Media Highjacks Super Bowl for Reluctant Bettis

Jerome Bettis didn't do anything to promote himself, but the media seized on the Bettis is from Detroit story line and wore it out. Jerome did what was logical to do, enjoy it. But for one outstandingly gritty play by Rothelsburger, and a missed field goal, Bettis would have been the NFL's all time greatest goat instead of the media's Super Bowl Hometown Sweetheart. I felt like Steeler defensive coach Dick LeBeau was the unsung hero of the game and that Rothelsburger was slighted, slightly. Were it not for my admiration for LeBeau I'd have been pulling for the Seahawks. Now I am glad the Steelers won because it will give more meaning to the Browns-Steelers games next season provided the Browns can muster up some meaning themselves.

I still can't help hating the Steelers from the days when I played against Bobby Layne and John Henry Johnson and Charlie Scales and Buddy Dial, and Big Daddy Lipscome, and George Tarasovick and Myron Pottios and Ernie Stauntner and the cheap skate Rooneys. Dirty tough games, the best kind. I don't think today's players would have liked being in the middle of a game when there were helmet to helmet hits on every play, along with head slaps, chop blocks, crack backs, clotheslining, the idea was deliver blows rather than grabbing at the ball type contact. Running out of bounds when you could get extra yards was seen as gutless and a kick to the head was delivered now and then. I can't believe Chuck Noll went over to the dark side.

Thank God Gangster Rap didn't get another promotional push from the NFL during the Super Bowl. A gang war between the Skin Heads and the Gangster Rappers...No! Actually I can't wish that on either of them but they are both a plague on our children's lives.

The intricate nuances of the NFL's free agency contract rules do little more than provide jobs and security for a needless strata of union personel, agents and club management go-fers that cost the players, coaches, and owners about 20% to 25% of the available revenues generated by the league. Over 30 years ago I explained in the final chapter of my book They Call It A Game how to compensate the players based on winning, then individual performance, etc. It really is pretty simple and is much fairer than the way contracts are negotiated and awarded today.

With a mad man elected as Iran's leader who admires Hitler wants to destroy Isreal and denies there was a Holocaust, and a total mess in a third World Iraq where the military and police trainees can't read and therefore can't be trained, and who in fact just want a paycheck from a job with a future that they can support a family with, we are facing the toughest challeges of our lifetimes. We could do with a little more candor from our "leaders" at this crucial time.

Mike Ditka has great political potential and I for one believe we should support him if he decides to run for political office. Mike recently made some strong remarks about how today's players do little or nothing for those whose shoulders (broken cartiledge and bones) they are standing on. Contract negotiations are underway and I have yet to hear a single mention about increasing NFL pension and benefit plans. You can expect to hear from the retired players shortly.