THE MEDIA FROM BUFFALO AND DALLAS : Super Teams Also Have Write Stuff

The Cowboys have sent their sixth team to the Super Bowl this week, and no other franchise can boast of invading the NFL’s premier event as often. This is as it should be, since Texas invented football and also the runner-up sport.

Our secondary sport is either quarterback school, mini-camp or that exhilarating prelude to the real thing, the Austin Brain Bake. Also known as training camp.

We have become wed to pro football through tradition. Teams that win or tie traditionally generate deep affection, more so than those who play with energy, but lose.

Therefore, our devotion to say, the 1992 Cowboys, is like the couple who sought guidance from a marriage counselor.

“Do I understand you love pro football more than your wife?” the expert asked the husband.

“It’s true,” he said, “but I like her more than track.”

FRANK LUKSA

Dallas Morning News

Listen to the Money Fall After Today’s Game

It was recently revealed by the Institute of Audiology Research, after years of clinical testing, that the normal American jock can stand in mid-town traffic and hear a $5 bill fall on a soft carpet nine floors up. Therefore, it follows that the Super Bowl and its attendant affluence has become, you should excuse the ethnic expression, The Happy Hunting Ground.

Money is the name of this game, and one can hardly blame the young chaps involved if they hanker for a piece of the action. It is the American way, first made popular by The Teapot Dome transaction and recently elevated to new heights by the good folk of savings and loans.

Forget the 36 large ones allotted each member of the winning roster. Goobers. World Series winners sack three times as much. It is the Super Bowl fringe benefits that buy baby a new pair of Ferraris.

For example, should the Cowboys quit Sunday on the long end, Troy Aikman could fall into, oh, maybe $10 million extra in eventual payout. Over and above whatever vulgar numbers his next Cowboy contract specifies. He prefers not to dwell upon such mundane subjects right now. Aikman’s only concession was the “LA Gear” gimme cap he promptly clapped on his blond mane before engaging the media horse Tuesday at Dodger Stadium. By actual count, carried on by an actual counter on the scene, 18 zillion TV cameras would carry that LA Gear logo into homes here and abroad with nary a bill.

“I’d say 2, 3 million dollars right away,” says Joe Theismann, who should know about Super Bowl harvest. “Then, that much more, at least, in years that follow. This is my 10th anniversary (since he quarterbacked Washington in Super Bowl XVII), and I still make maybe 100 motivational speeches a year because of it.”

BLACKIE SHERROD

Dallas Morning News

Bottom Line Measures Coaches’ Intelligence

Marv Levy’s critics figure he couldn’t motivate a 5-year-old in Toys ‘R’ Us. But it’s odd how many Bills have been repeating his sayings in the locker room. Apparently, some of what he says is penetrating their skulls.

What must really burn Levy is the notion that he has all the talent, that anybody could win with it. The fact is, some of the toughest coaching jobs are those that require the handling of great talent and massive egos.

Try to name a great NFL coach who didn’t have great talent. That wasn’t exactly a taxi squad that won for Chuck Noll in Pittsburgh. Noll won Super Bowls, though.

Buffalo’s staff has yet to do that. They’ve lost two in a row and have been outcoached. Their greatest test lies ahead, and if they lose again, they’ll be remembered as coaches who couldn’t get their team to play its best with the ultimate prize on the line.

So the criticism directed at them hasn’t been entirely unfair. It hasn’t been balanced, that’s all.

JERRY SULLIVAN

Buffalo News

Sigh of Relief Comes From Reading a Paper

So it goes in L.A., the land where it’s always warm and everything’s cool. You can type outside or serve at love on a rooftop. And once you get the people out from behind the wheel of an automobile, folks really are pretty laid-back out here.

The people are even too cool to get excited about the Super Bowl. You could walk around for half an hour and not be reminded of Game XXVII, unless you happen to pick up a newspaper and flip through to the sports section. There wasn’t a single mention of the big gamer on the front page of Monday’s Los Angeles Times. Thurgood Marshall’s death was actually more important than football out here.

That’s really not such a bad thing. And as long as I’m situated on the opposite side of the continent, I feel safe to confess that it’s a relief to be liberated from the civic frenzy of Buffalo Bills mania.

