Sentimentalists Will See Dream End In A Hurry

They said it

What writers and columnists are saying about the Super Bowl:

Bill Lyon, Philadelphia Inquirer

Sentiment is a wonderful thing, indeed. But in football, sentiment is just another tackling dummy, something for the padded pachyderms to knock the stuffing out of.

So while the ring-deprived John Elway and the even more pitiable and luckless Denver Broncos will get all the sentiment today in Super Bowl XXXII, the victory will go to the Green Bay Packers. On merit.

You see, of all our sporting events, the Supe is the most unforgiving and the least sentimental. It recognizes excellence and rewards it. Ruthlessly.

For all that is wrong with the Supe - the wallowing excess and the unseemly self-indulgence and the arrogant bloat - it comes closer than any other big event to following form.

It is the handicapper’s delight and the sentimentalist’s dream-buster.

Bernie Lincicome, Chicago Tribune

Considering the dreary and dissatisfying outcomes of Super Bowls, there are more miserable story lines than the authentication of John Elway, champion, legend and dental wonder.

However this one turns out, and I make it Green Bay 30-17, it will always be Elway’s, his last stand or ultimate glory, his final shame or rightful reward.

“If I weren’t playing in the game,” Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre said, “I’d be rooting for Elway.”

A quarterback without a Super Bowl victory on his resume is like a Rottweiler without an ankle in its mouth. Oh, very nice to look at but incomplete.

Michael Weinreb, Akron Beacon Journal

This year, Green Bay, the NFC team, is favored by nearly two touchdowns over Denver, which has the golden opportunity to become the second AFC team to lose four times during this streak.

It has become the way of the NFL.

It has become a pop culture joke. It has produced the Broncos (three times) and the New England Patriots (twice) and the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Bills again and the Buffalo Bills again and the Buffalo Bills again. It has given us all sorts of lovable losers, fodder for Letterman’s Top Ten and Leno’s monologue and clever television commercials.

It is becoming one of those givens of American life, synonymous with death and taxes. You don’t ask, you just do.

Which perhaps is why when you ask, you get nowhere.

Tim Keown, San Francisco Chronicle

Brett Favre is one of the obvious, obligatory stories of the Super Bowl. He’s the reigning god of pro football, one win away from treading into pop-icon status. He’s got the world on a short string, and if you hang around him for longer than a couple minutes, you can’t find a single reason to believe he won’t spend most of this afternoon with his arms raised in triumph.

But what is it we don’t know about Favre? There’s a good chance people in the Bay Area feel they know too much about him already; besides, once a guy reveals his penchant for re-swallowing purged Vicodin, how much ground remains untilled?

For one thing, he doesn’t get nearly enough credit for having fun out there. Everything about pro football has become imbued with such overwhelming seriousness that fun is a distraction, something that cheapens the game’s undeniable gravity. It’s the only sport that carries around such a terrible weight.

Favre doesn’t buy into that. Everything is going his way, and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. You watch him on the field and think, If I were in his position, that’s the way I’d like to play.

Melissa Isaacson, Chicago Tribune

Quick, name last year’s runner-up in the Miss America pageant.

Aha, can’t do it, can you?

The sad fact is that runners-up rarely are remembered. Unless, that is, they have been runners-up so often that they become laughable losers.

All of which brings us to the Denver Broncos, who will be 0-5 in the Super Bowl should they live up (or down) to most expectations today. And unfairly or not, they will be viewed as big-time losers in the eyes of most who watch.