No-Name Cowboy Ruins Steelers

Nevertheless, the Cowboys of Dallas will keep this Super Bowl trophy. They can put it with the other four, and tell lies later about how this one was a cinch. They passed the shiny symbol around, from owner to coach to players, a hard-earned souvenir, harder than they thought. Winners get to leave fingerprints.

“This thing is heavy,” said cornerback Larry Brown, the game hero.

It is heavy enough to have been teetering toward Pittsburgh until the last five minutes, until Pittsburgh quarterback Neil O’Donnell threw his second interception to Brown, the wrong cornerback, the one without the endorsements and foot speed, the one who will make a tackle, the non-prime-time cornerback who was not supposed to be breaking the heart of a perfectly nice town like Pittsburgh.

To be beaten by Deion Sanders would have been celebrated poetry. To be beaten by Larry Brown is rough carpentry.

It was like the Steelers lost to one of their own, a decent, modest nobody who managed to have the greatest game of his life when it mattered most.

“It’s not just me,” said Brown, becoming the first Cowboy to voice that opinion. “To me, it’s a team MVP. I dedicate it to Barry Switzer.”

Ah, Switzer. Yes. The Cowboy coach did not mess this one up. He allowed his opposite number to do that. Pittsburgh’s Bill Cowher went for it on fourth down three times, failing the last time on his side of the 50.

“I would do it all over again,” Cowher said. “I play to win.”

The game did not match the boasts nor beat the spread, and the Cowboys’ special torment for the Steelers was to allow them to think they belonged.

Despite a late, successful on-side kick that provided the only real drama of the day, the Cowboys were not going to be tricked out of their birthright, and they weren’t going to be passed or punched or tackled out of it either.

This was a team so high on its own opinion that the fall would have shattered a franchise. The Cowboys simply had to win, otherwise they would never be able to kiss themselves in the mirror again.

“This was like slamming a door in so many people’s faces,” said running back Emmitt Smith. “Everybody said how arrogant and cocky we were. What we were is confident, confident in our team, our coaches and our ability. We can’t help it if we’re glamorous.”

Tedious is a better word than glamorous. Being around the Cowboys is like being trapped in tourist class with a grandmother who has a wallet full of pictures.

“After winning three of four Super Bowls, I guess we have a place in history,” said Troy Aikman, the quarterback and usually the most level-headed of the bunch. “I don’t know if we’re the team of the ‘90s.

“But I know this: We aren’t about to look back over the last four years and say we had a nice run. We get to enjoy this for two weeks before having to answer questions about doing it back-to-back again.”

“It feels so good to be telling you about winning,” Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin said. “Thank God I’ve never felt that feeling of losing. I’d hate to be one of those Steelers.”

That one would have to be O’Donnell, who was able to do what no other Pittsburgh quarterback had ever done: lead the Steelers to a defeat in the Super Bowl.

“I am going to bounce back from this, I really am,” O’Donnell said.

Game goats from Jackie Smith to Scott Norwood have said the same.

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, with admirable civility, presented the Lombardi Trophy to Dallas owner Jerry Jones, the weirdest handoff since Pete Rozelle had to do the same for Al Davis of Oakland.

Not only are the two sides suing each other ($300 million versus $750 million), but earlier in the day Tagliabue had accused Jones of dishonoring his partnership in the NFL.

“The NFL belongs to 30 teams, not the Dallas Cowboys,” Tagilabue had said.

Not today it doesn’t.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Bernie Lincicome Chicago Tribune