With the Sissy Bowl well nigh upon us and Slick Willy Belichick, Sneaky Pete Carroll, Richard Sherman Hemsley, and that deaf, dumb, and blind kid Tommy Brady about to sashay though the tunnel into the limelight and onto the world stage, let’s hearken back to yesteryear to the game NFL Media analyst Elliot Harrison regards as the greatest Super Bowl ever played.
According to Harrison’s piece “Ranking the Super Bowls,” the greatest Super Bowl game of all time was Super Bowl XIII. It featured the greatest collection of NFL talent ever to gather for a game. In addition to Coaches Chuck Noll and Tom Landry, 14 players would end up being voted into the Hall of Fame: nine Pittsburgh Steelers and five Dallas Cowboys.
Super Bowl XIII was the first Super Bowl to feature a rematch of a previous Super Bowl. Two years earlier in Super Bowl X the Steelers had beaten the Cowboys, 21–17, and in Super Bowl XIII both teams were vying to be the first NFL team to win three Super Bowls. Dallas was also the defending Super Bowl XII champion.
Super Bowl XIII was also the first Super Bowl with a true heavyweight title-fight feel, given the Steelers’ and Cowboys’ unquestioned status as the NFL’s two best teams. The quarterback match up of Terry Bradshaw and Roger Staubach is still the only one in Super Bowl history to feature two quarterbacks with two Super Bowl victories.
Both teams entered the game with the best defenses in the league (the Cowboys only allowed 107.6 rushing yards per game while the Steelers only allowed 107.8), and each side took advantage of the other team’s mistakes throughout the game.
According to Harrison, Super Bowl XIII deserved its number one ranking for memorable moments, which included a strip-sack for a touchdown, a dropped pass from an all-pro veteran tight end who was wide open in the end zone, a controversial pass interference call, and an unintentional squib kick and a subsequent fumbled return, which proved to be the game’s turning point.
NBC broadcast the game with Dick Enberg supplying the pre-game notes, Curt Gowdy doing the play-by-play, and Merlin Olsen and John Brodie adding the color commentary.
To see the complete game without commercials click the video below or follow the link at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0e8nDiV6dA.
Harrison’s piece can be viewed at http://www.nfl.com/photoessays/0ap2000000314258.
THE MILLSTONE DIARIES 
RICE’S MISFORTUNE IS THAT HIS “INFRACTION” WAS CAUGHT ON CAMERA
Posted in Latest Commentary, tagged Arizona Cardinals, Baltimore Ravens The Millstone Diaries, Brandon Marshall, Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, Dez Bryant, Fox & Friends, Frostee Rucker, Greg Hardy, Miami Dolphins, NFL Commissioner, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, NFL players, Ought to be Headlines, Peck's Bad Boy, Randy Starks, Ray McDonald, Ray Rice, Roger Goodell, San Francisco 49ers, Steve Doocy, Terrell Suggs, The Millstone Report, U-T San Diego on September 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Ray Rice has become “Peck’s Bad Boy” for a deteriorating National Football League. When the first video of him dragging his unconscious fiancée out of an elevator appeared in July, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell slapped Rice’s wrist with a two game suspension.
Goodell went on to revise the league’s disciplinary policy regarding domestic violence to include a minimum six-game suspension or more for the first infraction and up to a lifetime ban for the second, with the prospect of yearly appeals.
But now that a longer version of the video has surfaced showing Rice administering a left jab to the jaw of his future wife, “Jolly Roger” stepped to the mic and said that “domestic violence and sexual assault are wrong … illegal … unacceptable … under any circumstances … [and] have no place in the NFL …” He then suspended the Baltimore Raven indefinitely for the knock punch.
On first blush the zero tolerance policy along with the indefinite suspension of Rice looks like the NFL has taken appropriate measures and is moving in the right direction, but the truth is many abusers of women continue to play football in the league.
For example, Rice’s teammate Terrell Suggs has had two incidents with his then-girlfriend and now wife. In 2009, he allegedly, “threw a soap dispenser at her head, hit her in the chest with his hand, and held a bottle of bleach over her and their 1-year-old son.” In 2012, the All-Pro linebacker “punched her in the neck and dragged her alongside a speeding car with their two children in the vehicle.”
Earlier this summer, Carolina Panthers Pro Bowl defensive end Greg Hardy was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend and threatening her life. Chicago Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall has a rap sheet and has been charged twice for domestic violence.
Miami Dolphins defensive tackle Randy Starks hit his fiancée; Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant hit his mother; Arizona Cardinals defensive end Frostee Rucker was twice charged with spousal battery; and San Francisco 49ers defensive tackle Ray McDonald was arrested for domestic violence just 72 hours after Goodell announced the league’s revised policy.
And these players rest at the tip of the iceberg. U-T San Diego reviewed hundreds of news reports involving NFL players since 2000 and compiled a list of arrests and citations that were more serious than speeding tickets.
It appears the reason Ray Rice has become the league’s “Peck’s Bad Boy” is that his “infraction” was caught on camera for the world to see. As Steve Doocy of Fox & Friends quipped, “the message is, when you’re in an elevator, there’s a camera.”
In other words, as long as players don’t get caught knocking out women on camera for the world to see, they’re cleared to play football in the NFL.
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