Sad Season, Glad Super Bowl

By Tom Callahan

A rare bit of good news comes out of Washington

Usually the Super Bowl has small chance to live up to a season's expectations, but there was precious little season this year, and relatively few expectations. National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle even called off his traditional gala the Friday before, an intimate gathering with a turnstile, because celebrating this year would be unseemly. Except for one city, Super Bowl XVII would always recall the time when the players walked out for 57 days, and some of the fans stayed away longer.

Washington may find it hard to imagine that anyone in the country was indifferent to its glory, but the N.F.L. could not have been too surprised that the Super Bowl TV audience share fell from 73% to 69%. "No-shows" since the strike--ticket buyers absent all the same--totaled 789,422. The league will not be comforted to note that the Redskins, layered as they are with 28 free agents, 13 of whom were never drafted by anyone, might be considered an advertisement for just the sort of jerry-built teams the spring United States Football League envisions. As the N.F.L. was closing, U.S.F.L. training camps were opening. Football season may never end again.

The Super teams, the Miami Dolphins and Washington Redskins, hardly seemed super before the game, when the opponents they defeated during the nine-week season were thought less significant than those they avoided in the eight-week strike. Miami missed the Cincinnati Bengals, the Los Angeles Raiders, the San Diego Chargers; Washington skipped the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Bengals, the Texas side of its home-and-away feud with the Dallas Cowboys. By the purest fortune the Redskins had the entire American Football Conference wiped off its slate. In the A.F.C., fit offspring of the old American Football League, the ball flies freely and the defensive coordinators speak fearfully, not of halting the opposition's offense, just of holding service once in a while, as though it were a tennis match, which frequently it is. Both the Dolphins and the Redskins were proud of playing defense.

Then last week's game began, and in a few hours, give or take $25 million worth of TV commercials, the most irritating pro football season gave way to the most entertaining Super Bowl. The heroic and tragic figures, Washington Fullback John Riggins and Miami Quarterback David Woodley, were clear-cut and equally attractive in different ways, unlike management's Jack Donlan and labor's Ed Garvey. The Redskins won straightforwardly, 27-17, and the Dolphins lost that way too.

After the game, Miami Coach Don Shula could smile and say of Riggins, who had carried the ball 38 times for 166 yds., "He reminded me of a fullback I used to know"; Larry Csonka, of course. "Riggins is one of the best big athletes [6 ft. 2 in., 235 Ibs.] ever to hit the National Football League. Pretty awesome." On a fourth down off-tackle play everyone in the Rose Bowl expected, Riggins crashed the line and ran 43 yds. for the telling touchdown. Earlier there were Washington tricks, the flanker reverse Richard Nixon used to recommend, the flea flicker Ronald Reagan so admires. But, as Shula said, "the old-fashioned stuff is what did us in: the pounding." He took it pretty well.

This has not been a happy season for N.F.L. coaches, who have been cracking like walnuts. Some were unable "to step back," as Shula advised, "and look at things objectively." Besides being the year of the strike, this is the year that Don Reese, a former Dolphin defensive end, told his story of widespread cocaine use in the league and was thoroughly believed. No wonder Shula declined to see much tragedy in Woodley's day. "David's only problem," said the coach fondly, "is that he has played three years and everyone compares him to quarterbacks who have been around ten or 15." After completing no passes in the second half, Woodley, who was twelve when Redskins Quarterback Joe Theismann was drafted twelve years ago, stood up bravely to questioners who arrived in tidal waves. He said repeatedly, "We had nothing to try. They just shut us down. The Redskins said, 'Here it is, try and beat it.' We couldn't. I couldn't."

Though Riggins came to Redskins Owner Jack Kent Cooke's casual pre-game party in white tie and tails, twirling a cane, he customarily dresses like someone who resides in a duckblind. "Riggo makes his own path in life," Washington Coach Joe Gibbs says, off tackle usually. For five seasons starting in 1971, Riggins was a member of the New York Jets and considered a bit strange even in New York City. Over money, he sat out the 1980 season in Washington. "I'm bored, I'm broke and I'm back," Riggins announced when he reappeared, saying nothing else publicly for about a year.

Not unkindly, Shula commended "whoever managed to get Riggins in the right frame of mind," Gibbs presumably. And Riggins concurred, "I 'got my mind right,' as Cool Hand Luke said." Football players who choose Cool Hand Luke as a role model seldom carry teams to the Super Bowl, but this is a rare time in Washington, where the Redskins had not boasted a world championship for 40 years. The players, Hogs (offensive linemen) and Smurfs (miniature receivers) alike, reacted as calmly as anyone who has been personally welcomed home by the President of the United States, though citizens of the District of Columbia were slightly excited. The city staged a parade that was well attended despite a downpour (500,000 people, double the number greeting the hostages from Iran). The bands had to elbow their way along Constitution Avenue in single file. Good news does not pass this way too often.

--By Tom Callahan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.