Your first Super Bowl

We watched Super Bowl I at my grandmother's house on her big color TV.

In those days we only got one station (CBS) really clearly at home, and we had a creaky old 1960-vintage BW teevee set, so I always associated CBS games with scratchy BW pictures and tinny sound. We could get NBC sometimes and ABC if the wind was just right but both came through a snowstorm of static.

Then we went up to Nana's and watched NBC and ABC shows in full glorious 27" color and booming sound. So I watched SB I on the glorious color teevee. The game? Don't remember hardly a damn thing about it.

 

The Krumrie injury was gruesome, but he started the next season opener and played 6 more years.

 

It's funny I can tell you the number and teams up to XX - after that the various NY Giants, Buffalo Bills, Cowboys, Redskins, 49ers and Broncos games kind of run together. Throw in the Patriots wins and I'm lost.

 

I also thought Curt Gowdy was great calling football, as he did in V.

 

Dog Eat Dog World was born before 1963 then.

Which means he's old enough to know better.

 

XX was the first one I watched. Being from upstate NY, Bills-Giants is the first one I remember. Wide right. Barf.

 

I have vague memories of the Dolphins Super Bowls in the 70s and the Steelers - Cowboys games (because my younger brother was - still is - a huge Cowboys fan). Believe I have seen every one since Steelers - Rams in its entirety and still have many of them on VHS.

Was offered a ticket to the 49ers - Bengals game in Detroit but couldn't come up with the $75 (I think that was the damage, huge chunk of coin for a sporting event at that time), which was not surprising since I was only 16. That will be the closest I ever get to going to a Super Bowl.

 

Super bowl XIX....my dad tried to explain roman numerals. I vividly remeber XX because even though no one in our family rooted for either team, we taped it.

 

Mine was SB XXII.

Was living in Baltimore back then, and everyone at our neighborhood party thought for sure Elway was going to get his ring this time. Especially with Jay Schroeder out and that mediocre (and black) former Buccaneers QB (who was black) behind center (a black guy, remember.)

My know-it-all 5-year-old self proclaimed the Redskins — the only team I'd ever heard of, really, besides my family's beloved Baltimore Colts — would not only win but win in a blowout. Spent the first quarter getting teased mercifully by my dad and his buddies.

Then the second quarter began.

 

Buck lived in a neighborhood with jimmy the greek and al campanis

 

I knew the guy who asked Doug Williams at Media Day that year how long he'd been a black QB. He was from the Clarion-Ledger. The thing is, though, while all of the national media thought that was the stupidest question ever asked, those of us who grew up in the South and lived in the South didn't think it was stupid at all. And neither did Williams, a Louisianian who understood exactly what was being asked.

 

That might be the biggest momentum shift in Super Bowl history. Few people remember that Denver dominated the first quarter of that game. Then the defense forgot how to cover or tackle and it was one big play after another for the Redskins.