The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 29

Monday. January 27, 1986 Akron Beacon Journal D5 SUPER BOWL XXChicago 46, New England 10 This NBC stands for National Brain Coma Dick Shippy year? This year so far has meant the Chicago Bears destroying opponents. NBC correspondent Tom Brokaw chatted with President Reagan during the pre-game portion, in lieu of a presidential phone call to the locker room. Brokaw mentioned that $2 billion had been wagered on the Super Bowl, and Reagan said that bothered him, just as it would have worried Rockne. Well, it certainly doesn't bother the television networks that air Pete Ax-thelm and Jimmy Snyder with their tips for the bettors.

That one minute at 4 o'clock in which the screen was supposed to go black, while we tended to bladders or bellies? You should know the television folks would never let the screen go completely black lest the public use that minute of TV nothingness to let the brain start functioning again. So there was music for sound, a clock counting down the seconds for visual. And just so you'd know what was up, they flashed "Intermission." It was more entertaining than the game. NBC Sports had $11 million tied up in equipment and personnel at the Su-perdome to produce a game that would have been an anti-climax had it been preceded by two hours of "Please stand by. We are experiencing technical ered "Pluto." Well, it's a planet to which we would like to ship Jim McMahon.

That ludicrous halftime show included a taped segment in which Bill Cosby and Lily Tomlin urged national participation in Hands Across America, a public demonstration planned for May and to be symbolic of a campaign against hunger in the U.S. There could be no more inappropriate place for such an appeal than a Super Bowl game. Anything connected with Super Bowl and Super Bowl Week screams of conspicuous consumption. And only a little bit behind in the bitter irony category was the Up With People halftime tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Do you have a feeling that a pitch for brotherhood, made during a Roman circus, is something less than heartfelt? Executive producer Weisman was so careful with that 2-hour pre-game show titled An American Celebration. There's a fine line you have to tread with pre-game shows. You don't dare invest them with too much quality, make them too absorbing, lest the game itself become an anti-climax. So there was Bob Costas reminding us this was the year of Villanova (defeating giant Georgetown), the year of Michael Spinks and of the Kansas City Royals. Uh, fellows, wasn't that last Sure, the replay showed the clip, just as the replay obligingly backed up Dick Enberg's contention that a Bear receiver was out of bounds when the officials allowed a reception at the New England 1.

At that point, who could possibly have cared? For that matter, how many had turned elsewhere by that time, seeking something of remote interest. Of course, if you tuned out too early, you missed seeing The Dumbest Graphic of the Year. That was interesting for its appalling lack of relevance. As the second half was beginning, Bob Griese went to the telestrator (you know, the electronic stylus that lets 'em trace lines on TV screens; it's John Madden's favorite toy) to diagram how New England could get back into the game. The Patriots would have to take control of the line of scrimmage (draw a nice circle around the line of scrimmage) against the fearsome Tush of the Bears' defenders (write B-e-a-r-s in neat letters).

Absolutely numbskull. Then, one of the side effects of a rout is an unholy preoccupation with the unholy like undue attention devoted to Jim McMahon's latest headband. In the course of the game, McMahon had bands involving the fight against juvenile diabetes, the question of POWs and MIAs (presumably in Southeast Asia, not Rush Street), in support of a Children's Hospital and one headband let- As luck would have it, this was the National Broadcasting year to air the Super Bowl. The last time NBC had this kind of luck, Fred Silverman was hired as president of the network and put together a prime-time schedule that made Camp Runamuck look like Masterpiece Theater. And as luck would have it, Sunday was CBS Sports' chance to air the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers from Boston Garden.

One helluva ball game. The Celtics came from 13 points back in the third period to catch Philly with an astonishing rally that was capped when, with one second left in the quarter, Larry Bird threw it up from midcourt and swished the thing. A few hours later, along came Super Bowl XX and NBC Sports was stuck with another New England team that fell behind by 20 points at halftime, and then came out in the third period and in a rush of ineptitude fell behind by 41 points. From the standpoint of audience interest, Sunday's telecast of the Chicago Bears' 46-10 humiliation of the Patriots had to be only a little more enthralling than selected highlights from the logarithm tables. And there wasn't a thing NBC could do to escape this nightmare.

