Game for Life by Peter Richmond

Author:Peter Richmond [Richmond, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2019-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

AFTER ITS HUMBLE BEGINNING in the first few years, the championship game between the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference had become not only must-watch television, but nearly a national holiday. And Madden’s Raiders were front and center, ready to play for the Lombardi Trophy in one of the most storied football stadia in the land: the hallowed Rose Bowl, in beautiful Pasadena, California.

The week before the game, the cover of Time magazine, which was the nation’s weekly cultural bible back then, devoted its cover to THE GREAT AMERICAN SPECTACLE.

Today, even the most fanatic fan would be hard-pressed to name the winner of, say, Super Bowl XV, but in 1976, only ten games had been played, and three teams—Green Bay, Miami, and Pittsburgh—had won six of them.

The club of Super Bowl winners was a very special club. The winner of the eleventh would make real history in the annals of the game—and its players would forever have a place in history.

Today, the game’s a year-round business, and the athletes and coaches who win the big game hardly get time to savor their amazing accomplishment. The players have to take part in off-season camps. The coaches have to immediately start to prepare for the following season, knowing that the league is going to give them a tough schedule that will begin with the season’s first high-profile game against a tough opponent.

But when more than a hundred thousand people filed into the Rose Bowl that sunny day, the stakes were huge. The winner would reach the pinnacle of American success stories. The loser would be forgotten.

In 1976, there weren’t off-season camps, or organized team activities, or minicamps, or rookie camps, so the off-season was long. Super Bowl winners could relish their triumph. They could relax, knowing they were the best in the world, and hang in their hometowns as local heroes.

Winning the Super Bowl today is great. Winning it a decade after the game began was huge.

Madden, a man who never coached a game he thought he would lose, had always expected he’d make it to the big one. When he did, he made sure he’d be prepared.

He knew how to make his luck.

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