Who are you rooting for in Super Bowl LVI/56?
It is a coin toss for me, not of indifference but rather different reasons of passion for the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals.
Let me begin with the Bengals because my rooting roots to them reach back to their very beginning as an expansion franchise in the American Football League in 1968. They were crummy that first season, losing 11 of 14 games, but something really “Crummy” happened the next year that made me pull for them nearly as dearly as I did my beloved Cleveland Browns.
Jimmy Crum, affectionately called Jim Crummy by us school kids, was a popular local TV news sportscaster famous for his trademark plaid sports coats and one-word catchphrase “Howaboutthat!”
As good luck would have it – mine, not Crum’s – he suffered a gallbladder attack or appendicitis or something else that required surgery and my dad performed it. As a thank you, Crum arranged for Pops to bring my two older brothers and me – ages 14, 12 and 9 – to the Bengals training camp at Wilmington College about 70 miles from our home in Columbus.
It was a “howaboutthat!” kind of day. Not only did we get to watch practice from the sidelines, we also ate lunch shoulder-to-hulking-shoulders with the players. Our seatmates included hotshot rookie quarterback Greg Cook; star running back Paul Robinson, who the previous season finished second in the MVP voting to Joe Namath; and menacing middle linebacker Bill Bergey.
While I remain a die-hard disappointed Browns fan, the Bengals were always my second-favorite team…
… until the Rams leapfrogged them two decades later.
While “no cheering in the press box” is an unwritten rule for sportswriters, I nonetheless rooted silently for the Rams while covering them from 1987 to 1994. After all, a winning team is a lot more fun to write about than a bungling one.
My favorite memory from those days happened during the 1989 season, during halftime of a game against the Atlanta Falcons, when legendary columnist Jim Murray asked me if he could sit next to me at lunch in the Anaheim Stadium press box.
“Y-y-yes, of course, M-M-Mr. Murray,” I stammered.
“Please, call me Jim,” my writing idol said and a friendship was born, although I never could bring myself to call him Jim.
Rams quarterback Jim Everett, who had thrown 31 touchdown passes the previous season and had not slowed down now, threw two TD spirals in the first half against the Falcons. In response to my gushing comments about Everett, Murray smiled wryly and knowingly and said in a don’t-get-carried-way tone: “He’s not Bob Waterfield yet.”
Waterfield, it should be noted, led the Rams to two NFL championships on his way to the Hall of Fame. Everett, it shortly turned out, was on his way to being a flash in the pan. It was a lesson, one of many from Murray, I have never forgotten.
Indeed, this season I have said more than once of the Bengals’ young star quarterback Joe Burrow: “He’s not Ken Anderson yet.” Anderson was the league MVP while leading the Bengals to their first Super Bowl victory in 1981.
Since I will not be in the press box at SoFi Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday, I will be openly rooting for the Rams…
…but, in my heart of hearts, I think I will be rooting a little louder for the Bengals; rooting like a 9-year-old kid; rooting for a “howaboutthat!” game where Joe Burrow may not be Bob Waterfield yet, but is Ken Anderson already.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
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