Life's Not a Bowl Of Any Single Thing

(7 of 7)

XVIII Los Angeles Raiders 38 Washington Redskins 9

During the pregame buildup, Jack Squirek had all manner of attention lavished on him--by the University of Illinois student newspaper. "Then I intercepted that pass," he says, "and for one day I was famous." An assistant coach had a premonition: plucking the quickest young linebacker from the Raider bench, to inserted Squirek for a single down with instructions to ignore the zone defense and shadow little Runner Joe Washington. "Wasn't it about ten yards?" Squirek, 26, muses. "It happened so fast, I only remember being in the end zone. After the game, jeez, there were seventy, a hundred writers, all around me." But as he came from nowhere to score that touchdown, Squirek has returned there, to the Raider periphery. "I realize there's a lot of talent on the Raiders," he says, "but it's frustrating not to play. When you're a rookie, you're eager to do anything, but it's tougher to be a special-team player after you've had a taste of glory. Now I dream of just steady, uneventful play." Like Max McGee, Squirek forgot the ball, but the equipment men remembered. It's on his mantel.

XIX San Francisco 49ers 38 Miami Dolphins 16

For 15 seasons and three Super Bowls, Jack Reynolds seemed as much a coach as a player, a thinking man's linebacker armed with his own sideline chalkboard. "I liked the strategy, the military part," he says. "Right flank, left flank. The offenses tap-tap-tapping, the defenses deploying their troops. It's a war. It's a con game too." But old soldiers fade away, and Reynolds, 38, should have read retirement into the mere three downs he staffed last Super Sunday. "Just the opening play of the game," as he recalls, and two others early on. "The bottom line is you're a team player. If you win, there's enough for everybody." Old Hacksaw had to be cashiered as a player, and to the 49ers' surprise, could not stay on as a coach. For now, he is making a living being Hacksaw in old jocks' commercials on TV. "I felt uneasy watching others do things I could do better, and uncomfortable teaching them. It's hard to put into words, but it was like being pulled apart from within, like I had killed myself for 15 years and was finally dying." Ray Mansfield's phrase is better: living on.