Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [56]
To the players, fans, and the television executives, this was largely uncharted territory.
“This game, of course, was played under heavy security,” CBS’ Greg Gumbel asked Lawrence Taylor during a postgame interview. “A great deal of discussion about whether or not football games should even be played. Did that enter into your thinking at all as you came out onto the field or as you played today?”
“When you see all the security,” Taylor responded, “it makes you realize that the war is real, it’s not a joke. And even though it’s fought all the way over there in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, it’s touching home right now. It’s a little scary but as far as the guys over there, I’m proud of them, bring us back a victory. And I just wish the people over here would stop all the protesting and support those guys. Those guys are fighting for us.”
A day before the city hosted its fourth NFC Championship Game in ten years, thirty-five thousand people marched from San Francisco’s Mission Dolores Park to an antiwar rally at the Civic Center Plaza. Seventeen hundred demonstrators had already been arrested that week in San Francisco, and upwards of forty thousand protesters were expected to protest the next day outside Candlestick Park, prior to and during the NFC Championship Game.[2] That weekend, tens of thousands more demonstrated in Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C. And rallies—some pro-war, some antiwar, some both—cropped up across the rest of the nation, in places like Lawrence, Kansas, Charleston, West Virginia, and Fayetteville, Arkansas.
But for most of the enormous television audience (Neilson ratings estimated a 26.9 share of the market, 24.4 million homes), the Giants’ engrossing victory served as a much-needed pause from a week’s worth of frightful headlines and televised Pentagon briefings.
“Nobody forgot about the guys over there,” said Barney Fitzpatrick, a bartender at an Upper West Side Manhattan sports bar, “but the country needs morale over here too. The American way is here, and football is part of the American way. Why let Saddam ruin our game?”
Americans didn’t let Hussein ruin the game that Sunday; neither did the American servicemen and servicewomen who watched or listened to the NFC Championship Game on the Armed Forces Network.
“How many were able to see it, we don’t know. We have no way of telling,” said Air Force Colonel Richard L. Fuller. “We haven’t had any mail yet and we don’t get any phone calls from them. They’re pretty busy, but they tell us to keep up the news and thanks for the sports.”
[1]In 1976, Saban resigned as head coach of the Bills after five games; Jim Ringo replaced Saban and Simpson won his fourth rushing and final rushing title at the end of that season.
[2]Only a handful of people actually demonstrated outside of Candlestick Park during the NFC Championship Game. According to the Kansas City Star, “Instead, the war protesters held placards in the park alongside one of the main roads into the stadium. A peace symbol made of red material was laid out on the ground—not clearly visible to passers-by but clearly seen from the Fuji blimp that circled the stadium during the game.”
5
Respect Week
Pan Am flight 8207 from Buffalo landed in west Florida early Monday evening, January 21. Crushing Los Angeles by forty-eight points in the AFC title game put Bills players in a good mood. While a few enjoyed the in-flight movie (Dick Tracy, starring Warren Beatty), others played cards or reminisced over the highlights of their great victory.
“It was a good plane ride,” said defensive tackle Jeff Wright. “Everybody was laughing and joking and having a good time. There’s no sense in being in a tense mood right now.”
The excitement carried out of the plane and onto the tarmac at Tampa International Airport.
“Showtime . . . it’s showtime!” Bruce Smith and