Super Bowl XX had to run its course the course ran three hours and 45 minutes, includ- ing one of the dumbest halftime shows ever conceived and NBC Sports had committed itself to showing every miserable second. You must feel compassion for Michael Weisman, executive producer for the network's 6 hours of coverage (the pre-game show started at 3 p.m.), and for Ted Nathanson, coordinating producer-director for the game itself. How can you prepare to telecast a game that invites a national coma? No, you have to make preparations with the thought you'll be covering a classic encounter, and if it's anything less, you go with what you have and make the best of it. But there was no best to be made of Super Bowl XX after the Bears had established their complete supremacy in the opening period. All right, analyst Merlin Olsen picked up a clip the officials missed when Chicago was in the process of putting one of its early scores on the board.

But what did it matter? Pats should have skipped Chicago Jf if The Bears knew what they had to do, knew how to do it. Did it at least as well as it ever has been done in the Super Bowl. "We should be listed among the best of teams, the great teams," Mike Singletary said. To argue with that is to argue that the Patriots should have beaten the Dolphins two weeks ago. say, Mike Singletary said, the coach left, left the players to themselves.

"We started watching film, more film," the linebacker said, "and then it came to us that we had watched enough film. We knew what we had to do, we knew how to do it. We didn't need any more film." That they didn't. SOFT, IRON-FREE WATER was throwing off his back foot. Yeah, he was scared.

Wouldn't you be?" Steve McMichael announced. Yes, it would have been just as well to be scared as to be anything in this game against the Bears. That aside, Steve McMichael was glad to have it over and done with. i "Know what? Tt's almost likp a dream, this victory. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and have to play this (bleep) all over again," he said.

The Patriots would surely just as soon sleep it off, thank you. Mike Singletary, the Bears' exceptional linebacker, is across the room. He, too, is telling it like it is, if perhaps a bit more kindly, if perhaps with a bit more compassion. "Winning the Super Bowl," he is saying, "it's almost like being in college. You want a degree, want it bad, but it's so difficult to get.

When you get it you are proud, proud of yourself, proud also of those who worked alongside you and are graduating with you. That's the way it is with winning the Super Bowl. You work so hard, you are so proud." He spoke of the team's defensive meeting Saturday evening, probably the unit's last meeting with coordinator Buddy Ryan, he likely bound for Philadelphia and a head coaching position. An emotional time it was, said he. "It's crazy, really crazy," Mike Singletary said.

"You learn from a guy, you play so well for him, so well that he leaves for another job, a higher job." After Buddy Ryan had had his Continued from page Dl Bears kept warbling, "Fe, fi, fo, fum, we smell the blood of a stumblebum." If the NFL had a true interest in a quality Super Bowl, it should have ordered up an intrasquad scrimmage by the Bears. This team, after all, must be considered one of the best ever to dance upon the necks of those fools caught up in the business of parity in pro football. There's parity, sure enough, for 27 teams. For the Bears, though, these Bears, there must be a place in history. They played 19 games and they won 18 times.

They allowed no points in their first two playoff games and the Patriots' touchdown occurred in the fourth quarter, while the Bears were being fitted for their Super Bowl rings. "This is one helluva football team," said Jim McMahon, the quarterback who launched the week with a pain in the rump and docked the week by giving the Patriots a pain thereabouts. "We were going for 60 points," he said. "We didn't get there, but only because we ran out of time." He tells it like it is, this daffy and determined one. So does Steve McMichael, the defensive tackle whose tastes run to rattlesnake hunting and quarterback haunting.

"Once we got 14 points ahead, I knew the game was ours," he said. "Ain't nobody gonna come back from 14 points to beat us. That's just the way it is, the way it has been all season. Right?" Right. Please do go on, sir.

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