Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/637179
| SUPER BOWL SUNDAY | 12 SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2016 But looking back 31 years to Super Bowl XIX at Stanford Stadium, when the 49ers crushed the Miami Dolphins 38-16, it feels like a lot more time has passed. Other than Bill Walsh's imaginative, electric offense with Joe Montana at the controls — some- thing that would still seem innovative in to- day's NFL — everything else seems so dated and primitive about the Bay Area's only pre- vious experience with football's grandest event. There not only wasn't any Twitter or Face- book back then, there wasn't even something called the Internet. You were on the cutting edge if you actually owned a personal com- puter, and the whole idea of packing one around for the purpose of sportswriting was relatively new. Laptops? Still non-existent. Email? Nope? Cellphones? A few people had them, but they looked like walkie-talkies and service was dodgy. There was no NFL Network. ESPN was still in its infancy, and it didn't have the rights to anything NFL. It showed things such as badminton and college wrestling in between SportsCenter telecasts and Roy Firestone interviews. ABC had Super Bowl XIX, and Frank Gifford and Don Meredith — now both dead — were the commentators. The late Tom Landry, a guest analyst, wore his trademark hat to the game. Al Michaels, who did the pregame and postgame shows, wore one of those hideous '80s perms. And then there was O.J. Simpson, still nine years away from his infamous ride in a white Bronco, working the sidelines as TV's shin- ing minority star. I had lived half of my 62 years in 1985. I was 31 when I covered my first Super Bowl, the first in the Bay Area and the one and only to this day to deliver a victorious "home" team. Stanford Stadium was old then — to think, fans actually still sat on benches to watch such an important game — and I was youthful and lean. Now the gar- gantuan old stadium is gone, replaced by a smaller, newer version, while I am older and broader. My memories are still pretty vivid of Jan. 20, 1985. I distinctly recall how easy it was to get into the actual game once fight- ing through the Palo Alto traffic snarl. Show your credential and you were in. No bag searches. No wanding. No ID checks. Three years ago, covering the 49ers in Su- per Bowl XLVII, I was required to surrender my workbag at the entrance to the Louisiana Superdome, where it was placed in a quaran- tined area and sniffed for bombs and other possible weaponry by a team of police dogs. The world would change 16 years later on a September morning. It's also remarkable that the Bay Area was awarded the Super Bowl considering the things Stanford Stadium lacked. Lights, for one. Portable lighting had to be brought in, and if you watch the second half of the game now on YouTube — something else we never could have fathomed back then — you can see how inadequate the lighting was, espe- cially after a dense fog rolled in. On the rim of the stadium, where the press box was sit- uated, it was so foggy it was getting hard to see the field by game's end. There were no luxury suites. The rich folks had to sit with the hoi polloi, on those old wooden benches. And unless you were between the 30-yard lines, you had a ter- rible seat. As if the stadium wasn't expan- sive enough, the field was surrounded by a running track, putting the game at an ab- surd distance. The video boards, situated high at each end of the vast stadium and ri- diculously small, weren't much help on re- plays. Of course, the NFL didn't have instant replay back then so perhaps that's a moot point, but there was one controversial call — a Freddie Solomon fumble that was ruled an incompletion — that might have changed the game had it existed. The week's buildup was that a young Dan Marino, who had thrown for more than 5,000 yards and an ungodly 48 touchdowns in the regular season, would pick apart the 49ers in a shootout. But as it turned out, the Dolphins had shortcomings — lack of a run- ning game as well as a lack of a run defense. The 49ers, prepared brilliantly by Walsh, ex- ploited both to the fullest. On top of that, Montana put on a show for the ages. The Super Bowl seemed like such a big deal in 1985, and it was. It had already become an international spectacle in just 18 years, and much of the world stopped to watch it. BY JOE, IT WAS GRAND Carl Steward Yards passing by Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino in the 1984 season Although Marino had a stellar year, it was not enough to topple Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers. 5,084 Bay Area's first Super Bowl was short on technology, but the on-field brilliance was golden SUPER BOWL XIX