• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 886 0

for the game’s MVP. Ballots had to be turned in late in the third quarter. Several sportswriters later believed that Thurman Thomas’ performance (fifteen rushes for 135 yards, five receptions for fifty-five yards, and his go-ahead, thirty-one-yard fourth-quarter touchdown) was worthy of the award. Despite averaging 9.5 yards per touch, he earned just one vote. Only once before (Chuck Howley in Super Bowl V) did a player from the losing team win the Most Valuable Player, and Thomas himself didn’t think he deserved the award: “We didn’t win the ball game, so you have to say that someone on their team deserves to win the Most Valuable Player,” he said that evening. “If we would have won, it would have been different. In my opinion, you always have to give that award to a player on the team that won the game.”

[2]A Plan B free agent was allowed to negotiate freely with any other NFL team until April 1.

13

January 15, 1994

Newspapers wrote about the story with zeal and intensity. Each of the major news magazines—Time, People, and Newsweek—ran cover stories about it. Correspondents from all the major television networks were dispatched so that live reports would be available for the evening news. And considering the international implications, detailed updates quickly spread to nations around the world.

But Americans were the most invested in the strife. And throughout the winter, they desperately wanted to know: Had ice skater Tonya Harding really hired her ex-husband to break the leg of her figure skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan, in order to force Kerrigan out of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer?

Less than a week passed before the truth began to unfold. On January 12, 1994—exactly three years removed from the day when the House and Senate voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein and Iraq—warrants were issued for the arrests of Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, and her bodyguard, Shawn Eckardt. Harding herself would agree to a plea bargain, after admitting her complicity. Still, Harding was allowed to compete against Kerrigan in the Olympics later that winter, and the television broadcast of the women’s short program in late February would attract a greater audience than any Super Bowl in history.

Somehow, the NFL managed to carry on with its postseason. And on the third Saturday of the new year, anyone who took a break from the mass-media coverage—right when the scandal was at its juiciest—to tune in for the second round of the 1993 NFL playoffs, was treated to a compelling and eerily familiar doubleheader of playoff football.



On May 15, 1991, television crews and sportswriters filled the press box at Giants Stadium. Bill Parcells took the podium to announce his resignation.

“I just think it’s time. That’s all there is to it. My instincts are usually good. I just think it’s time to move on,” he said.

“It’s been a great experience. Who’s been luckier than me? My hometown, my home team, my family and friends here. Nobody could have had a better job than me.”

As early as March, the New York media had speculated that Parcells might step down. The New York Times reported that he was experiencing chest pains in the months following the Super Bowl—a December 1991 angioplasty revealed an irregular heartbeat.

Still, the news shocked many of his assistants and players.

“I was just in [Giants Stadium], talking with Bill a day ago,” Ottis Anderson said. “We talked about the coming season. We talked about him losing weight and getting in shape. He looks good. I had no indication he was quitting.”

Offensive coordinator Ron Erhardt and quarterback Phil Simms had virtually the same stories. But at least one person very close to Parcells saw his resignation on the horizon.

“I had a pretty good idea it was going to happen, just because I knew him,” Parcells’ personal secretary Kim Kolbe recalled years later. “I knew a lot of it was his health. I kept praying it wasn’t gonna happen, but I was kinda thinking it might. I was actually on jury duty the day of his press conference. I was crying so hard they