is staggering. It has commanded the largest audience ever for a single sporting event televised in the U.S. The number should grow even larger when the Oakland Raiders and Minnesota Vikings contend for the Super Bowl title this weekend in Los Angeles. One of every three Americans--male and female, newborn to nonagenarian--will see at least some of the game; just nine nations in the world have a total population larger than the Super Bowl's TV audience. Only the World Cup soccer final, a few heavyweight championship fights, and the Olympics attract a bigger one-day sports audience. All are events of worldwide interest, steeped in tradition. The Super Bowl spectacle pivots around a grand, but parochial American passion. It was born a mere decade ago, the child of technology, a unique combination of slick and schlock with no history at all save a profound connection to a taproot of the human psyche.
To play--to compete in or look on the struggle--is an instinct that stems from an early branch of man's evolutionary tree. Playing games not only sharpens the hunting and fighting skills of animals but also, as Jane Goodall found in her studies of the great primates, serves to organize the beasts. In all ages, the human race has used sports to order its social house in virtually every particular of life. English knights jousted for the hand of a lady; Philippine villagers set the boundaries of paddyfields in wrestling matches; Greek city-states staked local pride ("We're No. 1 in the Peloponnesus!") on the laurel-leaf total at Olympia. Wherever and whenever the match, a crowd gathered to be entertained. So the evolution of Super Bowl Sunday was just a matter of time and technology, awaiting the installation of millions of television sets. Indeed, there are remarkable similarities between the first prehistoric foot race--undoubtedly enhanced by those who grunted their favorites on--and the game this corning Sunday.
And how the beasts organize themselves to see the contemporary version! Preparations begin the day after a site has been chosen. The first step in 18 months of logistical work-up is the arrival in the blessed city (the Super Bowl pours $55 million to $70 million into the local economy) of Bill Granholm, a top aide to National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle. Granholm begins by cornering 15,000 hotel rooms. Before the game is over, he and the rest of the league staff will have seen to everything from towels and hot dogs to brackets for televisions in the press box to X-ray machines for diagnosing injuries, to coat hangers for clotheshorse athletes to an elaborate security system designed to ensure that nothing can possibly go wrong on Super Sunday.
Next come the advance guards of the television network that has paid $3.5 million into N.F.L. coffers for the privilege of broadcasting the big game--and collecting $250,000 per minute of commercial time. For Super Bowl XI (Will the institution be called Super Bowl LXXIII when it is as old as the World Series is now?), NBC will haul to Pasadena a massive force of personnel and about $5 million worth of equipment: 165 people, 14 of whom--headed by Curt Gowdy and Don Meredith--will appear on home screens; twenty-one cameras, 16 of them the full-size "hard" variety, three handheld, one in a helicopter and one in the Goodyear blimp; five slow-motion "discs" for replays, and a vidifont, a computer-like machine that can instantaneously cough up players' names and statistics. Add to that three miles of video cable, 3 1/2 miles of audio cable, 65 microphones and 100 monitors, then plug everything into 15 giant trailer trucks and a specially built studio for the pre-game show, and the Super Bowl can be beamed to the addicted nation.
Just to make certain that there are no embarrassing slip-ups--28 minutes of silence is acceptable, perhaps even desirable, in a presidential debate, but the Super Bowl is serious business--NBC Executive Producer Scotty Connal a month ago called together the 87 members of his game crew for training sessions. (The remaining 78 will handle the pre-game show only.) By kickoff, they will work together as cohesively as the teams on the field, and maybe a lot more so. As a shining example, the television crew will have the sacrifice of CBS Sportscaster Jack Whitaker, who dieted the entire week before Super Bowl I. Said Whitaker in 1967: "This is serious stuff. I weighed 162 at the start of the season. I wanted to be down to 155 for this game."
Through its sophisticated and expensive techniques, television has forged a football game into the nation's single largest shared experience (except for electing a President or watching American astronauts walk on the moon). The Super Bowl has made other contributions to the culture too, footnotes not to be lost. In 1967, The Game was responsible for the release of 4,000 pigeons in flight over the crowd, an exercise that produced history's most massive precision drill: the simultaneous holding of souvenir programs over 63,036 heads. Other wonders: a 30-foot statue of a Green Bay Packer snorting smoke from three-foot-wide flared nostrils; a hot-air balloon that, too cold to climb out of the stadium, drifted into the stands and was torn apart by fans. The N.F.L. went superpatriotic in 1972, when it staged a flyover by Air Force jets, having arranged for a plane to peel off into the "missing man" formation while P.O.W. families looked on. There have been theatrics spectacular, displays dismal. This year it is all up to Walt Disney Productions, which will assure us that "It's a Small World" and a happy one.
