Saturday, January 2, 2016

Super Bowl XIII Memories




Super Bowl XIII - Pittsburgh Steelers 35, Dallas Cowboys 31. Played on January 21, 1979 in the Orange Bowl, Miami, Florida. Terry Bradshaw PIT 17 30 318 4 1, Lynn Swann PIT 7 124 1, John Stallworth PIT 3 115 2, Franco Harris PIT 20 68 1, Roger Staubach DAL 17 30 228 3 1, Tony Dorsett DAL 16 96, Drew Pearson DAL 4 73, Tony Hill DAL 2 49 1, John Banaszak SAC, Mel Blount INT, SAC Steve Furness, Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Dwight White, Mike Hegman, D.D. Lewis INT, Stadium Orange Bowl Miami, MVP Terry Bradshaw, Favorite Steelers by 3 1/2, National anthem The Colgate Thirteen, Halftime show Bob Jani presents "Carnival Salute to Caribbean," Attendance 79,484, Network NBC, announcers Curt Gowdy, Merlin Olsen, John Brodie, Nielsen 47.1 est. 74.74 million viewers, Cost of 30-second commercial US$185,000.


http://www.infoplease.com/year/1979.html
I was born for this Super Bowl, although still a very young child and so obviously too young to remember any of it. Still, this Super Bowl was different than the others, because essentially, I grew up not only under the shadow of the mighty Steelers dynasty of the 1970's, but of the tremendous rivalry that existed between those Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys. Particularly, it was this Super Bowl that stood out, because it was the first rematch in the history of the big game, and it was this particular Super Bowl that ultimately decided who the Team of the Decade would be. When Pittsburgh won, they were essentially crowned the best team of the 1970's by virtue of having won the most titles, and having gotten better of both of the two Super Bowl meetings between the two iconic franchises.

So here are some of the major events that took place in 1978, the year this Super Bowl was played. The world's population was 4.378 billion people. Vietnamese forces took over Cambodia, thus ending the nightmarish Pol Pot years of the Khmer Rouge, during which an estimated 1-2 million people died in the four years that they ruled the country. The Shah left Iran, and the Ayatollah Khomeini took over during the Iranian Revolution. Later in the year, Iranian militants stormed the American Embassy and held hostages in a crisis that many felt was the downfall of President Carter. Carter and Soviet Premiere Brezhnev signed the SALT II agreement. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, sparking a storm of protest around the world, and eventually prompting Jimmy Carter to withdraw American participation in the Olympics of 1980, to be held in Moscow. Margaret Thatcher became the Prime Minister of Great Britain. In Nicaragua, The Sandinistas took over and formed a government, while former President General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigned and fled to Miami.




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2 comments:

  1. Some Guy in JerseyJanuary 2, 2016 at 3:14 PM

    "I was born for this Super Bowl, although still a very young child and so obviously too young to remember any of it." Not to mention that in addition to being quite young, you were on the side of the Atlantic that wasn't especially conducive to watching the game. American football isn't especially popular in France even today, but back then it was particularly, as Mr. Ibarburu would say, "confidentiel". Happy New Year.

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  2. The Charbor ChroniclesJanuary 2, 2016 at 10:22 PM

    Yeah, true. Still, the legacy of those 70's Steelers kind of loomed over the NFL in the first half of the 1980's. It was not until the San Francisco 49ers, to their credit, matched the Steelers 4-0 Super Bowl record that people began to forget a little more about that dynasty.

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