By: Don Pierson (KRT Campus)
Posted In: Sports
Photo credit: KRT Campus
Chicago Tribune
(KRT) HOUSTON _ Two ultimate teams in the ultimate team sport are playing in the ultimate game, at least until next year. So why does Super Bowl XXXVIII have the personality of a beige sweatshirt? The Super Bowl is about glitter and glamour; the best football teams are about grime and grit. The top runners and receivers on the Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots are guys named Smith and Davis and Brown. The names on the jerseys ring no bells. “For fans who are a little bitter their teams didn’t make it, hey, watch the game,” Panthers receiver Muhsin Muhammad said Monday. “I’m pretty sure you’re going to find somebody you like.” It won’t be someone pulling out a cell phone from a goal post or a pen from his sock. It might be someone who’s not even playing, like Carolina linebacker Mark Fields or linebackers coach Sam Mills, both incredibly afflicted with cancer as this season started and now buoying the spirits of the Panthers as they undergo chemotherapy. Fields watches from a luxury box, and Mills is on the sidelines coaching. Fields spoke to the team before last week’s NFC championship game. “He kind of said just go out there and get it because you may never have this opportunity again,” linebacker Dan Morgan said. “We’re going to go out there and win this thing for them.” These are two teams in the best and most complete sense of the word. Patriots tight end Christian Fauria was a member of the Seattle Seahawks in 2001, when the Patriots were big underdogs to the St. Louis Rams in the Super Bowl. Fauria was sitting in Hawaii as a future free agent who figured the Rams would win easily. “My father-in-law was taking the Patriots and I was like, `You’re crazy. They have no chance,’ ” Fauria said. “Well, sure enough, the time I knew I was done was when they came out of the locker room as a team.” Refusing the customary player-by-player pregame introduction, the Patriots ran out of the tunnel as a team, as they had done most of that season and have ever since. “Anyone who is selfish and is about `me’ is going, `Listen, I want to be introduced,'” Fauria said. “You always see when you’re a kid the guys are introduced, and each guy kind of does his own little thing. That’s like their moment. “But football is more than just offense or defense. For them to come out as a team at the Super Bowl, which is the pinnacle of anyone’s career, means they put their pride and the personal feelings aside, saying, `This is how we got here. We got here together, let’s be introduced together.’ “I thought that was huge. Just flat out the key for me.” So Fauria has become one of the 42 starters used by the 2003 Patriots. He is one of the role players from 18 different teams that coach Bill Belichick has melded into another Super Bowl contender. Most_29 of them_weren’t members of the 2001 team that beat the Rams. Likewise, the Panthers are an assemblage of players from 16 teams, 30 of whom weren’t around in 2001. That was when the Panthers were reeling on the field at 1-15 and off the field from the 1999 conviction of Rae Carruth for conspiring to kill his pregnant girlfriend and the 2000 shooting death of running back Fred Lane by Lane’s wife. “Going through all the different turmoil and all the different things we’ve had to overcome, organization-wise and team-wise, it makes you hard,” Muhammad said. But it didn’t make the Panthers tough. They were wallowing in team misery until coach John Fox arrived and told them they needed to get tougher. Nobody has demonstrated more toughness than Fields and Mills. Fields has Hodgkin’s disease and hopes to come back next season. Mills has intestinal cancer and hopes to be back too. “If these guys can battle for their lives, then we can go out there and battle for 60 minutes,” safety Mike Minter said. “We wear shirts under our uniforms on game day with their numbers on it, just to carry a little of the weight off of them, and at the same time we look to them as our strength,” linebacker Will Witherspoon said. Team strength allowed the Panthers to win four of five overtime games and go 10-3 in games decided by a touchdown or less. The same kind of togetherness made the Patriots 8-1 in games decided by a touchdown or less. Yet the teams are labeled boring. “It’s kind of an oxymoron,” Panthers kicker John Kasay said. “We may be boring, but 14 out of our 16 games ended on the last drive or the last play. There have been a lot of people that had heart problems in the Carolinas over the last four months.” The Panthers boosted their running attack by adding Stephen Davis from the Washington Redskins in one of the best free-agent moves of the off-season. Or was that Steve Smith? Davis is the Panthers’ leading rusher, Smith the leading receiver. Davis, by the way, is the only offensive player on either team voted to the Pro Bowl. Fittingly, the Patriots’ leading rusher also is a guy named Smith_Antowain. There’s a Faulk in the game, but it’s Patriots runner-receiver Kevin, not Rams superstar Marshall. There’s a Manning in the game, but it’s Panthers rookie cornerback Ricky Jr., not Indianapolis superstar quarterback, Peyton. Moments after the Patriots beat the Colts in the AFC title game, the first name Belichick mentioned in his postgame news conference was backup quarterback Damon Huard. He had not played a down, but Belichick praised the job he had done in practice emulating Manning. The most famous player on the Panthers might be Rod Smart, but nobody recognizes that name. They recognize him as the player from the XFL who wore “He Hate Me” on the back of his jersey. That’s the defunct XFL, by the way. Team building has become a more intricate annual exercise than ever in the NFL. The teams that can fit new players into their systems fastest prevail. Not only are the Patriots especially a team of role players, they are a team of versatile role players. They coveted Bears linebacker Rosevelt Colvin in free agency because of his ability to play linebacker and rush the passer. He’s injured, but Willie McGinest and Mike Vrabel are similar players. The Patriots never rely on one guy. Asked Monday why he doesn’t wine and dine free agents the way many teams do, Belichick answered: “If a player is going to play for us because we take them to a fancy restaurant or flash his name up on the scoreboard, `Joe Blow, No. 28 of the Patriots,’ I don’t really think that’s what we’re looking for. “We want players who are sincere, and football is important to them. The games are great, but to play well you have to practice well, you have to prepare well, you have to work hard in the off-season program. If you really don’t enjoy football and you just want to be a football player and reap the rewards of being a professional athlete, then probably the New England Patriots isn’t the right team for that player.” If you want to see players celebrating with cell phones or pompoms, then probably this Super Bowl won’t be right to watch either. For one thing, the game might be 10-7, minimizing the chances for end-zone antics. For another, the Panthers and Patriots aren’t built that way. “You won’t see anything like that from us,” said Patriots receiver Troy Brown, a three-time Super Bowl participant but hardly a household name. “We’re not coached that way, we don’t play that way and our egos don’t need to be stroked that way. We just go out and play ball and let that do most of our talking.” ___ c 2004, Chicago Tribune.