JERRY SULLIVAN

Buffalo News

But There’s No Relief for Cowboy Followers

Over the din of popping arteries, let this quavering memory be heard: It was never like this. Never

In the olden, golden days, that is, when the Cowboys called on the Super Bowl, regularly as the postman, the frenzy did not approach today’s degree. Oh, there were a few zanies about, painting their faces and howling at the moon, but it was not the mass hysteria, such as today. Two decades ago, when Your Heroes went to the biggie in New Orleans or Florida at what seemed to be anointed intervals, there was excitement all righty, but very few blood vessels burst. The enthusiasm was, well, it was contained.

Today, at thought of the Cowboys playing Buffalo for the big marble, normal folk faint with rapture and on being revived, faint again. The two atmospheres--then and now--were from different planets.

BLACKIE SHERROD

Dallas Morning News

Humility Is Easy When You Are Underdog

Dallas is the choice of the country, of the media, of the bandwagon fans, of the political establishment. There’s no sense in fighting it. Buffalo is the tragic team from the “frozen tundra,” the team everyone loves to disrespect.

So what? Does the fact that the Bills are an underdog take away from all they’ve done to get here? Does the Houston comeback get tossed in some dark closet if they happen to lose Sunday in Pasadena?

Relax. Chill. The Bills will play the humble act to the hilt this week. People in Buffalo might as well do the same. Sure they’re the underdog. It’s a wonder they even allow the AFC an automatic berth in the game anymore. All the Bills hope to do is put on a good show and remember their helmets.

JERRY SULLIVAN

Buffalo News

But Why Is Buffalo Such an Underdog?

There is ample evidence that Buffalo is equal to the task Sunday, but it requires a certain amount of diligent investigative journalism to unearth it, such as opening a media guide.

Such digging would reveal that there is no NFL mystique for the Bills; that in the last three seasons, their record against the NFC is 10-4. Two of the losses came in end-of-the-season games in which home-field advantage was assured and Marv Levy benched most of his stars.

A third loss was in Super Bowl XXV, a game that has reached mythic status. The Giants won, 20-19, and at the time it was called the best Super Bowl ever.

Since then, something has been lost in the translation. It has become part of the NFC mystique, another conquest. Well, the next-to-last TV image of that game was a worried Giant Coach Bill Parcells, ringed by a circle of his players, their hands joined in prayer. That’s a blowout?

An appeal for divine intervention and a missed field goal?

LARRY FELSER

Buffalo News

A Case of Larceny: Theft of ‘America’s Team’

Dallas has taken a quick lead in style points, with the NFL assigning its hotel at ocean’s edge in Santa Monica. The Bills, meanwhile, were placed at a hotel in downtown L.A., which came as a surprise to those of us who never knew there was a downtown L.A. If anyone in the Buffalo traveling party is into California scenery, it will take about a $20 cab ride to find it.

But, and this might be important, Bills Coach Marv Levy scored heavily in spunk points when he stepped off the airplane talking--maybe in jest, but definitely for purpose--about his Buffaloes now being labeled “America’s Team.” Good stuff, Marv. Those gutless pigs from Houston happen to blow one second-half lead, and the Bills are still using it as a motivational moment. And now they even want to steal “America’s Team.”

RANDY GALLOWAY

Dallas Morning News

America’s Team II: What’s in a Name?

Now, with Troy Aikman and with their top draft picks, the Cowboys are beginning to elicit the D-word: dynasty.

“The Cowboys are a young, exciting team with an exciting coach,” says Dr. Thomas Tutko, San Jose State psychology professor. “You have a chance to build a dynasty.”

Nevertheless, he says, that doesn’t necessarily make the Dallas Cowboys America’s Team. “You don’t give yourselves a nickname,” says Dr. Art Taylor, associated director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport and Society. “It has to be bestowed on you.”

Besides, he says, the question is beside the point. “You’re not playing to be American’s Team. You’re playing to win the Super Bowl.”

VICTORIA LOE

Dallas Morning News

Owner Gets Smarter When Team Gets Better

Come to think of it, exactly what is the distance between Hooterville and Pasadena? And how far does one actually have to travel from being considered the astute owner of a Super Bowl team rather than a Green Acres character?

You have noticed, right, how Jerry Jones has grown remarkably wise with every winning season in Dallas? Dumb as a lug nut in 1989 (the record was 1-15), here is an hands-on owner whose IQ climbed dramatically as the Cowboys began their climb from the bottom.

Now, of course, his team is in the Super Bowl. In Dallas, that automatically makes Jones an instant Einstein. Not even his Little Rock heritage is being held against him.

RANDY GALLOWAY

Dallas Morning News