What is your biggest Super Bowl memory as a child?
It's the most vivid moment you can remember that stuck with you. It might have been your favorite team. It might have been an unforgettable moment. It's the Super Bowl, but there's a good chance it had nothing to do with the game at all. With Super Bowl 53 coming — and a chance for children to remember Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, Sean McVay and Jared Goff — Sporting News staff members picks their most impactful Super Bowl moments.
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Share yours with us. Here are ours:
Best sack ever
"Every time Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese zigged and retreated, zagged and retreated, the Cowboys' Bob Lilly stalked him. Zig, retreat, turn, zag, retreat. Wash, rinse, repeat, No. 74 in pursuit. A 29-yard sack (29 yards!), the perfect metaphor, early in Super Bowl VI, of ghosts being chased from a youngster's nightmares. On this day, the Doomsday Defense's domination was total, 24-3. No more Ice Bowl. No Jim O'Brien field goal. No more 'next year's champions.' That play by Lilly (rhymes with Hille, a kid watching in Fort Worth, Texas, where Mr. Cowboy played at TCU) remains a treasure in my mind's eye. Not just a sack. Historic, Texas-sized. The colors fade with time, like Kodachrome, but the memory remains in sharp focus." — Bob Hille
70s Steelers memories
"I had only been a Steelers fan about five years when they made their first Super Bowl. For my father, it had been closer to 40. So, on the occasion of the Steelers facing the Vikings in Super Bowl IX, he decided to throw a Super Bowl party for several co-workers and their spouses. It wasn't designed for teenagers, and there was one color TV in the house, so my brother and I watched a few rooms away on a small black-and-white TV.
It was just as thrilling to watch the Steelers win as it would have been on a 50-inch flat screen.
It was also fascinating to see the effect the game – and the refreshments served – had on my father. He was so thrilled he wound up getting drunk. My father almost never drank alcohol around the house. He rarely even had a beer. This was the first time I'd ever seen him 'overserved.'
When the Steelers became relevant in the early 70s, it was popular to form a fan club for a player you liked and hang a banner at Three Rivers Stadium. There were Gerela's Gorillas, Frenchy's Foreign Legion and the most famous of all, Franco's Italian Army. Also there was one for linebacker Jack Ham called 'Dobre Shunka.' They told us it translated from Polish as 'good ham.'
As the game was winding down and it became clear the Steelers would be claiming their first Lombardi Trophy, I heard my father's voice, somewhat lubricated, carry from the family room with the shout, 'Dobre Shunka!' My dad has been gone for nearly three decades, but I still can hear that wonderful exclamation as clearly as ever." — Mike DeCourcy
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"In hindsight, my childhood Super Bowl memories from growing up in the D.C. area are filled with rage that the Cowboys were always threatening to get there, instead of my hometown team, their arch-rivals. That team didn't start winning Super Bowls until Joe Gibbs arrived, right when I started college. So, watching the Cowboys lose had to suffice.
Nothing was more fun than watching them lose to the Steelers in Super Bowl X. I wasn't even a Steelers fan, but I was going to be one that day, and became a much bigger one — in particular, a Lynn Swann fan. You were pretty used to what a wide receiver was supposed to look and play like back then, especially in a league utterly dominated by running the ball. Running backs were superstars in ways that wide receivers weren't; as hard as that is to imagine today. The best ones, of course, were fast, and precise, and had great hands, and some were above and beyond the others. On that day, Swann was literally above and beyond all the others I and, I imagine, anyone else had ever seen.
It's still amazing to realize that he only caught four passes that day, but they were all acrobatic in ways that were rarely seen before — especially the one immortalized on the cover of Sports Illustrated, leaping and twisting to catch the deflection over Mark Washington. In real time, it didn't seem real, much less an actual catch. It was a long time before I saw a more beautiful catch. It was also a while before I was that satisfied with a Super Bowl that didn't involve my team.
The postscript to this: I got to interview Swann three years ago, to commemorate the 50th edition of the big game. At least the adult, professional me did; the 11-year-old, Cowboy-hating, football-fan me was still overjoyed about what he saw that afternoon." —David Steele
Two views of Super Bowl XX
"I was a late-developing young sports fanatic, but 1985 I parlayed my obsession with St. Louis' baseball Cardinals into finding a cool NFL team. Naturally, it was uncool to root for the Big Red, so I picked to follow the Chicago Bears. They went on per chance to become Monsters of the Midway with an elite defense and the punky quarterback Jim McMahon. I got fully obsessed with the NFL, after Joe Montana had briefly caused me to dally with it.
