Doomsday In The Dome

Swenson came to Denver as a free agent, and he believes his success and Denver's—with 14 free agents, including four starters—says something about the intelligence-gathering of the National Football League and its pretense of being so thorough. "The draft is bull," Swenson said. "The scouts for most of the teams are 100 years old, and most of them don't know what they're doing. I went to school at Berkeley, and most of the NFL scouts think the students are still rioting in the streets out there. They didn't want to look at me."

One thing the Broncos wanted very much to look at was what they had assumed would be the Super Bowl "insanity." They had expected pretty much of a party atmosphere and they eagerly looked forward to it. Unfortunately, the Broncos never got to experience it, to join all the other Bourbon Street crawlers, because Miller instituted a midnight curfew starting on Tuesday, the day after they arrived. In contrast, Landry turned the Cowboys loose until Thursday. His reason: "You've got to trust and respect your players."

Denver's Maurer found time to complain about the lack of frivolity. "Most of us are disappointed, I'd say. We were looking for all the distractions we had heard about. We kept asking, 'Where is it?' Finally, we said, 'This is the Super Bowl?' Hell, we have more fun than this in Denver."

It seems that one of the two Super Bowl teams always winds up being disappointed in the hotel accommodations. This time, both squads were in hotels at the airport (selected by the NFL), and of the two, the Broncos felt that theirs was the poorer. They complained of numerous cockroach sightings, and at one point no fewer than 11 Broncos got stuck in an elevator.

For its part, the Cowboy organization had learned from past experience—a Super Bowl victory over Miami in 1972 and losses to Baltimore in '71 and Pittsburgh in '76—that too much time can be squandered unless someone is there to take care of every little detail. Things like getting a car for a player or a plane reservation for his wife, or a dinner reservation for a distant cousin at Moran's or Antoine's. Thus, Dallas had a special squad of people assigned to do nothing but conquer the French Quarter. The organization set up an elaborate office with seven secretaries who were there to do nothing more than handle player requests, and those of Cowboy owner Clint Murchison, General Manager Tex Schramm, Landry and their pals. If Harvey Martin wanted to go to the King Tut exhibition to see what a real mummy looked like, as opposed to those in Pat O'Brien's or Galatoire's, a special secretary handled it. The Cowboys also were prepared to get tickets, sometimes in huge quantity, for any friend of the Texans'. They even had a team acupuncturist in town.

By reputation, Denver was supposed to be the looser team, but at their press sessions the Cowboys seemed more relaxed—or less formal. At those affairs, which are covered by all sorts of representatives of things like the Passaic Herald-News and the Grosse Point Crisis Club, men with the Dallas team would shout, "Who wants Charlie Waters?" Off to the side, Doug Todd, the Cowboy public relations director, held his head from the previous night's experiences in the Quarter and recited his current most favorite country and Western lyric: "If the phone don't ring, you'll know it's me."

But all of this was before Harvey and Randy and the Flex, and the words that were spoken by Craig Morton at his own last rites: "They just took away everything we had."

Well, they can't take away those 12 regular-season victories or that AFC championship, Craig. You'll be back. Just hope it's the Minnesota Vikings you find there the next time. Those Dallas Cowboys are mean.