Self Portrait IV

And it is Friday. This week end special as it returns the Super Bowl, our multi-billion-dollar game. I admit to having lost some interest without the once-feared Oakland Raiders or those 80s glamour pusses the San Francisco 49ers. The Bay Area's last best effort was '02 when the Raiders got blown out by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in XXXVII 48-21; Tampa Bay coach Gruden fired the prior year by Raiders' owner Al Davis. Think they were motivated? Since '02 neither club has made it to the playoffs which consistent, really, with our other local sports: the A's and Giants remember their far-past glory while the Warriors have not been contenders since the the 1970s and Rick Barry's golden years. And don't even mention the Cal Bears. But back to the SB, which really owes itself to Joe Namath in III. Broadway Joe was the son of Hungarian immigrants and Pennsylvania steelworkers; he would have been in Viet Nam if not his throwing arm. In college he won a National Title with Alabama and Bear Bryant. He was famous for booze and broads and often enjoyed both together game-night but it was not until '69 that he achieved icon status becoming the rare sports-athlete to influence American culture. Of course he famously predicted a win for his under-dog Jets would defeat Johny Unitis and the Baltimore Colts. This the season before the merger of the National Football League and the AFL, creating the NFL, and the game's outcome increased the market-value of the combined franchise. Even more so, it paved the way for black sheep Oakland and hard-knock NY and Green Bay which captured America's attention. The country saw its values in their local clubs, which often enjoyed mythic stature - consider the Pittsburgh Steelers in the '70s, the 49ers in the 80s or the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos of the early-mid and late 1990s, respectively - perfect representations of those cities in each era. I was flush with Ken Stabler, Dave Casper and Ray Guy. Those were the times. Oh, and the cost for a 30 second TV ad during the SB this year $3,000,000.