I consider myself to be fortunate for a lot of reasons. Among them is this fact; at 63 years of age, I have been around to watch all forty-eight Super Bowls. I was 15 years old when the Green Bay Packers faced the Kansas City Chiefs in the very first one. There was some hype surrounding the first match up between the National Football League and the upstart American Football League, but nothing like the hype we have today. In fact, the game was nowhere close to being sold out.
Two major television networks broadcast the game live; CBS was the NFL's network, while NBC was the AFL's outlet.
The Green Bay Packers handily won the first Super Bowl, bringing some of the old-time pro football enthusiasts to proclaim, " The AFL will never compete with the NFL."The second Super Bowl went just like the first. The Packers were back representing the NFL, while the Oakland Raiders were the AFL champions. Again, the Packers scored an easy win, and some people even began to predict the demise of the Super Bowl. After all, if the AFL can't even come close to winning a Super Bowl, it won't take long for the powers that be to end the relationship.
Super Bowl III in January of 1969 changed things forever. The Baltimore Colts replaced the Packers as the NFL representative, while the New York Jets went into the game two touchdown underdogs as AFL champs. I was a senior in high school and was an avid Colts' fan. I was so sure the Colts were going to destroy the Jets, I bet $50 on the game with a few of my buddies. Now $50 in 1969 was a lot of money, especially for a 17 year old high school senior. I was so cocky and confident the Colts were going to win. My all-time favorite player Johnny Unitas had missed the entire season with an arm injury and had been replaced by Earl Morrall, who was the NFL Most Valuable Player that year. Johnny U. was healthy by the time the Super Bowl rolled around and was available to play if the Colts needed him. Morrall would start and I was prepared for him to go all the way and destroy the Jets.
It didn't help my dislike of the Jets that former Alabama quarterback Joe Namath was their quarterback. I didn't like him when he played for the Crimson Tide and I liked him even less when he played for the Jets. Namath, as brash as he has ever been, predicted the Jets would win; in fact he guaranteed it. Then he made it happen. I was literally sick at my stomach when the game finally ended. The upstart AFL had defeated the storied NFL for the first time and it only took them three Super Bowls to pull it off. The only bright spot coming out of the game was the fact that Unitas had replaced Morrall as the Colts' quarterback and led them down the field to a touchdown in the fourth quarter. He was driving them again but was intercepted deep in Jets' territory.
The next day at school, I paid up my gambling debts, took all the laughs and ridicule with a smile and have never bet on a Super Bowl again to this day. As far as I was concerned, the Jets win was a fluke and an AFL win wouldn't take place again for at least a decade or more. Actually the AFL evened the score with a win for Hank Stram and the Kansas City Chiefs the very next year over the Vikings in Super Bowl IV. In fact, the AFL or now the AFC won three in a row as the Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl V after moving from the NFC to the AFC.
Now 44 years later the New England Patriots will face the Seattle Seahawks and I am picking the Seahawks to win in a close game. Just don't expect me to put any money on it.
Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. He is currently teaching Broadcasting at Coahulla Creek High School near Dalton, Ga.
His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for thirty years.
He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga Television for more than a quarter-century.
In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, (Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith.) They have four grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, DellaMae and CoraLee.