Super Slaughter

The weekend in New Orleans was billed as a super sports spectacular. When all the drumbeating and body crunching were over, however, the result was a pair of super slaughters. First, Heavyweight Champion Joe Frazier bludgeoned Challenger Terry Daniels to the canvas five times before the referee mercifully ended the mismatch in the fourth round. Then the Dallas Cowboys took over where Frazier left off, pounding the Miami Dolphins into the Poly-Turf for four long, punishing quarters.

Among other things, the Cowboys' dominance of Super Bowl VI destroyed a myth. Going into the game, the Dolphins were likened to the New York Mets of 1969, the pesky upstarts who won the World Series against lopsided odds. Like the miracle Mets, the Dolphins were a Cinderella team that rallied from defeat to challenge for the championship. They were young. They had the rabid backing of their fans. They made a habit of come-from-behind victories. And, headed by those happy Hungarians, Running Backs Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick, they professed the kind of fraternity-brother togetherness that promised to conquer all.

The Cowboys, on the other hand, came on as a gang of jaded old pros more interested in winning salary increases than games. They were called "unemotional." They supposedly reflected the cold, clinical approach of Coach Tom Landry and the computers he used to analyze the Dolphins' defenses. They had failed to win the Big Game so often in the past that some of their own fans labeled them "choke artists." Worse yet, the team was reported to be riven by dissent. The surly silence of Running Back Duane Thomas, in fact, gave rise to the rumor that the moody black Cowboys' star would not even bother to suit up for the game.

Not a chance. Driven by pride and the promise of a $15,000 payoff for each player on the winning team, Thomas and the rest of the Cowboys rolled over Miami like an automated machine. In the battle of the quarterbacks, the Dolphins' Bob Griese proved no match for the Cowboys' Roger Staubach. Griese, who gave up a costly fumble and an interception, was stymied at every turn by the Cowboys' tenacious Doomsday Defense. Staubach, meanwhile, piloted the Cowboys' ball-control offense to perfection. Sending Running Backs Thomas, Walt Garrison and Calvin Hill through holes as broad as a boulevard, he set up a pair of neatly executed scoring passes. Final score: Dallas 24, Miami 3.

Football Dynasty. It remained for CBS-TV Commentator Tom Brookshier to provide some comic relief. While conducting the ritual post-game interviews in the jubilant Cowboys' locker room, he suddenly found himself staring into the baleful eyes of Duane Thomas. Sportswriters had unsuccessfully been trying to interview Thomas for weeks. Making the least of the moment, the visibly flustered Brookshier posed a long convoluted question that seemed to translate: Are you as fast as you seem to be? "Evidently," said the unsmiling Thomas while his teammates roared with laughter. 'I'm nervous," admitted Brookshier. He tried another less than incisive question: "You must like the game of football. Do you?" Said Thomas: "Yeah, I do. That's why I'm a football player."

The unanswered question about Thomas is whether he will be able to settle the salary dispute that caused him to call Cowboy President Tex Schramm "sick, demented and completely dishonest."

What did seem certain to the Cowboys--and to many of the fans who witnessed their stunning victory--was the beginning of a pro football dynasty. "This is just the start," said Schramm. "We'll be back again and again like the Yankees and the old Boston Celtics."

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