Workaholic Eagles vs. ragtag Raiders in the Super Bowl
Dick Vermeil, 44, is a very determined man. When the coach of the Philadelphia Eagles was a player at California's Napa College in the 1950s, he cracked his ankle and hobbled on crutches for a week before a big game. When the day came, he could not stand being away from the action, so he suited up just to sit on the sidelines. Within minutes, his coach scanned the bench, looking for a man to replace the quarterback. Vermeil went in and played the entire game on a broken ankle.
Al Davis, 51, is a very determined man. The managing general partner of the Oakland Raiders was one of the architects of the American Football League. As A.F.L. commissioner in 1966, he put together the merger that stopped a disastrous bidding war with the N.F.L. and led to the creation of the Super Bowl.
On Sunday, Vermeil and Davis will square off for Super Bowl XV in New Orleans. Each brings with him a team that mirrors his own personality. Vermeil's Eagles, this year's N.F.C. champions, are the inheritors of his pay-any-price work ethic, a squad with no well-known stars that has been forged into an efficient football machine. The Oakland Raiders, the A.F.C. champions, are a reflection of Davis and the old A.F.L., a collection of castoffs and young players who manage, with guile and grinding tenacity, to survive in spite of the odds. In a Super Bowl shadowed by ticket-scalping scandals and lawsuits over the Raiders' proposed move to Los Angeles, the matchup between Davis and Vermeil is more than a football game. It is a clash of styles.
In 1960, when the Eagles last played for an N.F.L. championship, there was no Super Bowl, the A.F.L. was in its first season, and the indestructible Chuck Bednarik was on the field for the full 60 minutes, playing center on offense and linebacker on defense. The Eagles won their game against Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers. But the Philadelphia franchise quickly fell from glory. After a decade and a half near the cellar, Owner Leonard Tose brought in a hard-eyed young coach from U.C.L.A. to revive the team.
At his first training camp, Vermeil served notice that the Eagles were going back to bedrock, Bednarik style. Practices were suddenly twice as long as usual. Rules were rigid. Shell-shocked rookies and veterans alike crumpled under Vermeil's salt-mine regime. In the first ten days, a dozen players walked out of camp. Vermeil remained unfazed: "They don't take the Marines and train them on the beach with ice cream in their hands and then tell them to fight. We're preparing these guys for eleven individual wars. That's what it amounts to."