RAMS AND VERMEIL PROVE TO NEED EACH OTHER -- History of the Superbowl Part 10

1979

In life, we get smarter and smarter...as we begin to lose our motivation, drive, wetness.

The fuel that got us to the mountain...is usually almost gone when we arrive.

This is how all professional sports coaches, trainers and managers know to judge talent.

You want a guy ideally who is 27-28, because it's the only way you can get the best POSSIBLE combination...of wisdom and youth.

There will be faster ones in their earlier 20s.

Yet, while they're in their 20s, they're dumb-asses who have to put their dick in everything.

So 28.

You see how Michael Jordan could take four Phoenix Suns at once when he was 28?

Meanwhile when he was 25, he was too thick-headed to pass to Paxson.

And at 34, he was going at people with this orthopedic Tim Duncan turnaround jumper that only looked good because he had a cool basketball body for pretty much any endeavor he wanted.

Yes Jordan was smart enough to beat you at 34, and yes he was athletic enough to dunk on five Pistons when he was 24...you see what I mean.

Well Tom Landry...you're not dismissed from my classroom.

Mister Landry has three good quarterbacks that are in their prime all at the same time.

The 60s

He was smart enough to feed them with his power, of course, and that's why both Morton and Staubach where kicking everyone's ass in the late 70s.

But look how the Cowboys are limping into these Super Bowls versus Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

Sure they were smarter then the Steelers and Colts, that's for DAMN sure.

But they could NEVER compete with their acrobatics and youthful energy.

The Cowboys hustled and hauled ass and performed the shit out of their lungs during their 70s Superbowl run...

And look at them, man.

Fumble your asses off to Baltimore when you're young, watch the Steelers pass and run on your asses when you're old.

Young Miami (dumbasses) and Middle-Aged Denver (not as athletic).

My point is, the Cowboys, with their great drafting skills, simply didn't know when to say when.

They would continue this trend in the 90s, as all their faults and failures happen for the EXACT SAME REASONS.

They neglect things they don't feel like doing the way the 90s Braves neglected a bullpen.

The Cowboys thought they had it all worked out going into their divisional playoff game at home in late-December, 1979.

Their opponents -- the Los Angeles RAMS?!

The Los Angeles Rams.

The Rams were once the Cleveland Rams, which always told me it had a few things to do with the movie "Major League" (1989).

"Major League" turns into a pretty average, predictable film...but is pretty decent otherwise.

Major League's premise is that the showgirl wife of a deceased Cleveland Indians owner...wants to move the team to Miami, Florida where she can sit on a yacht and paint her nails.

Miami has already offered to build them a new stadium.

Charlie Cyphers, the GM, doesn't like this idea. He doesn't understand it. You want us to LOSE?

Yes, I want you to lose, she says. Because it's the only way we can make the fans go away and give us the excuse of impending financial ruin if we stay.

And so she hires the biggest bumbling fuckers you've ever seen to join this team.

Now THAT part was funny, and the reason you HAVE to see Major League II.

Screw the critics. The movie-makers in charge of Major League II liked the same stuff we liked -- Dorn, the lady, the drunken Bob Uecker, and the crazy idea of Wesley Snipes thinking Passenger 57 was more important.

Georgia Frontaine, Fontaine, Pantiere, one of those...she's the owner of the Rams at this point in 1979.

The owner of the team had DROWNED.

So she took the team over, and after what happened in the 79 season (75% of a superbowl victory), she would make the next ones to drown...the Rams.

They would lavish in hell for the next 25 years, suffering some of the worst shit a pro sports league has to go through.

You see? "Major League", despite lampooning the Cleveland Indians, may have been using details about the Georgia-owned L.A. Rams...like said in Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry"...to paint them with contempt.

"Major League" thus, may be motivated and inspired upon the wise-ass comment one night somewhere that "that's why they won in 1979!!!! Someone told them the real reason they were on the roster so they went out to prove the bitch wrong!!! They probably peeled a section of a cardboard likeness of her in like a...whore's outfit...YES!! Let's make her a showgirl!!!"

Georgia won the Rams in a vicious court-battle just a year before their Super Bowl win.

Coinkadink?

Georgia won the Rams from her step-son.

All of us who think the Chicago Bears are cool and have potential...can kind of sympathize with Georgia on that front. For Mike McCaskey was too a step-son who won a football team in an inheritance.

Now back to the National Funball League.

The Rams come into Dallas in January of 1980 to see who gets to play Tampa for the NFC championship.

The Rams trail almost immediately, with the Cowboys rocking Ferragamo for a safety.

It's 2-0 after 1.

At halftime it's 7-2 Rams, okay.

Turns out Cullen Bryant and star Wendell Tyler, the Rams running backs, really want to win this movie...I mean game.

Dallas leads 19-14 with 4:00 left in the game.

Downfield comes Tom Berenger, Dorn, Willie Mays Hays.

And Ferra-GAMO THROWS A TOUCHDOWN WITH 2:16 LEFT!!!!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!

The Cowboys come downfield but keep getting stopped.

20 seconds left, Cowboys in Rams territory.

4th and 5....

Here we go...

Here we go...

Staubach....

looking for his recievers...

