Question of the day: Which is your all-time favorite Super Bowl?
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Writers from around Tribune Co. weigh in on the topic. Check back throughout the day for more responses, and feel free to leave a comment of your own.
Dom Amore, Hartford Courant
If I were to list the most exciting Super Bowls, No. VII might not make the top X. Among the group I was fortunate enough to cover, the Giants’ victory over the Patriots in 2008 would be the most fun and the most exciting.
But the question is to name my favorite Super Bowl, so I am sticking with the first one in which I was emotionally invested. I became aware of football during the 1971 season and have vague recollections of the Cowboys victory over the Dolphins at the end of that season. The 1972 season was really my first, followed from start to finish, and I was enraptured ever after. Pro football was different then. The game may not have been more dangerous or violent, but it was more raw. Grizzly men with mud-caked uniforms and grimy faces, visible through single-bar helmets.
My team, the Giants, lost two heartbreaking games and the NFC East to the Redskins and so, in the playoffs, I followed the latter. George Allen’s Redskins. Billy Kilmer’s Redskins. Larry Brown and Charley Taylor’s Redskins. Then there were the Dolphins -- Don Shula, Larry Csonka, Bob Griese, Earl Morrall, Howard Twilley, the no-name defense and the high-wire act they ran week to week to go undefeated. With all it took to get there, it just seemed like the biggest deal in the world to a 10-year-old.
Dad and I were glued to the TV, even without a real rooting interest. It was the Super Bowl; I learned, that’s what you did.
The game was a dud. The Dolphins got the lead and sat on it, winning, 14-7.
Steve Svekis, South Florida Sun Sentinel
The star-crossed John Elway had much of America in his corner when Super Bowl XXXII against Brett Favre and the two-touchdown-favorite Packers rolled around in 1998. The Broncos icon Elway had been routed in three previous Super Bowls. This time, however, he had running back Terrell Davis. Davis, despite missing a quarter of the game with a blinding migraine, carved up Green Bay for 165 total yards. It was Elway, though, who made the game’s most memorable play. On third and 6 from the Green Bay 12 late in the third quarter, Elway ran eight yards to set up a Davis touchdown that gave Denver a 24-17 lead. His helicopter spin to finish the play is one of the Super Bowl’s iconic moments. The Pack tied the score in the fourth but could not stop Davis as he scored his third touchdown and clinched Elway’s cathartic first title.