Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [39]
“We’re going to have to go in [Iraq and occupied Kuwait] and chase them out,” said twenty-four-year-old Sergeant John Marion of Carthage, North Carolina. “It’s real scary. It’s going to be the unknown.”
Days before this escalation of warfare, the executive offices of New York State’s Erie County began preparations for an enormous rally to celebrate the Bills and rile up Buffalo’s rabid supporters. It had been scheduled to take place on January 18, the Friday before the championship game against Los Angeles. More than seven thousand people were expected to attend. The County Office Building Plaza was to be strewn with red and blue decorations, and police planned to close off Franklin Street so fans could chant and cheer when the players arrived.
But two days before the rally, it was canceled. Instead, a noon prayer service took place at St. Paul’s Cathedral, a block away from where the exuberant party was supposed to be staged.
“There is a time and a place to celebrate,” Buffalo’s deputy mayor, Sam Iraci, announced. “And a time and a place to reflect. This is a time to pray for the people over there, rather than celebrating for ourselves. We’ll have time to celebrate.”
Bills General Manager Bill Polian and two injured players attended while the rest of the team was at practice. “Once the game starts, I’m sure it’s going to be just as rowdy as ever,” said sidelined wide receiver Don Beebe. “When they get back home, I’m sure it’s going to be back to thinking about the war and the Middle East.”
The thought of tens of thousands of “rowdy” fans preoccupied with anything—especially a football game—other than the war bothered some Americans. Many citizens preferred that the playoffs be postponed indefinitely.
“I can’t even believe they’re going to have the game this weekend,” said a spokesman for Erie County Executive Dennis Gorski, the man whose office planned, then canceled the Bills’ pep rally. “It’s good for morale, but . . . it’s too fresh.”
Throughout the entire week, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue listened to debates on the issue and sought input from each of the league’s owners and NBA Commissioner David Stern. The White House also weighed in.
“Our attitude is that the business of the nation has to continue and should continue, and we are conducting this war with a high degree of public support,” Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater stated. “We don’t see any need why people should disrupt their lives any more than necessary. The President’s attitude is that the games should go on.”
Even if it didn’t quite fit his job profile, Bush’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development took to serving as an informal liaison between Tagliabue and the White House. As a six-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Jack Kemp had been a faithful public servant to New York’s thirty-first, thirty-eighth, and thirty-ninth districts. He was also the only man to ever quarterback the Buffalo Bills to a championship.
Kemp played seven of his twelve professional seasons in a Bills uniform, and won both the regular-season and championship game MVP in 1965. That year, Buffalo won a second consecutive AFL title, defeating Sid Gillman’s San Diego Chargers. (Each of Buffalo’s championship-game victories came against San Diego and Gillman, who cut Kemp in the middle of the 1962 season because he believed that the Chargers “could not win consistently with Jack.”)
The seven-time all-star retired from football in 1969, the AFL’s final season, and transitioned into politics. After twenty-eight years as a congressman, he joined President Bush’s cabinet in 1989.
With Kemp’s assurances from the “highest levels of the Defense Department,” Tagliabue elected to proceed with the championship games.
“We can’t be paralyzed as a nation for the situation,” he announced, “and can’t act out of fear. We have to maintain appropriate respect for the situation, and keep appropriate proportion. So we’ve decided to play the games, but we’re going to follow events right up until the kickoffs. There could be a change at