But always there have been the multitudes ready for the opening kickoff. They include Americans in Europe who jet into Frankfurt to watch the game in German hotels that pirate the American Forces Network's signal. In Korea, 40,000 troops worry less about Panmunjom Truce Session CCCLXXXIII than the 5:30 a.m. live color broadcast of the Super Bowl.
Back home, Super Bowl mania takes even stranger forms. Boston Political Journalist Richard Gaines will be one of the few on the telephone during the game. (Long-distance calls dropped 50% in Pittsburgh last year while the Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys.) Gaines watches the contest alone, but exchanges opinions via phone with a select coterie of fellow Super Bowl junkies. Says Gaines: "I always know exactly what plays will make the phone ring and who will be on the line." His Super Bowl record: all three hours on long distance.
In Redskins-obsessed Washington, Georgetown University Hospital installed television sets in the labor rooms of the maternity floor. Before that inspired move, fathers-to-be delayed bringing their wives to the hospital until the game had ended. How long between contractions? One slant off-tackle, an end-around, two passes and a penalty. When the Kansas City Chiefs played in the 1970 Super Bowl, the home-town police had one-quarter the usual number of Sunday-morning calls and just one crime, a burglary; they waited until half-time to question the suspect. The Kansas City Power and Light Co. turned on 15 million extra watts of power to run the city's radios and television sets that Sunday afternoon. The Chiefs' victory that year was won amid a gambling investigation during which the name of Quarterback Lenny Dawson arose. President Richard Nixon made two of his famous locker-room calls to buck up Dawson and Coach Hank Stram.
Dawson was cleared, but betting remains very much on the minds of Super Bowl fans. Super Bowl means time to put the money down, whether it is for $1 office pools or high-roller stakes. It is the biggest day of the year for bookies; estimates of the amount wagered range as high as $260 million. At the Stardust Lounge in Las Vegas, where Super Bowl betting is done legally, fans flock to the windows. Says the lounge's manager: "They'll come here out of the cracks of walls--from Texas, the Midwest, everywhere--to watch the game and bet." The word among bookies on the biggest Super Bowl bet ever made: $400,000.
But the principal social outlet for Super Bowl mania is getting together with friends to party, or at least munch, and watch the game. Some gatherings are formalized affairs, involving early invitations, official N.F.L. team bunting and other decorations purchased far in advance. Supermarkets in Knoxville, Tenn., report mountains of potato chips carted away in the days before the game; fast-food franchises put on extra help to handle the halftime hamburger crush.
In the bars, especially those that feature oversize screens, Super Sunday is boom time. In a restaurant/discotheque hard by the u.C.L.A. campus, students have their choice of three seven-foot screens on three separate floors. In no-longer-teetotaling-on-the-Sabbath Atlanta, bar owners plan to discount drinks, hoping to lure patrons away from their home TV sets.
Most Americans, however, will do as Columnist Art Buchwald does, and watch the game with buddies. His car-pool gang, which faithfully treks to Redskin games and includes such notables as Jack Valenti and Joe Califano, gathers, says Buchwald, "because we want to be with close friends at that hour."
Indeed, it is tradition that most nourishes Super Bowl madness. It is the last big Sunday afternoon before the tube, the clocking in of the final moments of the estimated 9 billion man-hours that Americans annually spend watching football on television. This Sunday, for example, Portland Attorney Jack Faust, his son Charlie and his friend Harry Johnston will drive through the city's all-but-deserted streets to the home of Faust's father to observe their rites. That is where they settled into casually selected chairs ten years ago to eat hot dogs and watch the first Super Bowl. Now none of them accept an invitation anywhere else on Super Bowl day. "I know that Dad, Charlie, Harry and I are going to be right there at the 50-yard line in front of Dad's 23-inch screen, sitting in those same seats and eating hot dogs. Some things in life are habit forming, and the Super Bowl is one of them."
Lavish parties have become a habit too during Super Bowl week, the most extravagant being the N.F.L.'s own $100,000 press bash two nights before the game. This annual ritual has been held at such expansive sites as Houston's Astrodome and Miami's Hialeah race track and is attended by some 2,500 revelers, among them a portion of the 1,900 journalists accredited to cover the game.
