The First Super Bowl

"There must be some way out of here
said the Joker to the Thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief."

Packers QB Bart Starr, MVP of Super Bowl I

I remember the first Super Bowl, January 15, 1967 because it was played on my 20th birthday. I was a sophomore at UC Santa Barbara living in an apartment in Isla Vista, a student community adjacent to campus, with three other guys. The university had recently changed from semester system to quarterly classes and we were near or on a quarterly break in mid January. Although I hadn't been following football, we didn't have a TV and I wasn't reading the newspapers very often, this first game between the two professional football leagues was receiving enough hype that I heard about it.

Since it was my birthday my girlfriend, Linda, was visiting me from out of town. She brought a chocolate cake to the apartment where we had a small celebration. I was slightly embarrassed in front of my male roommates but appreciated the gesture which was honest and heartfelt. Everyone likes cake and a party. Turning 20 I felt as though I were entering a limbo between teen life, which had dried up some time ago, and becoming a full-fledged adult with voting rights, and alcohol-purchasing privileges. I was somewhere in between and it was obvious.

When Linda visited we would stay in a motel in nearby Goleta or in town in Santa Barbara. Our guys' apartment had had its share of female guests -- one of my roommates was a true Don Juan -- but Linda and I were dying to get away by ourselves. We would see each other every one or two months, alternating being visitor or host. I would venture south to Upland where she was living either by hitch-hiking, getting a ride with a fellow student who was going that way, or borrowing a car. During that period I did not own a motor vehicle or even a stereo, let alone a TV. I had compiled a very small record  collection that included The Beatles "Rubber Soul," the Steve Miller Band's "Sailor," and Bob Dylan's "John  Wesley Harding," in which he introduced his classic "All Along the Watchtower."

The big sounds in our apartment were coming from San Francisco, with the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and from Los Angeles through the voice of Jim Morrison and the Doors. Perceptual enhancements were often consumed and strange visitors would come and go. Fraternities and sororities were still in flower yet there was a gradual movement undermining the old status quo, apparent in the throwback western-style outfits and hirsute faces and heads of a few in the philosophy and English departments. There was also a small group of protesters in front of the library on Wednesdays in silent vigil against the war in Vietnam. Isla Vista was still made up of mostly mainstream middle class kids, however. I considered myself fairly mainstream, with a dash of discontent that yanked on me like a wild dog on a leash.

My relationship with Linda had been an on-and-off affair since early high school. Overall we had stuck together through the good, bad and sometimes ugly years of growing up. We always seemed to get back together which indicated to me that we had a good thing. I really couldn't identify with too much of what was going on at UCSB. I seemed to be one of the few students to have a job. I was hired by the owners of a small cafe in the heart of Isla Vista as the busboy-dishwasher-janitor, following a day of weeding I had done for them on their hillside property. I've never had a problem with hard work. My instincts at that time were that I needed a good job where I could be creative. Above all I wanted to write. I had a student deferment from being drafted and sent most likely to Vietnam. I had to maintain 15-units per quarter to keep the deferment.

Since it was my birthday I told Linda that I wanted to watch the big football game, which became known as Super Bowl I after the fact. It was being touted as "super" because it matched the winning team of both professional leagues -- the original NFL against he upstart AFL. There was a new high-rise dormitory in Isla Vista and I had heard that the game would be shown on TV in the dorm lounge.

The lounge was crowded with an audience of students lured by the media frenzy, even in 1967. They had gathered in front of a television set, not a screen. It was definitely a happening. The famed Green Bay Packers led by their storied, hard-ass coach, Vince Lombardi, were pitted against the Kansas City Chiefs. It was a close contest until the second half when the Chiefs began to falter and the mighty team from Green Bay dominated under the direction of their low-key but steady quarterback Bart Starr in a 35-10 victory. That day the Packers were America's team.

It would be two more years, January 1969, before an AFL team would finally defeat the NFL in Super Bowl III, led by the most flamboyant player of that period, quarterback Joe Namath (aka "Broadway Joe"), whose underrated New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts, as he had predicted, in a close and thrilling game, 16-7. By that short time later, Linda and I were married and living in a small apartment in Claremont. I had my first letter published in a sports column defending Broadway Joe who had been maligned by czar NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle for Joe's one-third ownership of a New York bar, Bachelors III. I was commuting to Cal State Fullerton to finish my BA and working for Pomona Parks and Rec. Linda was employed by Pacific Bell telephone company in Ontario. And I had lost my student deferment and been reclassified 1-A, eligible for the draft.

"But you and I we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour's getting late."