NFL Has Plans to Weather This Super Forecast

The Super Bowl has survived the Buffalo Bills, Garo Yepremian’s performance-art interpretation of the forward pass, the San Diego Charger secondary and Kathy Lee Gifford, but will it be able to withstand El Nino?

Doomsday scenarios of El Nino ravaging the Southern California coast, pounding beachfront property and rendering the Jan. 25 Super Bowl in San Diego unplayable, make Jim Steeg, the NFL’s executive director of special events, rather testy.

“If I hear that one more time, I’m going to throw up,” Steeg says. “I’ve heard that this winter is going to be a wet one, a dry one, that it’s going to hit Feb. 15, or that it’s going to hit Dec. 15.”

Steeg dismisses the notion of a washed-out Super Bowl, citing the event’s 100% rain-free track record through 31 games.

Still, to allay public concern, Steeg has suggested an El Nino update be added to the NFL’s Super Bowl web site in December.

“There are going to be thousands of questions about it,” Steeg says. “The public is going to be all worried about it, if it is a rainy month. That’s the great thing about it. It’s got everybody worried, and they don’t even know if it’s going to rain or not.”

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We’ve seen worse: Or, if you’d rather not check out the NFL El Nino online update, consider this:

Thirty years ago this December, the league staged its championship game on a field of Wisconsin frozen ice, with a wind-chill factor of minus-69 degrees, frostbite and hypothermia be damned.

If the NFL could order the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys to play through those conditions, anything--even the San Francisco 49ers and the Denver Broncos playing through a monsoon--is possible Jan. 25.

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Trivia time: Who is the winningest quarterback in NFL history?

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Tough love: Asked to name the greatest running back in football history, William Sanders, father of Barry Sanders, didn’t mince words.

“O.J. Simpson, Tony Dorsett, Franco Harris, Eric Dickerson, the kid from Dallas--Emmitt Smith--they’re all imitations of Jim Brown,” Papa Sanders said.

“Even Barry. They’re just imitations of how great a back Jim Brown was and what he did over his lifetime.

“You’ve seen how many games Jim Brown played. He didn’t carry the ball 50 times a ballgame. They didn’t play a 16-game schedule. Even Walter Payton. Those guys are only replicas of what Jim Brown is.”

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Trivia answer: John Elway, with 132 victories.

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And finally: New Orleans Saint Coach Mike Ditka admits he misses Chicago--though probably not as much as Chicago misses him--but says he is getting comfortable with his new environs around the French Quarter.

“You get a little melancholy when you see the skyline,” Ditka said upon his return to Chicago earlier this month, “but, hey, I like the New Orleans skyline too. I like the smell of swamp water. I like those crawdaddies crawling around. I see those rattlers rolling around. I like that.”