RJ staffers share fondest memories of Super Bowl

EDITOR’S NOTE: For football fans, the Super Bowl is one of those events that creates memories that last a lifetime. In their own words, here’s how the game is best remembered, both personally and professionally, by members of the Review-Journal sports staff who either cover or oversee coverage of the Raiders.

Ed Graney Columnist

Leon Lett was running in the other direction.

That’s the vision I remember most from sitting in the end zone at the Rose Bowl for Super Bowl XXVII, watching my beloved Cowboys drill the Bills 52-17 in January 1993.

I was with my then girlfriend, and the union was doomed. I knew it even then, which was one reason for my acting like a nutcase (idiot?) before, during and after the Dallas victory.

She was a Padres fan. I loved the Dodgers. It would have never worked.

It also didn’t matter that I couldn’t really see Lett miss out on that would-be 64-yard touchdown return when he celebrated too soon and had the ball knocked away by Buffalo’s Don Beebe.

I only knew that one of my all-time favorite players (Troy Aikman) was named MVP, and I was able to score two tickets for a face value of $175 each. Expensive date, but the best result possible — for both the game and the doomed relationship.

Adam Hill Reporter

Growing up an obsessed fan of the Buffalo Bills, the Super Bowl induced far more nightmares than positive vibes. But once I separated myself from fandom as I got older and moved into the journalism business, it has become one of my favorite days of the year.

My friends and I invented a game that involves $1 bills flying all over the room. Wagers range from the over/under on the jersey of the next player to catch a pass to whether a baby or animal will be next to be featured in a commercial to whether the drunkest partygoer can consume a full can of queso dip in 30 seconds. Oh yeah, and there’s football. Best day of the year.

The only problem? This year I also have to help cover the game.

Bill Bradley Sports Editor

I’ve seen many games in my career, but the one I’ll never forget was Super Bowl XXXIV in Atlanta, known in Nashville as “One Yard Short.” I had started as sports editor of the Nashville Tennessean six weeks earlier. Already, I’d seen the “Music City Miracle” and a Titans victory in Jacksonville for the AFC championship.

That Super Bowl week was a whirlwind that culminated with a game for the ages. After watching some newbie quarterback named Kurt Warner of the St. Louis Rams toss a 73-yard touchdown pass with 1:54 to play, the Titans nearly completed a game-tying comeback on the last play of regulation, which fell “One Yard Short.” What a playoff run. What a week. What a game.

Sam Gordon Reporter

It was an unwritten rule at my childhood home in Minneapolis. I would watch the Super Bowl from the recliner in the living room, and my dad would watch from the couch. Didn’t matter if I’d moved out or if I was busy Super Bowl Sunday. I would come home and take my rightful place on the recliner.

And that was that.

But I couldn’t watch Super Bowl LII with my dad. To that point, it was only the second one I’d missed.

I had what I thought was a legitimate excuse. I was going to be at the game instead on behalf of the Review-Journal.

I watched the Philly Special — and the Eagles’ 41-33 victory over the Patriots — unfold from the press box at U.S. Bank Stadium in my beloved hometown. A professional dream come true. My dad assumed his usual post on the couch and watched from the comfort of his own home. We talked all about it the following morning.

Legitimate excuse, indeed.

Ron Kantowski Columnist

Two Super Bowl memories immediately pop into mind.

The first was quarterback Bud Dry leading Bud Light to a 23-21 win in the 1991 Bud Bowl. The second was that a guy named Stan Humphries was actually a Super Bowl quarterback.

It happened in Super Bowl XXIX, 49ers vs. Chargers. Humphries, a sixth-round draft pick out of Northeast Louisiana, was the Chargers’ quarterback. The 49ers led 28-10 at halftime when my brother and I went outside and starting throwing the football around.

We figured if Stan Humphries could play quarterback in the Super Bowl, the two of us still had a chance.

Bill Eichenberger Assistant Sports Editor

Fullback Bill Mathis, a guy from my hometown in Georgia, played for the Jets, so Super Bowl III was must-see TV, especially so since my neighbors had just bought a new color TV. The only problem was every player had a shadow, making it difficult at times to follow the play on the field.

But that didn’t matter on this magical Sunday, as Joe Namath and the Jets of the upstart AFL stunned the football world, beating the NFL champion Baltimore Colts in a win that ushered in an era of greater parity between the recently merged leagues.

A postscript: Mathis was Namath’s roommate, and the next summer on a choir trip to NYC, me and seven other wide-eyed, small-town guys were given a quick tour of Namath’s penthouse apartment by Mathis.

Joe was not there.

Vinny Bonsignore Reporter

I was sitting in the auxiliary press box in Glendale, Arizona, during Super Bowl XLIX between the Patriots and Seahawks.

The Seahawks were driving toward my end of the field, down 28-24, facing first-and-10 at the Patriots’ 38-yard line with 1:14 to play.

And when Russell Wilson completed a miraculous 33-yard pass to Jermaine Kearse to put Seattle at the New England 5-yard line, Seahawks fans were going crazy. Without question, Seattle was on the doorstep of winning the Super Bowl, especially after Marshawn Lynch ran 4 yards to the Patriots’ 1.

All the Seahawks needed to do was hand it off to Lynch for the last yard and that would be the ballgame.

But as I watched the Seahawks set up on second down, it immediately hit me they were lining up in a pass formation rather than a run. “Wait, what?” I thought to myself. Sure enough, Wilson tried to stick the ball through a maze of bodies to Ricardo Lockette, only for Malcolm Butler to make a great play for the game-winning interception.

What struck me was the pure ecstasy of Patriots fans and the agony of Seahawks fans, who were there in equal numbers, and how those emotions were expressed simultaneously across every section of the stadium.

It was a surreal moment.