Tag Archives: American Football League

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Getting ready for the Big Game

A young colleague of mine told me today he is going to Houston this weekend. He’s going to attend a football game: the Super Bowl.

My friend is a diehard, true-blue, dedicated fan of the New England Patriots, who will face off Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons.

Our brief conversation prompts me to offer this off-kilter perspective on the game that’s about to overwhelm us. It is this:

I have no particular allegiance to a team. My preference is for the conference. The National Football League comprises two conferences: American and National.

Going back many decades, I have long been an American Football Conference fan. My reasons are weird. Perhaps there are others out there who share my loyalty to the AFC.

It goes back to the American Football League. The AFL came into being in 1960. I was intrigued that a brand new pro football league would challenge the NFL. AFL teams played an exciting brand of football. They scored a lot of points; they played initially before sparse crowds; yet they had some talented players engaging in some tackle football.

Then in 1966, the NFL and the AFL agreed to merge. It would occur at the start of the 1970 season. Before the merger took effect, the AFL played the NFL in a championship game. The Green Bay Packers won the first two of those games in 1967 and 1968. Then in 1969, the AFL’s New York Jets — led by quarterback Joe Willie Namath — surprised the sporting world by defeating the Baltimore Colts; the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL battered the Minnesota Vikings in the following year’s championship game.

Then the leagues merged. My loyalty to the AFL was watered down somewhat when three NFL teams joined the AFC. They were: the Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts, the Cleveland Browns (now known as the Baltimore Ravens) and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Thus, my AFL loyalty was watered down somewhat by the presence of these old NFL teams playing in the same conference as the new teams.

But my AFC loyalty has remained strong. It has presented a struggle for me when the Steelers, Ravens and Colts have represented the AFC in Super Bowls. I continue to this day to root for teams that are held over from the old AFL … such as, oh, the New England Patriots.

I’ll root for the Patriots on Sunday, not so much because of the guys who play for them, or the fellow who coaches them. I shall root for them chiefly because of their origin as one of the founding franchises in the American Football League.

My young friend who’ll be somewhere in that Houston stadium cheering his lungs out Sunday for the Pats wasn’t even born when the leagues merged. He’s entitled to root for his team.

I’ll cheer for the league from which they came.

Go Pats!

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Immovable object vs. irresistable force

First, allow me to state the obvious: Football and baseball are vastly different sports, requiring dramatically different skills from those who participate in them.

Now let me declare one similarity: It is that teams with great offensive weaponry can be defeated by teams with great defensive skill.

One baseball axiom holds true, which is that “Good pitching usually beats good hitting any day.” I’ve seen it over many years watching baseball games. The 1963 World Series is my favorite example, when the powerhouse New York Yankees were shut down by the Los Angeles Dodgers; the Yanks had Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris swinging big bats, while the Dodgers had Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale throwing heat from the mound. LA won in four straight.

Now, about today’s Big Game, the Super Bowl. The Denver Broncos possess the NFL’s top offense. The Seattle Seahawks own the league’s best defense. One is irresistible, the other is immovable.

I am now venturing into something about which I know nothing, but the laws of physics seem to suggest — to me at least — that the immovable object is harder to move than it is to shut down the irresistible force.

It pains to me say this, given that I’m a long-time American Football Conference fan — going back to the days of the old American Football League, of which Denver was a founding franchise — but I’m thinking the Seahawks have the edge here.

My friends might say, “Oh, sure, but you’re from the Pacific Northwest. You’re going to root from the team from that part of the country.” Hold on. I grew up in Portland and there existed then — and perhaps it remains — a huge civic rivalry between the cities. Portlanders think little of Seattleites. We see the Queen City as snobby and full of itself. Seattle residents look down their noses at Portland, even though the Rose City has become every bit as cosmopolitan and trendy as Seattle.

But I’m thinking now, just a few hours before kickoff, that the immovable object is going to dig itself in and hold the irresistible force to perhaps just a couple of touchdowns.

Final score? Please, don’t hold me to this. Let’s try 20-17, Seattle.