Before Adam Vinatieri there was Jim O’Brien.....O’Brien may be the most forgotten player in Super Bowl history....but it was his 32-yard field goal with five seconds left that gave the Baltimore Colts a 16-13 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl V....
O’Brien’s clutch kick is overshadowed because Super Bowl V may have been one of the worst played Super Bowls of all time.....Super Bowl V was the first Super Bowl game since the AFL and NFL merged, but it is the Super Bowl that people forgot about despite some other distinctions....
It was the first 
Super Bowl decided in the last few plays.....and it also produced the first defensive player to be named Super Bowl MVP and the only MVP from the losing team....Chuck Howley had two interceptions in the game, with one of the interceptions coming in the end zone denying Baltimore points.....
The Colts were quarterbacked by Johnny Unitas and Earl Morral who combined for three interceptions.....the Cowboys were led by Craig Morton who threw three picks all by himself and totaled only 127 yards through the air....on the bench sat a young leader named Roger Staubach who, in later years, would atone for the Cowboys ineptness on this day....
The Cowboys defense stifled the Colts on the ground....Baltimore managed only 69 rushing yards and fumbled the ball five times – losing four of them....
Despite committing seven turnovers, the Colts, who were coached by Don McCafferty, were never out of the game....50 seconds into the second quarter, the Colts tight end John Mackey caught a deflected pass from Unitas and went 75 yards for a touchdown....but even the extra point was blocked on this day....
However, at the start of the final quarter Dallas only held a 13-6 lead.....and in the end Jim O’Brien helped the great Johnny Unitas get his only Super Bowl ring..... 
O’Brien, who also subbed as a wide receiver, played only four years in the NFL....in his rookie season of 1970, he made only 19 of 34 field goals.....in 1972, his last with the Colts, he converted on 13 of 31 field goals...and .in 1973, he ended his career with the Detroit Lions....but in those four putrid seasons, O’Brien had one shining moment – even if it is often forgotten.....
My yia yia and papou would be proud....
For those of you who are not Greek, yia yia means grandma and papou means grandpa.....and they both would be proud of what could happen in Saturday’s Australian Open tennis championship.....
They didn’t know a tennis ball from a basketball, but they would have been paying attention to the kid named Marcos Baghdatis....
What makes Baghdatis special to my family is that he is not just Greek....but he is actually a Cypriot – from Cyprus – the birthplace of my father’s family....
Greek athletes usually don’t do well in the worldwide sports scene....and Cypriots hardly ever do well.....the most well known Cypriot athlete is most famous for his blundering attempt at passing the ball in the Super Bowl than for his kicking ability – Garo Yepremian of the Miami Dolphins....
So on Saturday I will sit back and watch the kid from my yia yia’s island take on Roger Federer.....this is like the Columbus Clippers taking on the New York Yankees in baseball.....or Youngstown State playing Ohio State in college football....
More than likely Baghdatis will not prevail against maybe the greatest tennis player of all-time....he is 0-3 lifetime against Federer.....yeh, I know he beat Andy Roddick earlier in the week, but Roddick has been punked by just about anyone of late....
Win or lose, Baghdatis at least he made his native Cypriots proud....Yasou!!!!The match is Sunday morning at 3:30 a.m. on ESPN2
The following article appeared on ESPN.comMELBOURNE, Australia -- The village in Cyprus from which 20-year-old Marcos Baghdatis hails is called Paramytha. Loosely translated, it means "fairy tale." It's near the resort city of Limassol, on the southern coast of the island nation, at the edge of the crystal-blue waters of Akrotiri Bay.
When Baghdatis left home at 13 to go train at the Mouratoglou/Brett Tennis Academy near Paris, there was no way of knowing how his story would turn out.
Multitudes of other ambitious young players make similar journeys, and for every one that manages to make a living playing professionally, thousands end up taking court reservations and teaching the finer aspects of the backhand volley to grateful hackers at the Club Meds and tennis resorts of the world.
While Baghdatis enjoyed a large measure of success as a junior player, winning the junior Australian Open title in 2003 and ending the year as the top-ranked junior in the world, his professional career has been slow to take flight.
Until late in 2005 at any rate, when he began working again with coach Guillaume Payre (who incidentally is the stepfather of Baghdatis' girlfriend, Camille Nevieve) and then reached his first tour final in October in Basel, Switzerland, where he lost in four sets to Fernando Gonzalez of Chile.