All this swirling hoopla has its raison d'etre: a football game really will be played. Oddly enough, Super Bowl XI pits two teams desperately seeking to shed their reputations for losing the games that matter the most. Only one will. In secluded hotels and on practice fields carefully guarded against skulking spies from the other camp, the Minnesota Vikings and Oakland Raiders are preparing for each other; they are far away from the pols and press, the celebs and network salesmen who come to glory in the Super Bowl carnival.
From a spectator's point of view, this could be one of the most exciting and wide-open Super Bowls ever--a break from the often anticlimactic, caution-bedeviled struggles that have so often made the contest less than super. The teams are unfamiliar with each other, the Vikings having played the Raiders only once (Minnesota won 24-16 in 1973). Which strategies will work against the other team--and which will fail? Without previous experience against their opponents, coaches and quarterbacks tend to try a little of everything, probing for weaknesses. Both teams have strong offenses and solid, but not overwhelming defenses; that makes taking some chances and moving the ball an inviting and logical tactic.
The Oakland Raiders are the Designated Bad Boys of pro football. They are led by Al Davis, their onetime coach, now managing general partner, a man whose name can rightfully be preceded by the title "Master Schemer." Depending on whose ox is being gored, this means that he has smeared grease on uniforms to make slippery runners slipperier still, or it means he had the good sense to do what no one had ever done--make a punter his No. 1 draft pick. That is what he did in choosing Ray Guy in 1973. As a result, Davis explains, "I don't have to worry about a punter for ten years." Indeed not, because Guy can boom the opposition into the hole each time the ball is snapped to him. Guy not only kicks long (his career record for Oakland: 72 yds.), but he can also put the ball down uncannily close to the other team's goal line. He has more "touch" in his leg than most golfers find in a bag full of golf clubs; he can roll a punt like a chip shot or drop it dead like a wedge. His value against Minnesota? Probably as much as ten yards on each exchange of punts.
Oakland Coach John Madden is a bear of a man (250 Ibs.) and, on the sidelines, a volatile one. He has patched up a 1976 team weakened by injuries, switching to a three linemen-four linebackers defense to compensate, and ably led his troops through an emotionally trying barrage of accusations: Oakland spent much of the fall under a cloud of charges of dirty play. It began in the season's opening game, when Safetyman George Atkinson decked Pittsburgh Receiver Lynn Swann, leaving Swann with a concussion. Steeler Coach Chuck Noll charged Atkinson with foul play, speaking darkly of a "criminal element in the N.F.L." Hoping to cool things off, Commissioner Pete Rozelle fined Atkinson $1,500 and Noll $1,000. For his part, Atkinson slapped Rozelle and Noll with lawsuits charging defamation of character.
The Raiders sailed through the remainder of the season on a tide of law-suits,-- late hits and--in a play-off game against the New England Patriots--disputed calls by officials. They left in their wake, in addition to Swann's concussion, Patriots Tight End Russ Francis' broken nose and a host of battered, angry opponents. The Raiders' explanation: football is a game of aggression. Playing hard is not necessarily illegal.
Such controversies have served to obscure the merits of the team, which among other things has pro football's longest winning streak: twelve straight. In Kenny Stabler, the Raiders have a quarterback of stunning accuracy (a 66.7% pass-completion record), seven years of experience and sound football sense. Stabler stands behind an almost impregnable wall of protection led by Tackle Art Shell and Guard Gene Upshaw, his left arm ever cocked, "the Snake" ready to strike. Few quarterbacks have had a covey of receivers to rival Stabler's. Wide Receiver Fred Biletnikoff, 33, works the sideline like a 190-lb. Wallenda. His hands are liberally coated with Hold-Tite, but all the sticky goo in the world will not replace the 30 min. per day he spends tossing a football against a wall and snatching up the unpredictable rebounds. Cliff Branch, the other wide receiver, runs 100 yds. in 9.3 sec., which seems to be 9.3 sec. faster than Biletnikoff can cover the distance. But during his rookie year, Branch studied his teammate's hands as if they were the Rosetta Stone, and the result is the surest-catching fast man in football. Balancing the act is Tight End Dave Casper, a big (225 Ibs.) all-pro who can block and run as well as catch. Oakland is basically a passing team, but has adequate running led by former Colgate Star Mark van Eeghen and six-year Veteran Clarence Davis.
