Super
Bowl I: Atlanta Falcons 19, Kansas City
Chiefs 3
It was a
quiet afternoon game between two teams
that had little going for them.
Practically no one in the league even
cared what the outcome would be. Every
General Manager in the league was focused
on the pending college draft that was to
take place within hours.
It was
called Super Bowl I. The USA Football
League's inaugural championship. There was
no Sundby Cup to be found. There was no
vested interested in the game from anyone
in the league. Both Atlanta and Kansas
City were managed by the league offices as
they were still waiting to complete the
process of hiring GMs to step in an
control the franchise.
For the
first and only time in the league's
history, not only would there be a
computer team in the championship, but
both teams were computer owned. So
obviously, for that first season, the
computer reigned supreme over the league.
The
Falcons were led by an aging quarterback
that won the MVP award that season, by the
name of Willie Pike. Pike would play six
more seasons in the league, all with
Atlanta. It would be another 14 years
before the Falcons would return to the
league championship with a young GM by the
name of Tim Arkwright. During Arkwright's
20yr career in the USAFL, he would lead
his team to 9 championships. But this
first game belonged to players like Pike,
who threw 30 passes that day without an
interception, and his teammate RB Dale
Taylor who rushed for 61 yards and a
touchdown. Names from a long forgotten
past.
Names
only Andrew Lewis, founder and
commissioner of the USAFL, can recall.
For years
everyone considered that first Super Bowl
a non-event. A fluke of a joke. But with
the hindsight of nearly 100 years, there
is a certain charm in looking back to see
how this all began.
Sure
Jim Maurer (co-founder and brother-in-law
to Andrew Lewis) and Andrew were still
learning how to scout talent and manage a
depth chart. Of course it was humiliating
to know that the computer had bested our
efforts and shut us out of the Super Bowl.
But we had our minds set on the draft. Ah
yes, the draft. The real reason we created
this league.
For some
reason, my wife thought it very peculiar
that her brother and I were all excited
about this fictional world we had created.
We had spent the previous three days
analyzing how we thought the draft would
play out. By the time we settled down to
get underway, she couldn't resist taking a
quick photo of her beloved idiots playing
their stupid game.
If we
only knew then what was to become of that
night. A century of drafts later ......
and the College Draft is still the biggest
event on the USAFL calendar. And it will
soon get even bigger once the 2.0 version
of the Draft Console is published. But we
couldn't even imagine what the USAFL would
become back then. For us, it was all about
ordering pizza, compiling all your
paperwork that you spent the last week
scouting with highlighters and silly
calculations that you thought rivaled the
Enigma machine.
For
months the league would exist only in the
neighborhoods of southeastern Pennsylvania
until the 1980 season, the league's 12th.
At that moment, Lewis made the now famous
decision to place the league on the
internet and allow the public to have
access to it's membership.
The game
would change forever .... and the first
three men to walk into the league offices
to apply for a GM position would lay the
foundation that made the league what it is
today.
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