Super Bowl With a Smirk: Sweet or sad story? See who’s left in dwindling attended-every-SB club
Super Bowl With a Smirk is back with the third of five daily notes columns needling the self-important NFL and the gravitas of its big game. Flying under the banner, “Make Fun, Not War,” Smirk is an annual Super Bowl Week feature in the Miami Herald years we remember to do it.
[Warning: Smirk intended the following as something sweet and uplifting, but by the end of writing it was curled in a fetal position sobbing for his own mortality and the cruelty of how all our lives peel away like layers of an onion, in the end leaving only tears. Enjoy!]:
There were 338 credentialed journalists on site covering Super Bowl I in Los Angeles in 1967. On Sunday, from that list, only Jerry Green of The Detroit News will be back in L.A. covering his 56th SB in a row.
He is 93. now. He is a club of one, the only newspaper reporter left to have covered every Super Bowl.
“I’m the last one,” he told Newsweek. “How about that?”
Green’s daughter travels with him now and says this might be his last Super Bowl. He retired in 2004 but the News encouraged him to keep covering the big game. He has used a wheelchair at games the past few years.
“[Sunday’s game] might be enough,” says Green.
You who can relate?
Don Crisman, Gregory Eaton and Tom Henschel can. They are lifelong friends, all now in their 80s, who live in different states but meet every year to attended every Super Bowl and will again Sunday.
“We just love football,” said Eaton, who spent about $2,500 for Sunday’s ticket — or 400 times what he spent in 1967.
Crisman, eldest of the trio at 85, says this will be his last game. Eaton hopes to keep attending but has health issues. Henschel says hopes to attend a few more.
“Old man age is catching up to all of us,” Henschel told the Associated Press.
The Super Bowls will go on. Those who have seen them all will not.
▪ Goodell girds for slings and arrows: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at his annual Super Bowl Week state-of-the-league news conference Wednesday faced an assault of questions about the Brian Flores lawsuit over racist hiring practices. The NFLPA scheduled a news conference one hour later, presumably to refute everything Goodell said.
▪ NFL experts lean to Rams: A panel of 53 NFL experts has spoken, and 29 picked the Rams while 23 went for the Bengals. in other words nobody knows nuthin’ and we’re all just guessin’. A 54th ESPN expert would not budge from his prediction of a scoreless tie and was immediately fired.
▪ SB’s global reach engages bickering crones in Budapest: Sunday’s game will be broadcast in some 180 countries, in 24 languages. Right now, two old crones stirring a pot of goulash in Hungary are arguing whether Cincy’s offensive line can protect Joe Burrow. “Ijedten fog futni, mint egy csirke a hasitomtol! (He will run scared like a chicken from my cleaver),” cries one.
▪ Poll: Super Bowl matchup deemed ... average: We asked in a one-hour Twitter RapidPoll about your interest level in Rams-Bengals relative to other SB matchups. And of 186 votes cast, 53.8 percent said “about the same,” 23.7 percent said “more interested” and 22.6 percent said “less interested.” There was landslide agreement it was a pretty lame poll question.
▪ Excited Qanon followers converging on L.A?: Smirk is still trying to confirm but is hearing NFL fans who follow Qanon will be camping out in Los Angeles to celebrate the anticipated resurrection of Y.A. Tittle.
▪ SB public safety alert: Groundskeepers made available to discuss the condition of the SoFi Stadium turf left humiliated when no reporters showed up. However, a Public Safety Press Conference drew a throng as officials a crackdown on drones, counterfeit merchandise and media access to brain-trauma experts and Brian Flores.
▪ NFL Network talent availability: The event went off the rails Wednesday when a braying Steve Mariucci kept loudly mocking Kurt Warner over his life story movie, American Underdog, being so unbearably sappy. Wait. Sorry. That was a daydream from which Smirk awoke smiling.
▪ Brawl on Radio Row: Things turned ugly Wednesday on Sad, Sad Radio Row when a radio host from Mariemont, Ohio and a rival podcaster from the same area got into a slapfight over first dibs to Carrot Top and Bengals backup long-snapper Grip Snappington.
▪ Super Bowl Tip du Jour: Delight your party guests with a wonderful surprise! Just as the Bengals and Rams are lined up for for the opening kickoff, abruptly switch over to the Animal Planet channel and Puppy Bowl XVIII.