Now, on the eve of the biggest match of his career, an Australian Open final Sunday evening against top seed 
Roger Federer, Baghdatis' rise to prominence is being celebrated not as a solo act but as a shared community triumph.
Melbourne has the third-largest Greek community in the world, after Athens and Thessaloniki, and Baghdatis has been cheered on by an armada of chanting, flag-waving supporters, including nine of his uncles and 21 cousins. This has put a strain on his ability to come through with enough tickets for his gang, as players are typically allocated six tickets for each match they play.
"They helped me a lot throughout these two weeks, especially the Greek Army, like you call them," Baghdatis said. "They're fantastic, just amazing. They are [making] the atmosphere, like, amazing."
The Cypriot government has also gotten into the act, deciding after its new-found favorite-son's semifinal victory Thursday night to fly Baghdatis' parents to Melbourne in time to watch their son play in the final and to pick up all their expenses in Australia.
Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos saluted Baghdatis after his 3-6, 5-7, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 victory over fourth-seeded David Nalbandian.
"I warmly congratulate our compatriot for his impressive advance to the Australian Open final," he said in a statement. "His fighting spirit, patience, strength of character with which he competed today provides a shining example for all those young men and women of our country."
Ironically, not a single Greek or Cypriot journalist is among the more than 1,300 accredited media here in Melbourne, though word is a couple of them are scrambling to make it down for Sunday.
Up until now, tennis just hasn't been a big deal in Cyprus, where it is largely viewed as an elitist sport in a nation not renowned for its physical fitness.
Charlie Charalambous, a columnist for The Cyprus Weekly, wrote: "How a Cypriot got to be ranked among the world's best [tennis players] defies logic on an island where we eat ourselves fitter."
It all makes for heady stuff for an emotional player barely out of his teens, ranked No. 54 coming into the tournament. His fourth-round showing here last year had stood as his best performance at a major.
He had earned just shy of $400,000 as a professional before this tournament began, and is assured of at least $600,000 simply for advancing to Sunday night's final. He'll double that paycheck with a win, potentially tripling his career earnings.
Not a bad day's work.
He's got some history with the previously invincible-looking Federer, extending the Swiss to four sets in the second round of the 2004 U.S. Open and losing to him again in straight sets in the quarterfinals in Doha, Qatar, earlier this month.
But Federer has shown flashes of appearing mortal in Melbourne, ever since he let Germany's Tommy Haas climb back from a two-set deficit to make things interesting for the top seed in the fourth round.
Then Nikolay Davydenko held six set points to take a two-sets-to-one lead on Federer in the quarterfinals, but the six-time major winner beat back the challenge and advanced in four tough sets.
And while Federer has a charming cow named Juliette back home in Switzerland, Baghdatis has an entire country and a proud culture firmly behind him.
It's been Greek Pride week the past few days at Melbourne Park, with the atmosphere in Rod Laver Arena when Baghdatis plays befitting a World Cup soccer contest more than a genteel tennis match.
After his five-set win over seventh-seeded Ivan Ljubicic in the quarterfinals, Baghdatis said, "Everybody [is] in the streets right now [in Cyprus]. Everybody, they're having fun, today stopped working to see my match, or took a television at work. I mean it's just an amazing day for Cyprus, for me, for my family."
There are times when the most dangerous opponent is one who has nothing to lose, who can swing from the heels and aim for the stars. One who's too young to be jaded by the oncoming freight train of fame and notoriety that is many a prominent athlete's eventual destiny.
For a slew of seeded men in Melbourne, that opponent has been Baghdatis. He's mowed down, in short order, No. 17 Radek Stepanek, No. 2 Andy Roddick, No. 7 Ljubicic and No. 4 Nalbandian on his way to the final.
If Baghdatis is to become the most improbable men's Grand Slam winner since unseeded Gustavo Kuerten won the French Open in 1997 (while ranked No. 66), he'll need to continue to ride the wave of emotion, skill and serendipity that has seen him through to the final two. Because this affable Cypriot is not long for scouting his opponents.
Asked whether he had seen any of Federer's matches in Melbourne, Baghdatis answered: "No, no. Don't like watching tennis."
