Surviving the Super Bowl

By Tom Callahan

To the victors go the spoils, usually spoiling the victors

If the Super Bowl is the ultimate game, why is there another one next year?

--Dallas Cowboy Philosopher Duane Thomas, whose 1971 wisdom surpassed understanding

As the four surviving teams in the National Football League's Super Bowl tournament press on toward the ultimate game, the question is whether anyone ultimately survives at all. The last three Super Bowls were won by the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Oakland Raiders and the San Francisco 49ers, none of whom made it back even to the play-offs the following year. John Madden, who celebrated the 1977 Super Bowl with Oakland after eight years of trying, slipped the next season and quit coaching the year after that. He says, "The real pressure is having to do it again and again."

Bill Walsh of the 49ers and Dick Vermeil of the Philadelphia Eagles, the N.F.L. Coaches of the Year last year and the year before, knew about pressure before they got to their Super Bowls, but learned about futility there. Walking away from his $250,000 job last week, Vermeil, 46, expressed something of the toll that accrues from 24 years of X's and O's, using that corporate phrase "emotional burnout." But Walsh's portrait of himself after the 49ers' 41-37 loss to the San Diego Chargers Dec. 11 is more achingly descriptive. "I was totally drained," he says, "physically, mentally and emotionally. It took everything I had. There was nothing left of me. I knelt down for the prayer, and as I went to get up from one knee, I couldn't. When I made it back to the coaches' room, I broke down sobbing."

Here is a bright man who, a year ago, in his 27th coaching season but only his third year as a head coach in the N.F.L., was artistically helping to reshape his sport. Last week he was fervently hoping to locate an aspiring head coach skilled enough to allow Walsh, at 51, to leave the field in good conscience and concentrate on the comparatively serene work of general managing. "Hard, executive work," he allows, "with long hours here and there, and a certain amount of travel. But no experiences like San Diego." Should he be unable to find or convince the right man, he will soldier on a while.

Part of Walsh's weariness has to do with calling essentially all of the plays in some 260 games since 1969 for the Cincinnati Bengals, San Diego Chargers, Stanford University and the 49ers. Seasons can get away from a football coach. "The changing trees, the colors in the fields, amazed him," Carol Vermeil said of her husband's simple wonder during the eight-week strike. "You know, I think that he thought all fields were green with white stripes on them." And so can years get away. "How does an eleven-year-old qualify for a driver's license?" Madden remembers asking his wife once when his signature was requested on their son's learner's permit. "John," she said softly, "he's 16."

There are other things that coaches seem to be losing track of. Players, for instance. Rich salaries, not to mention the recreational use some of the money is put to, have weakened the coaches' control and resolve. It seems nothing can test a coach's heart and stomach quite like coming back from a Super Bowl year. Walsh defines the 49ers' failure as "basically an inability to handle success." Though there were some injuries, and only one game was lost by more than a touchdown, he starts the list of downfalls with "arrogance."

The team that lost only three games in a full 19-game season last year won only three in a struck nine-game season this year. The offense was O.K., though what little running the 49ers had last season dwindled even more. Quarterback Joe Montana was fine. Wide Receiver Dwight Clark was splendid. However, the defense tumbled from second in the N.F.L. to 21st.

"Self-satisfaction took over a number of our players," Walsh says plainly, "a feeling that they could now relax. Greed set in. Jealousy of stars too. Resentment toward new players joining the team. 'After all, they were never champions.' That sort of thing. Also, and maybe mostly, an attitude that said: 'Don't worry, I'll turn it on in time. I did it before.' Our first game against the Raiders [a 23-17 loss], you could really see it. 'I'm the champ. I'll pull it out. Here comes a typically close San Francisco victory.' But then, what's this? A fumble here, a holding penalty there. 'Uh-oh. We lost.' "

At least one young player who started the Super Bowl was fired because of drugs; Linebacker Craig Puki talked of it publicly and has since come back with the St. Louis Cardinals. What element of the 49ers' story has to do with drugs? "Drugs are an element of every story today," Walsh says quietly, and he wonders if age and money haven't more to do with it than football. N.F.L. coaches are perplexed by the pervasive subject. Commissioner Pete Rozelle's longstanding line that professional football players have no greater drug problem than does society has been amended lately to read perhaps they do. Probably the most respected disciplinarian in the league, the Miami Dolphins' Don Shula, keeps seeing one old star after another off to the penitentiary.

Walsh has accompanied athletes to drug rehabilitation centers. It is an unusual, or maybe an unfeeling, coach who has not. "But I don't know whether the sensitive coach is any improvement over the old hard-rock guy who would line up all the cocaine users and shoot them," says Walsh. "Neither one seems to do much good." Most of the coaches know little about cocaine. But they understand it has an effect on sleep and nutrition, and at practice they can guess which players have been up all night. "I can pick them out," Walsh says. "One, two, three, four--it's not the biggest part of football's story, just the saddest part."

As they prepare for the Super Bowl or any other game, the coaches' handiest cliche is that they don't worry about the things they can't control. It's not true.

--By Tom Callahan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.