Super Bowl Archives - The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Sep42013 by Chris HolmesNo Comments

Ranking the Greatest Ever NFL Franchises, 1920-2012

Jan42013 by Chris HolmesNo Comments

The 10 Longest Active Super Bowl/Championship Droughts in NFL History

(Note: Totals are accurate through the end of the 2014 NFL regular season.) It seems like training camp just opened, and we've already put another NFL regular season in the books. But now I want to turn my attention to the unfortunates -- the teams that haven't won a National Football League title since I've even been alive. While there are some pretty good franchises on this list, it's mostly a collection of clubs that have come to represent football futility for most. Unlike the other major American sports leagues, the NFL has seen fit to establish a clear distinction between the pre- and post-Super Bowl eras. I have never bought into that line of thinking, and so I count Super Bowls, NFL championships, and AFL championships equally. If you think that's bunk, I'm not going to try t...

Sep212012 by Chris HolmesNo Comments

Football Friday: What Steve Sabol Meant to Me

Football Friday, Sports

One of the few things about the nearly interminable one or two-week buildup between the NFC/AFC championship games and the Super Bowl that I looked forward to was tuning into ESPN and watching hours upon hours of NFL Films' Super Bowl highlight packages. In some ways, watching those 30-minute capsules -- replete with their sweeping orchestral scores and booming narration by John Facenda -- was more rewarding than the games themselves. Through the magic of eBay and torrent sites, I've had the opportunity to watch Super Bowls from the 1970s and early '80s, that I wasn't around to see or was too young to remember. In almost all cases, watching those contests was almost a letdown after memorizing practically every line and every beat from the NFL Films version. Take, for example, ...

Jan302012 by Chris HolmesNo Comments

Retro Football Cards — Super Bowl XLVI edition (Manning/Gronkowski)

Sports

(For all my retro cards, click here.) OK, now that we're through the farce that is the Pro Bowl, it's almost zero hour for the 2011 NFL season. So I thought it only proper to bust out a pair of Super Bowl-related retro cards. Up first is New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning, as grafted onto a 1956 Topps card. And for the AFC's New England Patriots it's Pro Bowl tight end Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski, on a 1984 Topps. Of the two, the Manning was the easier to produce. I used a '56 Charley Conerly card. Conerly was the QB of the Giants during the 1956 championship season, which is why I went with it. The stroke/halo effect is present on that '56 set so I reproduced it as close as I could. Like with the Drew Brees card, I had a hard time finding a good helmetless pic so I just w...

Jan262012 by Chris HolmesNo Comments

Retrotisements — Super Bowl edition

Advertising, Retrotisements

These days, most of the Super Bowl-related ads I see are for giant TVs. You know, to watch The Big Game. So I was a bit surprised to see that most companies riding the Super Bowl popularity train back in the day just decided to give stuff away. Tickets, mostly. If you dig these classic advertisements, head over to the main site and my gallery of Retrotisements. Aw, Burt Lancaster doesn't need your prizes, he just loves being part of the team! I would love to know which team the lucky winner of this contest got to become a part owner of. Of course it didn't specify the NFL, so it really could be anything. Hopefully not the Cleveland Browns. (Aqua Velva, 1970) The good news is you can win tickets to the Super Bowl and Hawaii! The bad news is you have to hang out with ...

Jan242012 by Chris HolmesNo Comments

Get the Lead Out — A History of Series Debuts After the Super Bowl

TV & Radio

I still have pretty vivid memories of watching television on the evening of Super Bowl XXII. Not just because it was the day that the hated Denver Broncos got pummeled by the Redskins, but it was also the premiere of The Wonder Years on ABC. It instantly became one of my favorite shows, and I watched it faithfully for most if its entire run. As it turns out, The Wonder Years was also one of the more successful shows to launch right after the Super Bowl. Let's take a look at the history of TV series to debut after the big game and see how many we can remember. 1979: Brothers and Sisters (NBC), Super Bowl XIII It wasn't until the thirteenth Super Bowl that a network struck on the idea of capitalizing on a huge built-in audience to roll out a new series. You can't blame them if they had ...

Jan232012 by Chris Holmes1 Comment

Super Bowl XLVI — This Fan Space For Rent

Sports

I can't believe I'm saying this as a football fan of three decades, but I've seriously given thought to not watching the Super Bowl this year. Not because I don't think it will be a good game, and certainly not because it lacks for good story lines. It's just that I'm not the kind of football fan who will watch a game just because it's football. I need some kind of rooting interest -- some reason to pull for one team over the other, even if it's a silly one. But with Super Bowl XLVI, I am struggling to think of one so far. Unlike the last time the Patriots and Giants faced each other, in Super Bowl XLII. It was easy to root for New York then. I, like 99% of decent-minded sports fans, wanted desperately for a season's worth of Boston-centric hubris and obnoxiousness to come crashing down...

Jan132012 by Chris Holmes11 Comments

Football Friday: How does a quarterback make the Hall of Fame?

Football Friday, Sports

I've been listening to a lot of New York sports talk radio, and Giants fans are rightly happy with their team's playoff win over the Falcons last weekend. And I've heard at least a few callers raise the question about whether Eli Manning is on track for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It's not a completely silly question, and one that deserves a closer look. First off, Manning is a Super Bowl champion. That automatically puts him in a special group of NFL signal callers. But if he never wins another title and continues to put up good passing numbers for the next five or six (or more) seasons, is that enough? It may be instructive to look at the QBs who are already enshrined in Canton to see how Manning stacks up against them. Perhaps there is some unofficial criteria that can be a...

Nov162011 by Chris Holmes3 Comments

Cork it, 1972 Dolphins

Sports

This post originally ran in November 2005, when the Indianapolis Colts looked poised to unseat the 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only undefeated team in the modern NFL era. They ultimately failed, and so this year the 9-0 Green Bay Packers are next in line for a shot at sports immortality. And wouldn't you know it, the '72 Dolphins just can't shut the hell up. Same crap, different year. I'd like to take a moment to delve into the world of sports. Last night, the Indianapolis Colts beat the Pittsburgh Steelers to go to 11-0 this season. And just like all the other times a team has gone undefeated this deep into the season, we have to watch the graying, braying remnants of the 1972 Dolphins (who finished 17-0) celebrate whenever the last undefeated team loses. And I, for one, have...