The Super Bowl pregame feature we should be watching
To this moment, it remains unfathomable, impossible to forget or ignore.
But first consider what a six-hour Super Bowl pregame show might appear as if the rotating network, in exchange for billions, didn’t feel compelled to kiss the NFL’s fanny, promote their own news and entertainment shows and stars, and hype a game that needed more hoo-hah like a club sandwich needs more lettuce.
Today’s Super Bowl marks another anniversary — the 29th — of the Bengals team that lost Super Bowl XXIII, 20-16, to the 49ers in January 1989. That game likely strikes those who remember it by what preceded it: A story of the most irreconcilably unrestrained individual madness in the championship game’s history.
What happened the day and night before. Geez. The Bengals might have won — we’ll never know, but they led 13-6 in the third quarter — had it not been for the previous 24 hours.
Stanley Wilson was a muscular, 5-foot-10 running back from Los Angeles, recruited to Oklahoma, where he scored seven TDs his senior season. He was a straight-ahead banger and dipper — he now would be classified “a downhill runner” — who could plow for first downs and touchdowns, catch passes in the flats and throw powerful blocks.
He played for the Bengals in his rookie and second seasons, 1983 and 1984, but then lost the entire 1985 season to a cocaine suspension. Returned in 1986, he lost his entire 1987 season, again, to cocaine.
Despite it all, in 1988, given his third second chance, Wilson became an important part of a 12-4 regular-season team that included Boomer Esiason at quarterback and Ickey Woods, James Brooks and Wilson as formidable, multi-tasked running backs.
But the night before that Super Bowl, the word spread: There would be no Stanley Wilson. With the game in Miami, cocaine capital of North America, he had binged that day, apparently all day — the day before the Super Bowl, for crying out loud — and he was out of it, gone, done, through.
Last heard from, Wilson in 1999 was convicted of stealing $130,000 in property from a home in Beverley Hills to feed his addiction. He was sentenced to 22 years state prison in Lancaster, Calif.
Forgive my amateur sense of good Super Bowl TV pregame storytelling, but what a tale this would have made for NBC.
So many significant pieces were in place, right there in Minneapolis. Cris Collinsworth, who will call the game on NBC, was on that Bengals team. Esiason is there to be the analyst on on the radio version. Theirs is a shared bizarre experience worth a half hour show.
Additonally, Solomon Wilcots, a CBS analyst, was a Cincy starting defensive back. They were all easily accessible.
Why not sit them down, talk to them on camera. What do they remember about Wilson? That day? That night? The next day? The pregame locker room buzz? What was the fallout? How was the game plan, near zero-hour, altered? What was the measure of betrayal? Anger? Astonishment?
The Bengals’ coach, Sam Wyche, having undergone a heart transplant in 2016, is still with us. He was a frank guy. He could have been asked about, too. And to think what coaches, players and media today lament as “distractions.”
And maybe NBC could have even found Wilson, now 56. It’s unlikely he’s anywhere far from where he was last sentenced. Regardless, he should be attached to an official paper trail.
In Cincinnati’s 21-13 playoff win over the Seahawks (Seattle was an AFC team then) on Dec. 31 1988 to reach the AFC Championship, the Bengals played a low-risk grind. Esiason was seven-for-19, 108 yards and Wilcots had an interception. The game included 12 punts. However, Wilson stood out, busting a 20-yard carry and twice scoring on 3-yard runs.
But on third-and-short plays that Super Bowl, the Niners suddenly no longer had to worry about Stanley Wilson. Mind-blowing, still.
Wouldn’t such a session and so many others that could be inexpensively produced — be more grip-and-hold than boo-ya?
We wouldn’t watch such a feature?
But it’s too late, as we’re already conditioned to anticipate very little, choosing instead to preview the potato salad.
The ’mania that is the WWE’s McMahons
Perhaps during NBC News’s mirth-filled salute to the 33rd anniversary of Wrestlemania there was no time to list those participating wrestlers who died, mostly of job-related drug overdoses, on Vince McMahon’s and Linda McMahon’s watch. Of course, such a necrological roll would’ve taken quite a while.
Mrs. McMahon now leads the Small Business Administration, a Cabinet-level position within the Trump administration. Her previous sense of business included the sale to kids of WWE T-shirts picturing an arrow pointed toward the crotch, the visible stamped message reading, “Suck It!”
Then there was the commerce attached to the indescribably pornographic in-ring skits which she and her husband planned and in which they participated for the enjoyment of kids.
And now for Vince McMahon’s XFL II!
It’s not QB vs. QB
Super Bowl “Quarterback Comparisons,” yet again, were almost invariably presented as head-to-head, as if the game starts and the opposing QBs both run on to the field to play one-on-one, defense versus offense, then switch. As Ben Roethlisberger wisely counseled, “It’s not tennis!”
If MSG’s New Devils studio/rinkside man Bryce Salvador — who spent the final six-plus seasons of his NHL career with New Jersey — wants to be heard as a valued contributor, he has to drop this “we” stuff. Salvador’s pleasant and enthusiastic, eager to please. But the audience’s sensibilities should supersede that of the team.
Gee, what if they played all the national anthems? Maryland’s state-funded men’s basketball team includes players from Bosnia, Slovakia, Angola, Canada, Nigeria, Spain and Mexico. Apparently, the university can’t find any student-athletes in Maryland who could use a basketball scholarship.
Two available CBS TV analysts I’d like to be seated between during Super Bowl LII: Trent Green and James Lofton. Hey, easy on the crab dip!
If Giancarlo Stannton receives a $50,000 bonus from the Yankees for making the All-Star team, I’ll help him out. He’ll give me $10,000 and I’ll spend a few hours a day banging his name into the online ballot box. That would remove all doubt and we’d both make out.
Super Bowl on radio again will be nationally carried by Westwood One and called by Kevin “Hollerin’ ” Harlan, likely meaning we’ll stylishly hear that a team “moved the chains” — partially useless, as we’ll be unable to see how far the first down moved said chains. Brings to comical memory the CBS Radio radio team, Jack Buck and Hank Stram. Stram would note that “Number 57 came in to make that tackle.”
Lock of the Day? In the Puppy Bowl, although Mike Francesa is touting the favorite, take the dog.