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Some say the 15th Super Bowl was the game that united the American and National conferences in a common cause against--nothing personal--the Philadelphia Eagles. "Even on picture day, we had to practice," recalls John Bunting, 35, an Eagle linebacker. "I remember the box lunch on the bus." Knowing that coaches mimic other coaches' success, the Raiders whispered among themselves about their duty to restrict Coach Dick Vermeil's military work habits to Philadelphia. "When we finally got on the field," Bunting says, "we were exhausted emotionally and physically. I was crushed for weeks." Released after eleven seasons, he moved to the U.S.F.L. and lost the championship game there too. But the Philadelphia Stars repeated the following year and this time won. "I thought of the Super Bowl," says Bunting, now a coach with the Baltimore Stars, "and I felt relieved, finished, fulfilled. No more risks to take. At half time, I'd taken an injection in the Achilles, and I was tired of that kind of pain. I sat there and cried."
XVI San Francisco 49ers 26 Cincinnati Bengals 21When the 49ers cut Linebacker Dan Bunz last summer, fans tried to reimburse him for a goal-line stand. "They sent $57 checks, my number," he says, "to go out to dinner." Head-on, he had tackled Cincinnati's Charles Alexander on a flat pass to the half-yard line with third down and the Super Bowl to go. "Maybe the replay is what's etched in my mind, but I felt so aware at the time, so keyed up and alive. For a mad second, I almost went for the ball. It was that perfect tackle I'd always heard about." On fourth down, Alexander was only a convoy, but his hard look toward Bunz telegraphed that play too. "I broke my chin straps," says Bunz, 30. "My nose was bleeding. It was the highlight of my life." His wife Elizabeth, a dentist, had looked forward to having her husband's teeth off the line. On this season's first Sunday, she tried to settle him in front of the TV. "Calm down, you're not playing anymore." But by half time she surrendered softly. "If you can play, go play anywhere." In December he hooked on with Detroit.
XVII Washington Redskins 27 Miami Dolphins 17For nine years in Miami, Tampa and Washington, Defensive Back Jeris White mysteriously shunned the press. No incident triggered his silence, no anger accompanied it. His off-season real estate career might have profited from celebrity, but he simply declined to think of himself as a football player. "Now that I've been out a few years," he says, "I guess I can say I was afraid for Jeris White. I was afraid of becoming enraptured, the way so many others bathe themselves in a false sense of reality. I wanted to be the steak, not the sizzle, and I knew that if I was to come out whole, I had to keep a separate identity. Jeris White, the person." Allowing for the customary withdrawal pangs, he seems to have made it. "I think you al ways ache a little," says White, 33, who played well in the Super Bowl but kept in the shadow of the stadium tunnel later while the other Redskins met the press. "My old Miami coaches passed by and said, 'Nice game, Jeris,' and I thought, 'Full circle.' " He held out the next year and never came back.