The Raider defense has undergone serious adjustments this season--three injured starters on the defensive line had to be replaced--but now appears at its best. A marauding secondary, led by Atkinson, plays helmet-rapping tight and tough. In that same style, Linebackers Ted Hendricks and Phil Villapiano are the match of any in the league. Defensive End Otis Sistrunk, he of the shaved head, is a fearsome, 280-lb. spectacle for opposing backs to behold. The defensive unit has had to play well to keep up the winning streak: seven games were won by a touchdown or less.
The Raiders have been to the Super Bowl once, in 1968, and they lost that game to the Green Bay Packers. Since then they have compiled the best record in the N.F.L. (95-24-7), but they have been knocked out of the running six times in the playoffs. They are hungry; they are not afraid to hit--some say hurt--and they relish their style of tough football. Above all, they are not dull.
In contrast, the coolly professional Minnesota Vikings have earned their reputation as the "Icemen of the North." They are led by Coach Bud Grant, who is so emotionless that when cameras picked up a flicker of a smile on his face during the play-off game with the Rams, TV commentators treated the phenomenon as a major news event. Though the Vikings have been one of the most dominant teams in football in recent years (98-38-4 since 1967) and have made four trips to the Super Bowl (more than any other team), they have never won the Big Game. Win or lose, they have had a reputation for consistent behavior: no heaters or hand warmers on the bench--sub-zero weather or not--and always the stony, stoic faces. No feeling, presumably, in heart as well as ringers.
But that was before "going crazy." A Bud Grant Viking team going anywhere but to the frostbite ward is unthinkable. Going crazy? Yet that is what has happened in the Minnesota locker room. Led by the team's younger black players, going crazy is partly an in-house psych job, a bursting of the once dammed-up enthusiasm, locker-room slogans and shouts, but most of all a free-flowing expression of the emotions all athletes feel toward their teammates, their opponents and their game.
Storming onto the field against the Redskins in the divisional playoffs, they blew George Allen's team out of the park with a burst of emotionally charged big-play football. The next week against the Rams, disbelieving fans saw Cornerback Nate Allen block a field goal attempt, allowing Teammate Bobby Bryant to scoop up the ball and run 90 yds. for a touchdown, a shock from which the Rams never recovered. The Vikings have blocked 15 kicks so far this year, the most in the league, something that happens only when a team is high on, and within, itself.
But the Vikings have more than raw enthusiasm going for them. Start with Quarterback Fran Tarkenton (see box). Tarkenton wrought a permanent change in pro football when he came up as a scrambling rookie in a strictly pocket-passer's game. Now he is throwing to the best corps of catchers he has known in his career: Wide Receivers Ahmad Rashad and Sammy White and Running Back Chuck Foreman.
Foreman, the National Conference's Most Valuable Player this season, is the compleat back. He blocks for Tarkenton and Running Mate Brent McClanahan, slips out of the backfield as a receiver (55 catches for 567 yds.) and is a devastating runner (1,155 yds.). His cuts are not as sharp as OJ. Simpson's, but when he makes the small move, sometimes merely a slight lean, he seems to dematerialize, leaving would-be tacklers with nothing but handfuls of hope. Slender (6 ft. 2 in., 205 Ibs.) but strong, Foreman can push through the smallest crack in a defensive line. The Vikings' offensive front, led by Old Pro Mick Tingelhoff, 36, consistently gives its backs the cracks they need.
If the Vikings have a major weakness, it is their defensive line and linebackers, both of whom are vulnerable to a rushing game. The Vikings ranked 17th in rushing defense this season, after finishing first in the league last year. Defensive Linemen Carl Eller, 34, Alan Page, 31, and Jim Marshal, 39, dubbed the Purple People Eaters in their prime, are now a step slower. Still, when the time comes for the sack, they make it.
Fortunately for the Vikings, Oakland's strength, its passing, must contend with the strongest part of the Minnesota defense, the secondary. But even with that, the Raiders were a four-point favorite as they settled down to final practices. Only Minnesota's cool might keep the Vikings from setting an unenviable record: four Super defeats.
But until Sunday at 12:30 p.m. P.S.T., in Pasadena, all is conjecture. Then a brand-new $41 N.F.L. football will be kicked high into the warm Southern California air. More than 103,000 people, jammed into the Rose Bowl's circular rows of seats, will roar in anticipation. Across the land, 30 million households will fall silent as television screens show a small figure hurrying toward a goal line nearly 100 yds. away. The Vikings and Raiders will have seized the rapt attention of a nation. For one of the teams, and all its fans, Sunday is going to be a long-remembered Super Day.
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