So that game was the culmination of it all and my non-sports family watched the 46-10 rout of the Patriots with me. I've been hooked on all kinds of players and teams since, even doing a school project on the NFL. Who knew I would make that sudden youthful passion a career in time? Now that I'm attending Super Bowls in my job makes me feel very blessed." — Vinnie Iyer
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"Steve Grogan was my hero. He never got his due in New England. The Patriots always were trying to replace him, but he was just such a tough, smart quarterback that he almost always wound up back under center. So, of course the Patriots drafted Tony Eason in the first round in 1983. Eason was a disappointment, and Grogan wound up back in the lineup throughout the season. When the Patriots made their Super Bowl debut in January 1986 as a scrappy wild card that won three straight road games, however, Eason was the starter. I was 11 and watching the game at my grandmother's. I remember that, on the third play of the Patriots' first possession, Eason dropped back to pass but got blitzed by Chicago's Otis Wilson. Eason flung an incomplete pass, but Wilson laid him out on the play. My Auntie Pearlie gasped and said, 'Can he hit him that hard? He can't hit him that hard!' I rolled my eyes at the naivete.
But the game went on and, well, the Bears kept hitting Eason, sacking him three times. Eason was so scared he gave new meaning to the seven-step drop—he would go back seven steps and just drop to the ground rather than risk getting hit anymore. So, Grogan (then 32) came in, and God bless him, he took his clobbering from the '46 defense' with dignity. Well, dignity might be a stretch. There was a play Bears lineman Dan Hampton was barely blocked and grabbed Grogan, before he spun out of Hampton's grasp. But Grogan reversed field right back to Hampton, who leveled him. Wilson, Mike Singletary, Richard Dent, all teed off on Grogan at some point. My lasting memory is of poor Grogan scampering in the end zone and haplessly flinging a pass to avoid a safety at the end of the game. He was dragged to the turf, one final insult for a proud quarterback. In the end, as I watched Grogan take his beating, unlike his glass-jawed counterpart, I found myself thinking, 'Can he hit him that hard? He can't hit him that hard!'" — Sean Deveney
80s kids relive Super Bowl XXIII
"The first Super Bowl I remember being aware of was Super Bowl 21 between the Broncos and Giants in 1987 when I was barely five years old, but the first memory that really stands out was Stanford Jennings' kickoff return touchdown in Super Bowl 23 between the Bengals and 49ers in 1989. I also remember final drive quite well, but the Jennings' TD really captured my attention. It stuck with me so much that when Jennings was released by the Bengals following the 1990 season, I was shocked. 'How could they release a guy who returned a kickoff for a touchdown in the Super Bowl?' I asked my dad, incredulously. He had no idea what I was talking about and told me to go do yardwork.
Looking back, I think Jennings' TD stuck with me because I was cheering for Cincinnati for some reason I can't remember, and his return gave the Bengals a seven-point lead. I also remember because I was cheering for Cincinnati, I was also cheering for 'Bud' in the inaugural Bud Bowl (Google it, millennials). My logic was 'Bud Light' was two words, just like 'San Francisco,' so I couldn't cheer for it. For the record, "Bud" won, and my first vivid Super Bowl memory at seven years old was forever linked to a beer commercial. God bless America." — Matt Lutovsky
John Taylor scores the game-winning touchdown in Super Bowl 23. (Getty Images)
"It's always going to be Joe Montana-to-John Taylor in Super Bowl 23, but not for the pass itself. I was nine-year-old troll who spent the week getting teased at school, which I brought on myself after telling a bunch of Bengals' fans they were going down. Around the time Stanford Jennings ran a 93-yard kickoff return for a touchdown, I came down with the most violent case of stomach flu I've ever had. I refused to go to bed, however, and for some reason my mom let me stay in the living room. I just wasn't going to miss the fourth quarter. That's the one Montana immortalized by asking 'Hey, isn't that John Candy?' Montana led the 11-play, 92-yard drive for the 20-16 win while I puked into a trash bag. That was awesome.
I missed school the next day, perhaps a lesson that you shouldn't troll when your favorite team isn't playing in the big game. That's OK. At least I lived to tell the story about seeing the greatest drive in Super Bowl history." — Bill Bender
Brady begins
"They say you always remember your first. Well, not mine, but Tom Brady's. I was flanked by family members watching Super Bowl 36, and I was adamant that the Patriots were going to win.
'With a backup quarterback?'
'There's no way they're beating the Rams.' Then, it happened.
There was something devastatingly magical about the way a 24-year-old Tom Brady marched down the field, calm and cool, without a care in the world. Everything about Brady's career is encapsulated by that drive: calmly catching the ball off spikes, storming down the field with decisiveness, carving up zone defenses.
With 20 seconds left, he hit Troy Brown for 23 yards, finding the soft spot in zone defense — it's a pass Brady's still throwing and a defense he's still hitting 16 years later. A few plays later, another spike, and Brady casually catches it off the bounce one more time, setting the stage for ageless wonder Adam Vinatieri, who boots the ball through the uprights. Confetti falls, God bless, drive home safe.
So, you're welcome, football fans. It's my fault. You can thank me for the Patriots dynasty." — Joe Rivera
