Bengals, 49ers Put the Super Back in Super Bowl

This one was truly Super.

By the end of last week, the 23rd Super Bowl--XXIII to Latin students--seemed ready to sink in the swamp of current events. Riot-torn Miami, not Joe Robbie Stadium and its ensemble of players and coaches, drew front-page headlines this week.

But the San Francisco 49ers and the Cincinnati Bengals pulled the Super Bowl back into hearts and headlines yesterday. In arguably the most dramatic Super Bowl, 49ers quarterback Joe Montana fired a pass to John Taylor in the endzone with 34 seconds left to give San Francisco a 20-16 Super Bowl triumph.

To television audiences, the Super Bowl came accompanied with the usual baggage: hundreds of advertisements and horrendous commentary from Dick Enberg and Merlin Olson. For once, it was worth wading through the sludge of commercialism in order to see the game. The Bengals--surprise--were good. The 49ers were better.

Instead of the banquet of blowouts Super Bowl audiences have been subject to the past five years, this year we got a delicious feast. When Jim Breach kicked a field goal to put the Bengals up, 16-13, with three minutes left in the game, the excitement had only begun.

Early on, it became apparent that this year's Super Bowl would be better than those of the last few years. When the teams left the field at halftime tied, 3-3, the only people groaning were those who had placed bets on the high side of the 47-point over-under spread. The rest of us kept watching, even if most of us forgot to bring our 3-D glasses for the, as always, puerile halftime show.

The Super Bowl even managed to be more dramatic than Bud Bowl I, the battle of beers pitting Budweiser against Bud Light. (How do the winners celebrate after the game--by drinking each other?)

Montana and wide receiver Jerry Rice put together a fine drive in the game's final minutes. And when the game was over--after Cincinnati quarterback Boomer Esiason's pass fell to the grass--we saw something we don't see often in sports anymore, let alone on the tense city streets. When the gun sounded, 49ers Coach Bill Walsh and Cincinnati Coach Sam Wyche walked off the field arm-in-arm.

A week of unrest in Miami put the Super Bowl in perspective. No matter how big an event, it is smaller than life and death.

Walsh and Wyche gave Miami and the rest of the crazed world an example. No matter how fierce the fight, there is room at the end for a little comfort, a little understanding--something, as the lights go out in Joe Robbie Stadium and we turn back to the real world, we should remember.