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If Hunt's daughter hadn't
bounced a 'super' ball...
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
That old bard, Willie Shakespeare, is still drawing
those royalty checks about 400 years or so after he penned most
of his stuff. Or didn’t, depending on what Shakespeare book
or scholar you listen to these days.
The Super Bowl will be upon us on Feb. 6 in Jacksonville with
the Philadelphia Eagles taking on the defending champion New
England Patriots in the 39th version of the thing. I have always
refused to go along with the Roman numerals in a country where
most of the writing is in English, not Latin.
So what does Willie Shakespeare (after all the classes and all
the courses, I consider him an intimate pal) have to do with
the Super Bowl? Well, you might ask and well, I might answer.
“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare asked. “A
rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Well, Willie, let me tell you. This was all written before hype
took over sports.
In 1967 and 1968 there were two championship professional football
games between the NFL’s Green Bay Packers and the AFL’s
Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders.
Green Bay, under monarch Vince Lombardi, won both games easily.
The AFL stuck to its independence and claimed it was as good
as the old NFL guys.
This was not accurate. More importantly, both games were a bore.
It was called the NFL-AFL Championship game. Attendance was low,
television coverage was modest and the bottom was about to fall
out.
Here’s where Shakespeare got into the football picture.
A rose by any other name smelled, tasted and played differently.
The third NFL-AFL championship in 1969 was played between the
NFL’s lordly Baltimore Colts and the lowly New York Jets.
The Jets had a cocky kid quarterback named Joe Namath. He guaranteed
the win and delivered.
More importantly, the name of the game was changed.
Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chief, was the power behind
the AFL and one of the ringleaders in the football merger. He
wanted equality for his league which began play in 1960. The
Jets of New York had once been known as the Titans of Harry Wismer
before they became Sonny Werblin’s Jets.
Hunt was at home thinking about how to make the game more of
a television show piece and increase the earnings for his wealthy
old AFL pals and for his new NFL pals.
His six year old daughter was bouncing a big ball on the living
room floor while the old man pondered this lack of national interest
in the game. She hit it once, twice, loud and then louder. The
old man asked her to stop so he could think. He also asked her
what she was doing.
“I’m bouncing my super ball,” the youngster said.
“Super ball, super bowl,” said boss man Hunt.
Like a Shakespeare revelation, the new name just stuck in Hunt’s
head. Sure they could change that hackneyed NFL-AFL thing in
January to the Super Bowl.
They came up with that old Roman numeral thing to make it even
more glamorous and started the marketing of the event as equal
to the big College Bowl games of the day--the Rose Bowl, the
Cotton Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and the Orange Bowl. Now there are
something like 30 bowl games played each year.
That played right into the professional football Bowl thing.
The college bowls grew in number and the professional bowl grew
in status.
Namath’s bragging and delivering made the Super Bowl into
a national event and all the championship professional football
games that followed had to get in line behind that one.
As the 39th Super Bowl approaches, there is no way of connecting
the dots. Only the fanatics know that the third Super Bowl was
the one between the Jets and the Colts. Few can identify the
teams in any other game.
After the Feb. 6 game it will be quickly forgotten that New England
played Philadelphia in the 39th edition, especially if New England
happens to win again.
The pro football people never attached the year to the game.
Baseball always did. Fans remember the 2004 Series, the one Boston
won, as well as the 1955 Series, the one Brooklyn won.
The baseball thing started in 1903 with Boston, of all teams,
beating Pittsburgh in 1903, only 102 years ago. Imagine if they
called that thing the baseball championships between the National
League and the American league. Would anybody have cared?
Maybe the baseball people were ahead of their time by calling
it a World Series as the game grows throughout Europe, South
America and Asia with the possibility of teams from other countries
challenging the American teams in a real worldly World Series.
The world is growing smaller. There may be baseball teams from
a dozen countries fighting for a title the way the kids do in
Little League.
There may be football teams across the world challenging the
winner of the Super Bowl in a few years.
As for now, Feb. 6 is almost a national holiday. Thanks to Lamar
Hunt and his daughter’s super ball. The name’s the
thing. OK, Willie, we’ll give you credit for that one.
©2005 by Maury Allen. The cartoon
is from IMSI's
Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael,
CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted on Jan. 31, 2005.
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Maury Allen. To send an
email, click here: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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