INCOMPLETE!!! AND THE RAMS WITH THEE ENORMOUS UPSET!!!!!

I like to imagine Dick Enberg having the call whenever something like that happens.

He's the best commentator there is.

Only one who treats the AFC like people.

He'll do a Charlotte Hornets--Minnesota Timberwolves game on late notice, he doesn't even know who these young folks on these new teams are, and he's all

DOUG!!!! WEST!!! WITH A CHANCE FOR THRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.....

HE GETS IT!!!!!

This win over Dallas for the right to see Tampa Bay in the NFC championship marks one of the only times that -- in a non-Laker-title situation -- Los Angeles, California, head to toe, resembled Indiana University after the Keith Smart shot.

Rams were going to the FINAL FOUR?!!!!! On a touchdown drive like SUPERMAN?!

So the Rams opponents would, for the umpteenth time, be Tampa.

Tampa Bay is a great story.

Tampa Bay was the newbie of the NFC crowd that simply didn't get the initiation rituals.

Bright orange, and a young quarterback who was so otherwordly arrogant you would have literally thought he was an alien.

He was from another world, and he was very proud of that other world.

Dealing with Steve Spurrier as a player...was apparently like listening to ALF talk about Melmac to a bunch of Earthlings who simply would rather take his word for it and have him leave them alone.

Spurrier, the man who would coin Free Shoes University as what FSU really stands for (I liked that), would become the leader of the NFL's first ever winless ballclub.

They made a big deal about the Detroit Lions going winless in 2008 because there were 16 games by then. In 1979, there was just 14. Don't strike. It means more games, more playoff rounds, and pretty soon it will mean 96 teams for March Madness college basketball instead of 65, and playoffs for the football teams. They're gonna just love that. PWWWWWWWWW.

Spurrier was the quarterback for them. Yup.

Spurrier got good, you know, but he was dealing with a Tampa Bay team that was very liberal.

Spurrier, coming from Florida (right? At least the SEC), assumed that he could do what Roger Staubach did.

He assumed, like alot of misled young artists, that the trends of the last several years would mirror the trends of the future.

He didn't know that these other Landry wannabes in the NFC were taking his strategies now as a CAUTIONARY TALE.

So he assumed he could go out there, throw tons of interceptions, but as long he adhered to a system the way Staubach did, that he would always have a place.

He could...show how similar of mind he was as the other coaches.

Show them he spoke their language.

An ass-kisser.

Spurrier would have been willing to be a defense specialist, a placekicker specialist, anything, as long as he was part of the organization.

Kind of like the way they do in the SEC. Braintyping. Nepotism. Whiteness and Background.

Of course Spurrier is not a racist or a race-baiter, any of that stuff, he was simply one of those lazy showoff white guys who, as a very equal-opportunity-minded guy, at least expects the perks of being superior.

Not the late 70s NFC.

They weren't fucking around anymore with tradition and white.

They wanted to win, and they wanted to learn how to not lose like Landry had.

So they went and got a Joe Gilliam.

His name...was Doug Williams...

Ah yes, I made some eyes rise with that one.

Williams was so fucking cool.

Before the loss in Superbowl XIII, the idea of a black quarterback leading the NFC parade was as crazy as John Kerry admitting it's bullshit to make gay marriage an issue.

But like I said...cautionary tales...

And so this NFC team goes and takes Tiny Tim and says SEE YA, BITCH!!!!

For the NFL in 1979, this was literally like benching your son.

And so they would do so, and Tampa would be good enough to HOST the NFC Championship game.

They would lose 9-0.

Wendell Tyler had almost 200 yards on them.

And so the Rams were the NFC Champions, and Dorn went to punch Charlie Sheen for unknowingly sleeping with his wife because his wife saw Dorn getting with some girl during a post-game telecast.

Their opponents would be Pittsburgh.

People only watched because Los Angeles has a lot of freaking people. There is developed land in that bitch until you get way the hell off to the mountains.

This is how all their teams, including the Rams, could do a tour way off in Anaheim and draw MORE.

Surprisingly, the Rams were ruthless in this game.

They led 13-10 at the half, and then when Bradshaw started throwing his alley-oops to Swann, the Rams didn't get nervous...they TOOK THE LEAD BACK.

Rod Smith of the Rams would catch a Swann-like touchdown pass from Ferragamo.

They went into the fourth quarter against Pittsburgh up 19-13.

There's your 75 percent I was talking about earlier.

Unfortunately for L.A., the final score of this game would be 34-19.

Bradshaw would leave his mark on the football world with the quarter of his life.

It didn't matter who was rushing him, who was FAKE rushing him, who was hiding behind the recievers, Bradshaw could NOT BE STOPPED.

Stallworth was unearthlike, with more then 140 yards IN THE FOURTH QUARTER.

Even when he didn't land in the endzone, his over-the-back catches would put them in position for Franco Harris to run in.

Terry Bradshaw would get another Superbowl MVP award.

Franco won it in 74.

Swann (YEEEEAHHHHH) won it in 75.

Bradshaw won it last year, and now again.

The Pittsburgh Steelers were world champions, and the first to win FOUR SUPERBOWLS.

to be continued...

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