Super Bowl: Something new and old

When both teams were still in what the National Football League calls its postseason tournament, someone asked on Facebook whether anyone would watch a Super Bowl between Atlanta and Kansas City.

Neither team, Atlanta with Matt Ryan and Kansas City with Alex Smith, had a quarterback as well known to the masses as three other playoff teams led by Super Bowl winners. As if that meant anything on the high and holy day of professional football.

The truth is that millions watch the Super Bowl each year for different reasons -- football, gambling and commercials coming to mind immediately -- and will endure almost any one-sided matchup.

Who knows, entertainer Janet Jackson might have an "equipment malfunction" during the halftime show or the lights might go out in the stadium -- both have happened, the latter perhaps influencing the outcome of Baltimore vs. San Francisco after the 2012 season.

Sunday's conference championship games, neither as compelling as the Green Bay-Dallas epic a week earlier, were won by the favored teams. Tom Brady outdueled Ben Roethlisberger in the AFC Championship game while in the NFC, Ryan and his mates ended the dream of Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers to "run the table" after starting the season 4-6.

So, as the Super Bowl reaches middle age, 51 to be exact, we have a fresh matchup of Atlanta vs. New England, even if the Patriots, like the Yankees of old, are becoming as familiar on TV as Jennifer Garner or Samuel L. Jackson asking "What's in your wallet?"

New England won its ninth AFC title, flattening eight-time winner and six-time Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh 36-17, after Atlanta steamrolled Green Bay 44-21, in a game it once led 31-0, for its second NFC crown. The latter game featured a close-up shot of former President Jimmy Carter and his wife cheering for their home-state team with the statesman from Plains, Ga., now 92, pointing to Rosalynn that they were on camera before Fox Sports switched to a commercial.

Give yourself credit if you can name either team owner in Super Bowl LI. One is the co-founder of The Home Depot and the other has the same hometown (Brookline, Mass.) as John F. Kennedy.

Arthur Blank of the Falcons, like Jeff Long at the University of Arkansas, once hired, and then had to replace, Bobby Petrino as head coach. Petrino, like another first-year NFL coach hired by the Razorbacks (Lou Holtz from the New York Jets in 1976 to succeed Frank Broyles), soured on the professional game quickly. It might have gone differently for Petrino in Atlanta had Michael Vick, the Falcons' franchise quarterback, been on the field rather than serving time for his role in an illegal dog-fighting operation.

With three games left in the 2007 NFL season, and the Falcons 3-10, Petrino fled from Atlanta like Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind." Instead of dropping off his keys at the front table like a guest should, Petrino left a four-sentence laminated note at the locker of each Falcon player. He would outdo himself at Arkansas, literally running his Razorback career off the road in a 2012 motorcycle accident involving a woman not his wife.

I know next to nothing about Dan Quinn, the Falcons' second-year head coach, other than he has the presumptive league MVP in Matt Ryan and a former Alabama receiver, Julio Jones, who might be the league's best pass catcher. Defensively, the Falcons kept the NFL's hottest quarterback, Rodgers, out of the end zone Sunday until the third quarter. With two weeks to hype the game, the national media can fill in the blanks about Arthur Blank's team (sorry, couldn't resist), which can give Atlanta sports fans their first world title since the 1995 World Series champion Braves.

The New England Patriots, meanwhile, stand on the precipice of history with record fifth Super Bowl titles possible for Brady, the team's magnificent quarterback, and coach Bill Belichick.

Though his charm lies beneath the surface, Belichick has disproved F. Scott Fitzgerald's assertion that there are no second acts in American life. Failing in Cleveland, where after five years as the Browns' coach he was informed by owner Art Modell that he would not be following the team to Baltimore, Belichick has coached the Patriots to six Super Bowls, winning four and losing twice to the Giants in games quarterbacked by Eli Manning and featuring spectacular catches by David Tyree and Mario Manningham, respectively.

He may have the warmth of an insurance adjuster, but Belichick knows football and staked his professional future upon a sixth-round draft pick from Michigan in 2001. All Brady did was lead the Patriots to three Super Bowl titles in four years -- matching Troy Aikman's feat with the 1990s' Cowboys -- and then win another in 2014 against the defending champion Seattle Seahawks.

Brady, whether by design or not, is, like Joe Namath, a publicity hound, marrying supermodel Gisele Bundchen after having a child with actress Bridget Moynahan. He is also one of two quarterbacks (Joe Montana is the other) to win multiple league MVP and Super Bowl MVP awards. He and Belichick are as closely linked as were Montana and Bill Walsh in San Francisco and Bart Starr and Vince Lombardi with the 1960s' Packers. Pulling out the 2014 championship against Seattle with a last-minute drive, Brady won his first Super Bowl in 10 years and tied Montana with his fourth.

A chance to watch Brady, who turns 40 in August, is reason enough to check this one out. And who could pass up a Lombardi Trophy ceremony involving NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, this one in a locker room instead of a courtroom.

Brady fought his four-game suspension from Goodell for "Deflategate" in federal court, saying "I did nothing wrong, and no one in the Patriots organization did either." Thus disciplined by the league office, Brady joined the Patriots in Week 5 last fall and promptly had one of his greatest seasons with 28 passing touchdowns against two interceptions.

Oh, well, if the game gets really dull, there are always the commercials -- and Lady Gaga at halftime.

Sports on 01/24/2017

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