Flashback Friday: Super Bowl Weekend 10 Years Ago

FLASHBACK FRIDAY

This story below was written 10 years ago this weekend, not because the Cowboys were in the Big Dance, but because Dallas was hosting the game that year. It was a tribute to an organization that billed itself as "America's Team" and has been my youngest brother's team through the ages, a team that has won 5 Super Bowls and had some pretty illustrious years, especially under the much respected head coach Tom Landry. 

Football has become more than just another game. And the highlight of pro football is its crowning achievement, the Super Bowl. For fans, the Super Bowl means super hype, lots of spectacular spending on commercials and an opportunity to party with friends. For one day a year there will be more people watching one event than double the number of people on Facebook. (EdNote: This has changed.) 

Like the internet, its reach is global, and has been such since near the beginning. Not everyone is big on football, but there sure are a lot who are. This year's game will be held in Dallas in the new Cowboy Stadium which I mentioned in December when paying tribute to Cowboys coach Tom Landry, who played an instrumental role in making the Cowboys "America's Team" back in the Seventies. 

Another person who played an instrumental role in that era was quarterback Roger Staubach. For the record, Roger Thomas Staubach, incidentally, was born the same year as Bob Dylan and Jerry Jones, who became owner of the Cowboys in 1989 and proceeded to fire Mr. Landry. (He later admitted he handled that situation poorly.) To his credit, Jones built the new 1.2 billion dollar Cowboy Stadium with his own money and did not push that deal off on overburdened taxpayers, like other teams which I will not mention here. 

Staubach was a Heisman Trophy winner in college and learned early what it takes to remain cool under pressure. With Staubach at the helm, the Cowboys garnered their first Super Bowl victory, Staubach being named Most Valuable Player. Coach Landry described him as "possibly the best combination of a passer, an athlete and a leader to ever play in the NFL." 

Better luck next year.

Whether you win or lose, it's a highlight for any player to be in the "the Big Dance" and whether you win or lose you get a very nice chunk of change. One thing you don't get, however, when you are on the losing end, is that super ring. The Ring's the thing. Staubach has two. You only get them by being part of a team. “If you are a team player, it’s in the gut that this is a lot more special than any individual award,” Staubach once said. 

While leading the Dallas Cowboys from 1969-1979 the team never had a losing season. Here's a summary of his other career highlights and awards:
1985 Pro Football Hall of Fame Inductee
6× Pro Bowl selection (1971, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979)
5× All-NFC selection (1971, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979)
2× Super Bowl champion (VI, XII)
NFL 1970s All-Decade Team Super Bowl VI MVP
1963 Heisman Trophy
1963 Maxwell Award
1963 UPI Player of the Year
1971 Bert Bell Award Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor 

O.K.... time to start getting ready for the Game. Anyone here checked out some of the commercials that will air later today? Chevy has a couple that are pretty cool. And who's slated to be this year's Go Daddy Girl? We'll soon find out.

 

Super Bowl Trivia: Who owns more Super Bowl rings than anyone alive?

See the answer HERE

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THE ABOVE was published in 2011 on Super Bowl Sunday. This year's answer to that last question is different from the answer of 2011. Tom Brady has 6 Super Bowl rings, more than any other quarterback, and is aiming to garner a 7th this Sunday in Super Bowl 54. The amazing thing is that he's making this attempt with a new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 

This has certainly been the NFLs strangest year, due in large part to Covid. Most games were played in empty or semi-empty stadiums. TV viewers heard crowd noise generated in the same fashion as laugh tracks on sitcoms. The effect was surreal, almost turning these competitions into WWF artifice.