Frenzied Forty-Niner Fanaticism

Starting today and continuing through next week, the sports pages of this and other newspapers will be filled with discussions of the upcoming Super Bowl contest slated to take place this weekend in Detroit between the Cincinnati Bengals and the San Francisco Forty-Niners. Every sportswriter in existence will feel compelled to add his or her two cents to the total of analyses, game and color stories, and past Super Bowl reminiscences that will crowd the new pages and ultimately bore the American populace to death. I, unfortunately, am one of those egotistical writers who yearn to impart a fresh look at the Super Bowl contest, and I would like to take the liberty of being one of the first to write about it. As someone famous once said, "Apres moi, le deluge."

To lure back any faltering readers who do not want to hear about how Detroit is really and truly a "Renaissance City" (and not just another car slum), or about how much better one team is than another, or even how amazing it is that the Forty-Niners have a barefoot kicker, I would like to say that my Super Bowl topic concerns my blond and beautiful California roommate. Want to read a little bit further? I thought you would.

There are very few things that passionately arouse my roommate, whom I will call Susan for the sake of anonymity. In fact, only three come to mind: running 30-mile races in the heat of Yosemite, Calif., snowshoeing in New Hampshire the day before an exam in -15-degree weather, and watching the San Francisco Forty-Niners.

None of us can quite figure out when this obsession with the Forty-Niners began. It must have started some time this summer, though, because when we returned to school this fall, gone were the posters of California surfers, Hawaiian sunsets and her beloved golden retriever. In their place were Forty Niner team schedules, individual pictures of the players, and a monstrous poster of the team in its full splendor. Forty-Niner pennants decorated her bulletin board, and Sunday afternoons were devoted to tracking down the Forty-Niner results, preempting all other television shows if the team happened to be buzzing among the New England television circuits. We shook our heads in amazement and sadness--Forty-Niner fever, worse than the fever that struck the miners over 100 years ago, had claimed another victim.

Recently, I am sorry to report, Susan's disease has escalated in severity. When the Forty-Niners were behind the Dallas Cowboys in the recent NFC playoff, Susan was as vocal as any of the men in the Kirkland House television room, screaming her directions to the oblivious coaches on the screen, and exultantly replaying every Forty-Niner first down verbally. When wide receiver Dwight Clark made the amazing catch in the final seconds of the game that lifted the Forty-Niners to victory, Susan was almost deranged in her delight. In fact, my normally frugal roommate called home in the middle of the afternoon to Shriek to her father (who served as resident team physician at the Forty-Niner training camp last summer), "Did you see that catch?!?!"

When I said that Susan adores only three things, I forgot to mention a fourth obsession--Dwight Clark. Not only did Clark make the reknowned playoff catch, but he also had dinner with Susan's family at her home last summer. Clark, according to Susan, is as close to perfection as anyone can be--he is tall, muscular, good-looking and nice. The only problem, says sorry Susan, is that he currently dates Miss Universe.

With the Super Bowl fast approaching, Susan has lapsed into total Forty-Niner adoration. A record that recently arrived in the mail from home entitled, "Go Forty-Niners" blasts from our stereo system constantly. Although we tolerated almost any form of music--from opera to disco--this song has driven all of us away in despair. A cross between hokey Western nasal twanging and weak rock-and-roll, this particular fight song--coined especially for Sunday's big event--boasts cloying lyrics like, "Go Forty-Niners/Take it all the way/You can win the Super Bowl/And keep the trophy in the Bay. Houston, Dallas/Cincinnati too/You beat the best of them/And we're so proud of you!"

As Sunday nears, Susan has taken to wearing red and gold--the colors of the Forty-Niners--and last night I could have sworn she was mumbling football audibles in her sleep. On Sunday Susan plans to get the best seat in front of Kirkland's television, and the rest of our suite has made plans to leave Cambridge in the event that the Forty-Niners (who are presently favored by 1 1/2 points) win, and our walls come tumbling down from a combination of New England's recent earthquakes and the vibrations from "Go Forty-Niners."

May the baseball season in California be lousy!