E-GIANTS
Dave Klein was the Giants' beat writer
for The Star-Ledger from 1961 to 1995.
He is the author of 26 books and he is one of
only four sportswriters to have covered all the Super Bowls.
Dave has allowed TEAM GIANTS to reprint some of his articles.

By DAVE KLEIN
IT'S THE START OF SUPER BOWL WEEK AND MAY THE BEST TEAM WIN -- QUICKLY

Now, with this transmission, we go into a sort of holding pattern. It will be Super Bowl Week starting Monday, and E-GIANTS subscribers will still receive their updates, but they may not arrive on Tuesday and Friday, as has become the off-season custom.

News is where you find it during SB Week, and you just never know who you're going to trip over who can add some insight to the Giants' current plight, their plans for the immediate future and anything else that even indirectly attaches itself to the team.

Will they hire a quarterbacks coach during SB Week? It is possible. On the other hand, they may not address it for a while. The confirmation of Kevin Gilbride as offensive coordinator will be sufficient for a while, and the addition of Steve Spagnuolo as defensive coordinator should take that unit and those coaches into weeks and weeks of planning, adjusting, adding and subtracting.

So what is there to speed you on your SB Week? Perhaps this -- there are only four newspapermen who have covered all 41 games, Lord willing, and you are reading one of them. The others are Edwin Pope of the Miami Herald, Jerry Green of the Detroit Free Press and Jerry Izenberg of the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger.

We were interviewed, as a quartet, the other day for CBS radio, and that show will be broadcast "sometime" on Super Bowl Sunday. The moderator, Jim Gray, asked several incisive questions, but the most important was how we feel about being the only four survivors from Super Bowl I, which attracted about 500 correspondents.

The old line that it is merely a tribute to longevity doesn't exactly work these days, and perhaps it was Green who put it best. "I would like to think," he said, "that they'll run out of Super Bowls before any of us has to leave. We'll just carry on, doing what we do, and it will be the Super Bowl that will become a memory." Fat chance, Green. The Super Bowl is forever; people are not.

A couple of years ago, one of the newspapers in Jacksonville, Fla., where for some difficult to fathom reason had been awarded one of these games, sent a questionnaire to those remaining (there were six, I think, or five). The questionnaires were the same, and the one question that stuck in everybody's craw was this: "Who do you think will be the last surviving sportswriter?"

Now isn't that a lot like asking you to predict the death of your friends, or yourself? If I remember correctly, and to the credit of all of us, none of us chose to answer that question. It is, at the same time, both disturbing and humbling to consider, so let's don't.

Somebody asked which of all these Super Bowls was the most exciting. That was easy, since most of them have been crashing bores. The first was important because it was, of course, the first. After that, some were more exciting than others. That Miami march to the undefeated season was exciting for that reason, as well as for the Charlie Chaplin-esque comedy routine involving Dolphins' kicker Garo Yepremian trying to pass a blocked field goal -- and he did, fumbling the ball right into the hands of a Redskin defensive back named Mike Bass, who took it back 49 yards for the only Washington touchdown in a 14-7 Miami victory.

Later, it was the nail-biter that gave the Giants their victory over Buffalo -- you remember, the "Wide Right" field goal attempt by Scott Norwood; and then the St. Louis-Tennessee game that was decided when linebacker Mike Jones tackled Titans' receiver Kevin Dyson on the Rams' 1-yard line with no time left to preserve a 23-16 victory.

The Jets beating Baltimore in Super Bowl III was dramatic, and added to the legend of the game, perhaps preserving it because the owners of the old AFL had decided to abandon the game until their teams became more competitive. But most of the time, the games have gone the way one might expect, the favorites winning effortlessly and the only real highlights being the new television commercials foisted on the world -- which has become yet another tradition.

Personally, I think about the Super Bowl in terms of who I won't see when I get there, old friends who have retired or passed on. I remember for years I bought a special Super Bowl desk telephone for my father, who just loved those things, and the year after he died I automatically bought another one.

I remember spending the better part of a long, long night with four guys, all good friends, three sportswriters and a movie actor, and now when I get to Miami none of them will be there. And I promise not to tell that World War I story about the "tontine" and how the last survivor couldn't drink the old bottle of wine but threw it into the fireplace.

It is time for the Super Bowl. I will shamelessly root for one of the two teams and I am not going to reveal which one because I don't want to offend any of the readers. Since the Giants aren't competing in this one -- and frankly, how could they? -- it's all right for me to root. It's permissible.

We'll talk next week; enjoy your Super Bowl parties and I hope the team you want to win actually does.

Check out Dave's website at E-GIANTS where you can subscribe to his newsletters which run much more frequently than what is available here.
- Team Giants

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