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For 17 pro seasons as an assistant coach, starting with the newborn Boston Patriots in 1960, Red Miller dreamed of his moment. He never dreamed it would last but a moment. In his careful, defensive way, the 49-year-old "rookie" head coach squired the Broncos to the Super Bowl as Denver's deprived fans painted the country a bright orange. "I walked out onto the field," Miller says, "and thought, 'I used to coach at Astoria High.'" Within three years he was available to Astoria again, but the U.S. Football League's Denver Gold hired him for his marketability. Sales boomed briefly, but within a year he was fired again. At 58, Miller has, in a phrase coaches use on cut day, "resumed life" as a Dean Witter stockbroker. Norris Weese, the Bronco quarterback who finished the Super Bowl, visited Miller's office recently, and the coach gave him a tour of the different-size cubicles. "Like coaching," Miller says, "it's just a matter of putting in more hours than anyone else. I want to win the stockbrokers' super bowl. Hell, yes."
XIII Pittsburgh Steelers 35 Dallas Cowboys 31He dropped the Super Bowl, smack in his hands, keeled over just like Charlie Brown and collapsed in the end zone forever. "Tough to handle," drawls Jackie Smith, 45, the great St. Louis tight end, coaxed from retirement by Dallas. "But it mellows." He produces fishing films now in rural Arkansas and misses big cities not at all. No tight ends are in the N.F.L. Hall of Fame, but one ought to be. "Sounds crazy, considering what happened," he says. "But I don't guess I ever enjoyed a season so much. All those years in St. Louis, I never had time to reflect, and looking back after retirement, everything seemed so jammed together." When the Cowboys called, looking for an emergency replacement, Smith was 38. "I promise you, I was like some old boy in his living room thinking, 'Man, I'd like to be down there with the Dallas Cowboys.' Suddenly I was, and it came to me what a great gift it is to have the ability to play. I was given a little slot of time back to understand this. One pass can't take that away from me."
XIV Pittsburgh Steelers 31 Los Angeles Rams 19Several years before the Rams reached the Super Bowl, Defensive End Fred Dryer and Teammate Lance Rentzel spoofed the famous hype by crashing the press box in the '20s guise of Front-Page Reporters Cubby O'Switzer and Scoops Brannigan. Each carried a "press" card in his cap and a $50 bill in his kit for flashing at bellhops and other cheap purposes. "After that, I couldn't help but smile at the Super Bowl," says Dryer, 39, for whom acting has become a profession. He plays Police Detective Hunter on television. "When all the over-coaching, overpreparing and overwriting is done, the Super Bowl is a goddam game. We played well. I let the event in completely and enjoyed the whole thing tremendously. The loss was gone the second I walked out of the stadium." Vacating football was more complicated, like dropping a longstanding character. "To put it aside," says Dryer, "you almost have to give up the fact of who you were. I couldn't be an athlete in my mind the rest of my life, so I left the football player behind. Within a year, it was like I never played sports."