X'd, O'd And Ko'd

"It happens all the time," Montana said, smiling. "We were afraid we were going to get a new play on our way to the game while our bus was stopped at the bottom of the hill."

Ah yes, the bus. It was the scene of one of the 49ers' scarier moments Sunday afternoon. The trip from the Niners' hotel to the Silverdome should take 25 minutes. Bus No. 1 left at 1:15 and it breezed into the stadium on schedule. Solomon and Clark were aboard Bus No. 1, They dressed quickly and ran onto the field all by themselves, to the scattered cheers of the 49er fans and the solid boos of the bigger Bengal contingent. Solomon had an iffy knee. He sprinted 100 yards, from end zone to end zone, "to show myself I was all right."

They jogged back to the tunnel. Was Bus No. 2 in yet? No, it was not. Bus No. 2 contained Walsh and Montana and half the San Francisco team. It was stuck on an off ramp, half a mile from the stadium, a victim of the motorcade for Vice-President Bush, which had stalled traffic in all directions.

"Coach Walsh was pretty loose on the bus," Montana said. "He said, 'I've got the radio on and we're leading 7-0. The trainer's calling the plays.' "

"After sitting there for 20 minutes, I was starting to get a little uneasy," Walsh said. "Everyone was cracking jokes, but I was looking at the angle we'd have to take to walk to the stadium, a cross-country trip, each person holding onto the next one's shirt so we wouldn't get blown over."

Bus No. 2 finally made it in at 2:40, an hour and 35 minutes before kickoff and 20 minutes before the team was supposed to be on the field for its warm-up. To Super Bowl historians this was an omen. Teams that have trouble lose. The whole week had been a bad omen for the 49ers. They hadn't been sleeping right. The three-hour time difference had put them out of sync. Montana was showing up for his 8:30 a.m. press conference, 5:30 a.m. San Francisco time, bleary-eyed, punchy. Their Tuesday and Wednesday practices had been sloppy and lethargic.

"Why do we have to have the early practice and the Bengals the late one, especially since they're already on Eastern time and our hotel is farther from the Silverdome?" Walsh wanted to know. "Coin flip," the NFL people told him. How about if we find our own practice facilities? Sorry, no can do.

On Friday, Walsh was still fuming. "It's madness," he said. "You can get any playground director to do what they do, only he'd do it hand over hand with a baseball bat. High-salaried people...it's a joke."

Another bad omen. Bitching coaches lose. Remember Bud Grant and the sparrows in the shower room? And the game certainly started off badly when the 49ers' Amos Lawrence fumbled the opening kickoff and the Bengals took over on the San Francisco 26. But six plays later Free Safety Dwight Hicks intercepted an over-the-middle pass intended for Isaac Curtis, the middle man of three wide receivers flanked left, ran it back from his own five to the Niner 32, and the 49ers had bailed out.

"Anderson made an unwise choice on that one," Cornerback Ronnie Lott said. "Dwight's just been eating that play up in practice."