"The Charbor Chronicles": Super Bowl XVII Memories

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Super Bowl XVII Memories

Image courtesy of marada's Flickr page - Pro Football Hall of Fame: https://www.flickr.com/photos/marada/18349271420/in/photolist-s9jx2h-6WanDm-88EBAf-88EBFW-6Wakz7-6WamJ3-6WavG5-6Wapgd-7AA2Cj-eZaZFx-tXsP7C-ucHyh9-5V94An-8qJEgH-744DSK-ofEBCj-7ZjcnY-4qX6xk

Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

Super Bowl XVII - Washington 27, Miami 17. Played on January 30, 1983 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. John Riggins WAS 38 166 1, Joe Theismann WAS 15 23 143 2 2, Charlie Brown WAS 6 60 1, Alvin Garrett WAS 1 44, 2 13 1, Jimmy Cefalo MIA 2 82 1, David Woodley MIA 4 14 97 1 1, Andra Franklin MIA 16 49, Tony Nathan MIA 7 26, Dexter Manley WAS 1.0, Mark H. Murphy WAS 1, Bob Baumhower MIA 1.0, Lyle Blackwood MIA 1, A.J. Duhe MIA 1, Larry Gordon MIA 1.0, Earnest Rhone MIA 1.0, Stadium Rose Bowl, MVP John Riggins, Favorite Dolphins by 3, National anthem Leslie Easterbrook, Halftime show Bob Jani Productions presents "KaleidoSUPERscope" with the Los Angeles Super Drill Team, Attendance 103,667, Network NBC, Announcers Dick Enberg and Merlin Olsen, Nielsen ratings 48.6, est. 81.77 million viewers, Cost of 30-second commercial US$400,000

http://www.infoplease.com/year/1983.html

The second Super Bowl that I watched, and this one, also, made a strong impression on me. Specifically, the aesthetic quality of seeing a championship game played in the bright sunshine of southern California in the middle of our dreary, northeastern winter felt like a special kind of reward for the teams involved.

Still, I did not care all that much about either team. The Bengals were hardly my favorite team when they played in the Super Bowl the year before, as the Giants were by far my favorite, and the Jets were my clear choice as second favorite team. But at least I liked them, and was impressed by their uniforms. It was not as easy for me to like either team in Super Bowl XVII. By default, I was pulling for the Miami Dolphins, but I was annoyed that they had beaten the New York Jets, and they seemed to me, at the time, to be one of those teams who would always find ways to play in and win Super Bowls. True, they did make it in the eighties, twice. And they had a very rich history dating back to the 1970's, being the only team at the time to have qualified for three straight Super Bowls, and being the second team to win back-to-back Super Bowl titles, only a few years after the Green Bay Packers had done it.

But the Dolphins did not manage to win this one. They came close, and were winning in the second half. However, John Riggins had worn the defense down by then, and Washington was able to come from behind to win their first Super Bowl. With the win, the NFC earned their first back-to-back Super Bowl wins since the Green Bay Packers had won the first two Super Bowls, although it still was not clear that the NFC was about to enjoy more than a decade of dominance. In fact, the AFC would win only one Super Bowl between then and the 1997 season, when the Denver Broncos finally ended the NFC's streak. It would happen the next season, when Washington returned to the Super Bowl as heavy favorite, but got steamrolled instead. For this year, however, they were champions.

Here are some of the major events that took place in 1983, the year this Super Bowl was played. The world's population was 4.690 billion people. The story that sticks out the most for me, as an American child in 1983, was when 239 Marines were killed after terrorists bombed in Beirut, Lebanon. But I also remember the invasion of Grenada, far more, it seems, than most other people my age (and they really should remember it). A Boeing 747 from South Korea was shot down, with all 269 passengers aboard killed, after it apparently veered into Soviet airspace. Pope John Paul II ratifies the changes ushered in by the Second Vatican Council. Benigno S. Aquino, Jr., a political opponent of Ferdinand Marcos, was killed in the Philippines. Poland's Lech Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize. The biggest movie was Return of the Jedi, which of course was the third installment of the Star Wars saga.

http://boards.sportslogos.net/topic/98529-super-bowl-field-database-sb-xlvi-texture-added-122215/page-9

And I found this alternate field of the two losing teams in the Championship Games, had they managed to win and meet. Ah, Jets! What might have been...