Unearthed Super Bowl I broadcast a three-hour slice of long-lost Americana

Well, except for a couple of notable things. There’s a lot of extra elbows and slaps while on the ground after tackles, that would cause a littering of yellow flags today. There’s one play, midway through the third quarter, where Kansas City’s Buck Buchanan stops Jim Taylor at the line of scrimmage, the two men clearly exchange pleasantries, and then Buchanan takes Taylor by the shoulder pads and heaves him to the ground.

“That’s going to cost Buchanan and the Chiefs,” Frank Gifford says.

Except, well, of course it cost them nothing other than a brief admonition from the official and a play-on rotating of the ref’s arm.

The same thing happens a little later when Williamson clotheslines Green Bay receiver Carroll Dale about 15 yards clear of the line of scrimmage.

Rough and tumble

Not only does Williamson not dance over his fallen prey, not only does Dale get right up and not wave his right arm looking for a flag . . . but Gifford says, approvingly, “hard but clean play right there.”

This is where the differences between Then and Now really stand out. At one point Jack Whitaker (who took over play-by-play for the second half after Ray Scott did the first) says merrily: “Everything’s a record here today!”

And in that spirit, all week, Williamson (a shut-down corner long before the term had been invented) had become the very first Super Bowl Week quote machine; in the most famous he vowed to take out the Packers’ two main receivers: “Two hammers, one to Dowler, one to Dale, should be enough.”

Well, Boyd Dowler left on the game’s first series after separating his shoulder making a block and Dale bounced right back up again after Williamson’s attempt at beheading.

But later, with barely three minutes left in the game, Green Bay running back Donny Anderson’s knee collides with Williamson’s helmet and for four full, uncomfortable minutes Williamson is out cold on the field.

And not one word — not one — is uttered about the remarkable irony of all of this, not a mention about Williamson’s boasts, not a peek at the Packer sideline which, we later learned, was all but falling down laughing about it.

Gifford, still a few years away from becoming a play-by-play man for ABC, is outstanding in his role as an analyst, even if he offers one too many olive branches to the humbled Chiefs.

For one thing, he twice correctly identifies the Packers as “the best team that’s ever played the game of football” (which was certainly true in the moment, and given the proliferation of players that day who are in the Hall of Fame, it still might be).

Flashbacks

When the Packers first took control of the game, Gifford points out to Whitaker that the Packers only blitz 10% of the time, one of the lowest in all of football, and he says, “I think we’ll see more of that now that the Chiefs have to play catch-up” and almost immediately the Packers send five and six green shirts after Dawson.

(Time-transport Tony Romo from Allegiant Stadium Sunday to the Coliseum and you’d get something akin to, “THEY’RE GONNA BLITZ, JACK! YOU WATCH, JACK! GONNA RED DOG HIM, JACK! GONNA COME AFTER HIM, JACK! THEY DID IT AGAIN, JACK! LOOK AT THAT, JACK!!!”)

Another thing kept quiet: Up 25 points late in the fourth, the Packers are still throwing the ball. Vince Lombardi (Gifford calls him “Vinny”) clearly wants to send a message. They also have the ball in the last two minutes, and the Chiefs don’t call any timeouts, but there’s no kneeling.

Perhaps Victory Formation hasn’t been dreamed up yet, but it sure looks like Lombardi would’ve been happy to keep running plays for an hour more.

Now . . . Ed Sullivan!

In all, with commercial deletions and a gap that costs the first seven minutes of the second half, it only runs for barely 90 minutes, including a brief interview between Pat Summerall and NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who doesn’t even try to hide the smile on his face that looks like he just won the Irish Sweepstakes.

And, like Lombardi at game’s end, you really wish there was more. It’s thrilling to watch McGee — famously playing with a hangover the size of the Hollywood Bowl subbing for Dowler — make an array of catches that even 57 years later would be called “dazzling.”

It’s poignant to see a few shots of Paul Hornung in his last game (though he never played one snap), the camera catching him from behind so all you see is his golden hair and his No. 5.

It’s curious to see a McDonald’s commercial where one voice coos, “where quality starts fresh every day,” and another describes the key ingredient used on the burgers as “golden mellow cheddar cheese,” which explains why it probably tasted better in ’67 than in ’24.
The cheeseburger was also 19 cents.

It is a simple telecast, evoking a different time. And it was. After the brief postgame show and then a weekly episode of “Lassie,” CBS handed its air over to Ed Sullivan as it did every Sunday at 8 o’clock and soon thereafter, in one of that show’s last culturally iconic moments, the Rolling Stones played “Let’s Spend the Night Together” — but only after agreeing to change the lyric to “let’s spend some time together.” Mick Jagger famously sang that song with an exaggerated eyeroll.

Maybe even he couldn’t believe more wasn’t made about the Hammer.