Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [123]
But simply showing the game to his crew was not the sole objective of Captain Abbot’s plan. He hoped that the crew might watch the game as other Americans had: captivated with suspense, unaware of the game’s outcome. To do that, outside communication needed to be suppressed. The ship’s closed-circuit radio was shut down, and updates from the action in Tampa were intercepted.
“Three times a day, we took one of our radio antennas and got a feed in of all the day’s news,” Lieutenant Tom Van Leunen recalled. “It was the old ticker, the old letter ticker. We still needed to get that because we still had to do the rest of the world news and sports for the crew. And we did that every night live. So we had one of the ship’s journalists who worked for me actually go up there, when the stuff was coming in and tear it off so the INTEL and COMS guys wouldn’t get it and send it around the whole ship.”
Van Leunen watched the game in the AFRT trailer and then flew back to the Theodore Roosevelt only to return and discover that news of the Giants 20-19 triumph had leaked through.
“There are some things you can’t stop. When you’ve got a crew of six thousand people, there are probably one hundred short-wave radios, those little portable short waves. It was routine that guys had those. You’re never gonna make an aircraft carrier, even in the middle of an ocean, information-free. Sailors are pretty good at getting around roadblocks.”
Nevertheless, a Super Bowl party still took place later that day. Through the closed-circuit television system, the game was screened in bunk rooms and offices. And on two of the mess decks, the tape flown in from Bahrain was projected onto a large television, and the crew viewed the game. Along with hot dogs, hamburgers, popcorn, and sodas, a large cake decorated to resemble a football field was served. Beer—O’Doul’s 0.5 percent-alcohol beer, a.k.a. “near beer”—was also provided.
“We tried to make it like they were sitting in the living room with their high school buds or their college buds,” the ship’s executive officer, Commander Ron Christenson said. “And I think it really helped.”
The game’s broadcast—throughout the ship’s closed circuit and on the mess decks—was such a comfort to the thousands of sailors that another screening took place later that day for the sailors who had been on duty at the time.
“When you go to sea for six months at that time [of war], those are the things you really miss,” Lieutenant Ron Christenson said. “You miss being with your family, but you also miss those things that you traditionally do, like watching a football game or a special football game like [the Super Bowl]. When you get to watch it . . . it’s very special, for the whole crew.”
[1]Although the term “AstroTurf” would eventually become synonymous with all artificial sports surfaces, Super Bowl V was played on PolyTurf, a product made by a rival company. Super Bowl VIII, played at Rice Stadium, would be the first played on AstroTurf.
12
Who Are the Champs Here, Anyway?
“There are occasions when a coach’s words—and even his eloquence—are meaningful to his players,” Marv Levy wrote years later. “This was not one of those times.”
Still, upon his arrival in the quiet, deflated Buffalo locker room, just minutes removed from the bitter end of Super Bowl XXV, Levy opted to address his team.
“Yet I knew that to refrain from all communication would have been a gesture that they could rightly interpret as a display of anger and disdain toward them. No feelings were further from my heart than those. And so I spoke briefly and sincerely.”
“There is not a loser in this room,” Levy told his players.
As Levy expected, his words were little consolation to the team. But soon, amid the sounds of players removing athletic tape, unstrapping shoulder pads, and filing into the showers, two distinct sentiments swirled through the visitors’ locker room beneath Tampa Stadium.