By Woodrow Carroll
Super Bowl LV will kick off at 5:30 p.m. Sunday in Tampa, Fla., with the hometown Tampa Bay Buccaneers playing last year’s champion, the Kansas City Chiefs. It will be the first time a Super Bowl team will play in its home stadium.
Given we have 54 Super Bowls in the memory banks, we look back at previous Super Bowl games with an eye toward the interesting aspects.
The first four Super Bowls are well etched in many older fans’ memories. The Green Bay Packers, with Vince Lombardi calling the shots, took home honors in SB I and SB II. In the third edition of pro football’s biggest game, the New York Jets and quarterback Joe Namath surprised the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts, 16-7. A year later, the Kansas City Chiefs showed the football world that the American Football League’s strength with a victory over the Minnesota Vikings, 23-7.
Super Bowl V receives little attention, with good reason! Baltimore beat the Dallas Cowboys, 16-13, SB V is generally regarded as one of the least exciting in the long history of the event, even though the Colts won SB V on a field goal by Jim O’Brien with four seconds to play. O’Brien’s heroics was tempered by his missed extra point.
In the long history of the Super Bowl the name Chuck Howley is important. Actually, the name is not so prominent because the game was eminently forgettable to many observers, however, Howley was a linebacker for the Cowboys in SB V and was selected Most Valuable Player Award of the game, the only player for a losing Super Bowl team to capture MVP honors.
The Colts’ coach in SB V was Don McCafferty, in his first year as head coach of the Colts. He should have been on top of the world following his Super Bowl success, however, it was not to be the case.
Early in his third season with Baltimore, McCafferty got into it with higher ups. Exit McCafferty after five games. Not long after, McCafferty was hired to coach the Detroit Lions. His real worth as a coach never was tested, however. After a 6-7-1 season at Detroit in1973, McCafferty died of a heart attack at age 53.
Repeats champions? Yes! Threepeats? No! On eight occasions an NFL franchise repeated as Super Bowl champion. Green Bay claimed SB I and II. The Miami Dolphins were champions in SB VII and the SB VIII. The Dolphins were undefeated across the board during their Super Bowl VII championship in 1974, the last team to finish a season undefeated. The Pittsburgh Steelers followed Miami with back-to-back championships in SB IX and X. A third consecutive Super Bowl trophy did not happen for the Steelers. After sitting it out for a couple of years, the Steelers reclaimed the throne by winning SBs XIII and XIV. The San Francisco 49ers made it two straight in SB XXIII and XXIV, calender years 1989 and 1990.
Dallas took two championships in SB XXVII and SB XXVIII. Denver added championships, SB XXXII and SB XXXIII.
In spite of success quarterback Tom Brady, he managed to back up a Super Bowl victory with a repeat only once, SBs XXXVIII and XXXIX when New England took three-point victories over Carolina, 32-29, and Philadelphia, 24-21.
For those tired of Xs, Vs, the 50th edition of the Super Bowl was just that, with the Denver Broncos beating the Carolina Panthers, 24-10, in 2016.
Each Super Bowl carries with it plenty of potential story lines. Will Tom Brady add to his already considerable legend? Will the Kansas City Chiefs, led by Patrick Mahomes, repeat as the NFL’s best?
Will an unexpected MVP emerge?