I guess it is too late to stop the Super Bowl nobody wants, even if it is probably one the season of shame deserves.
Denver-Washington? Minnesota-Cleveland? Juggle any of the four names left, and there is no order that doesn`t beg for an apology.
This thing is going to have as much glamor as a blood drive.
The marquee has one name-John Elway. The rest is pin-the-tail-on-the-corner back.
It has no coach anyone recognizes, side view or full face. The four of them are obscure enough to hide in an Iowa caucus. Three are
indistinguishable, and the other one needs a good ironing.
Anyone who can tell Marty Reeves from Joe Schottenheimer from Dan Gibbs goes to the same optometrist they do.
Jerry Burns is wrinkled enough to have spent his adult life underwater.
The nuttiest part of a relentlessly disturbing season is that three of the last four teams were in exactly the same spot last year-Washington, Cleveland and Denver.
Only the New York Giants are missing. And I hate to say this, but missed, too.
Here`s my plan. We match the Bears and the 49ers-or one or the other against the Giants-on Super Bowl Sunday and beat the pants off whoever finally ends up in San Diego.
In the ratings and at the souvenir stand.
We can sell ads and paperback rights and probably even get John Madden to stop by and bellow.
We`ll call it the True Bowl, or the Anything-But-Another-Minnesota Bowl.
I think we have all shown considerable restraint in not going up to Minneapolis and tipping over all their silos, including the place where they play outdoor sports indoors.
We humored the Twins, even though they were, without argument, the worst baseball team to win a World Series inside or in peace time.
We patted them on the back and told them to call anytime they began feeling that the whole thing was some kind of giant Halloween prank.
And this is the thanks we get. The Vikings threaten to do the same thing in football.
I think there ought to be a Minnesota Rule in sports. No team is allowed to win the championship if all its playoff victories plus regular-season wins still add up to less than the team with the best record.
The Twins won eight games in the playoffs and still had a poorer record than seven other baseball teams.
If the Vikings win the Super Bowl, they will have won 12 games, or still less than the 49ers and no more than the Saints, the Redskins and whoever wins the Denver-Cleveland game.
Not that Washington is any bargain. The Redskins need a strike to win a Super Bowl. They won the last time labor lunacy fouled a season.
Their championships rings should have little picket signs on them and the Lombardi Trophy an asterisk dotting the ”i.”
And that`s as close to a pedigree as any of them can come. One Super Bowl win and eight Super Bowl losses, two each by Denver and Washington and four by the Vikings.
Cleveland has yet to have a chance to lose the big one, blowing title games at the end to Denver and, before that, to Oakland.
One more choke and the Browns are going to have to change their name to the Red Sox.
I can wait.
