Brent Musburger’s Super Bowl stories and Super Bowl 58 bets
It was the morning after Super Bowl I, only it wasn’t yet called the Super Bowl, and I was waiting to catch a plane back to Chicago when Joe King, then a New York World Journal sportswriter, passed by and told me how much his editor liked his story about the Green Bay Packers win over the Kansas City Chiefs.
I almost choked on my coffee. I didn’t have the heart to tell Joe that he hadn’t written a single word of the story that so pleased his editor back in New York.
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The date was January 15, 1967. I was assigned to cover the NFL– AFL Championship Game in Los Angeles for Chicago’s American, an afternoon paper owned by the Chicago Tribune. Those were the Golden Days of sportswriting. No internet. No cable TV. Just typewriters and Western Union operators transmitting the stories and statistics about a sport that the country was falling in love with.
It had been a strange week in Southern California. Vince Lombardi had taken his Packers to UC Santa Barbara and let it be known that writers weren’t welcome. Hank Stram, on the other hand, held court daily at Veterans Field in Long Beach. Stram relished the attention leading up to the game. Lombardi would later admit that he felt enormous pressure to win and defend the reputation of the more established league.
Curfew-busting Max McGee became the unlikely hero of Lombardi’s victory when he replaced the injured Boyd Dowler three plays into the game and caught seven passes for 138 yards, including the Super Bowl’s first touchdown, a 37-yard pass from Bart Starr. Packers 35, Chiefs 10. Betting on that first game was hardly discussed unless you had an account with a local bookmaker.
While the morning paper writers filed their stories from the Coliseum press box, the afternoon guys worked both locker rooms for quotes from the Packers and Chiefs and then caught a bus back to the hotel, where we wrote our stories in the NFL-provided press room.
NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle had been kind enough to leave the bar open, and the party was on. That’s when we noticed Joe King slumped over his typewriter without a single word typed out. In those days, writers were fierce competitors for scoops but loyal friends after the stories had been filed. Our plan was hatched. Milton Gross, lead columnist of the New York Post, was selected to write the lead. The rest of us took turns. I wrote the eighth paragraph. Western Union transmitted the story back to New York. Joe King was the name on the byline, and a career was saved.
A lot of Super Bowl memories have come and gone since, and somewhere packed in a cardboard box in Montana are two tickets to that first game, a gift from the commissioner. I offered them to the bellman at the hotel, but he wasn’t interested in going.
This time, I’ll be taking my grandson to Super Bowl 58 between those same Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. Super Bowl tickets today cost thousands of dollars, and bellmen are distant memories. Betting on the game is now a national obligation. Back on December 9th, I bet a Super Bowl exacta box with Circa on the Chiefs (+1400) and 49ers (+1100). A winner either way.
I’m also looking forward to making an in-game wager or two because that’s something we didn’t know about 57 years ago.
Finally, a big shout out to all the folks in Las Vegas who are working to make sure our city becomes a regular stop on the Super Bowl circuit. Viva, Baby!
Catch “Uncle Brent” on the Countdown to Kickoff Super Bowl special on Sunday February 11 at Noon ET. (LISTEN LIVE | WATCH LIVE) (the Watch Live option requires a VSiN Pro subscription).