Super Bowl XI would be ranked low when listing the all-time great Super Bowls....and honestly, rightfully so.....the Oakland Raiders dismantled the Minnesota Vikings 32-14.....interestingly, people don’t realize that this was the last Super Bowl played entirely in daylight....the game was played before 103,438 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.....nowadays the Super Bowl has become a prime time event with hours upon hours of pregame hype leading up to the 6:21 p.m. kick-off....back in 1977, it was simply a game.....
This Raider team was one of the greatest teams of all-time as they finished the 1976 season with a 13-1 mark....their only blemish came in week four when the New England Patriots waxed them 48-17 in Foxboro....the Patriots almost got the Raiders twice that year, but Oakland prevailed 24-21 in the playoff game....
After three straight years of losing in the AFC title game, head coach John Madden finally got to the Super Bowl by beating his nemesis, the Pittsburgh Steelers 24-7.....the Steelers were a beat-up team for that game....but the fact is, Oakland was heading to the Super Bowl to play an 11-2-1 Minnesota team....
After a scoreless first quarter, Oakland racked up 16 points in the second quarter and the onslaught began.....the Vikings were held to a paltry 71 yards rushing on the day while the Raiders pounded out 266 yards on the ground.....however, the MVP was Oakland wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff.....
All day long the Raiders defense harassed Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton and terrorized his receivers which was best exemplified when the Raiders Jack Tatum put a devastating hit on wide out Sammy White which left White helmet-less a
nd motion-less on the ground for many minutes....
This game also produced some memorable photos, most notably of a dirty riddle, stickum layered Biletnikoff....
Yeh this game was not a classic....but most people forget that the 1976 Raiders were.....
It looks like the time has finally come to say good-bye to seeing Mario Lemieux on the ice....one of the greatest, if not the greatest, hockey player of all-time retired today from the Pittsburgh Penguins after a 22-year career....I was in the 11th grade when Super Mario came on the scene.....I am now 37-years old....In his youth, Lemieux was just as dominant as Wayne Gretzky.....he helped bring back-to-back Stanley Cup titles to the Steel City....and he personally took it upon himself to keep the Penguins afloat when it looked for certain that the team would go bankrupt and end up elsewhere....
As great a player as he was, we will never really know how much more he could have done because of injuries and Hodgkin’s Disease....Lemieux was plagued with an assortment of ailments including a bad back.....but the diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Disease stripped away his best years....and in the end, a heart ailment led to him leaving the game for good....
Unfortunately for Lemieux, he also had to play at the same time as Gretzky’s career was winding down.....and being that Gretzky was the e
lderstateman, Lemieux had to share the spotlight....
No one knows if the Penguins will be in Pittsburgh in the near future despite having a young and up and coming star in Sidney Crosby......but no matter where the franchise goes or how well Crosby does, Lemieux has left his mark with the city of Pittsburgh and its fans -- and a statue of him should stand in the center of the city....
Over the next couple of weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, I will be reliving some of my favorite Super Bowl games......
- The oddest, but neatest, shaped stadium in the league has to be in Seattle....
- Since 1969, the Pittsburgh Steelers have had just 2 head coaches while the Cleveland Browns have had 13.....
- With a win today against Carolina, Seattle head coach Mike Holmgren would become the fifth coach to lead different teams to the Super Bowl....the other four were: Bill Parcells, Dan Reeves, Don Shula, and Dick Vermeil....Holmgren took the Packers to the Super Bowl in 1996 and 1997....
- This week the New York Jets hired Eric Mangini as their head coach....Mangini was 34 years, 11 months, and 29 days o
ld.....he is the 15th youngest head coach ever in the NFL.....the youngest head coach ever was Harland Svare who was 31 years, 11 months old when the Los Angeles Rams hired him in 1962.....
- With a win over Denver, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger will be the second youngest starting quarterback to play in the Super Bowl.....Big Ben will be 23 years, 340 days old on the day of the Super Bowl....Dan Marino was the youngest at 23 years, 127 days when he led the Dolphins to the big game in 1984.....
- Denver owns a 3-2 edge over the Steelers when they meet in the playoffs....
- On a quick political note, has-been performer Harry Belafonte lashed out at the Office of Homeland Security during a speech last night....the 78-year-old Belafonte said "We've come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended.".....first off, just by him making that statement shows his ignorance.....if Homeland Security was like the Gestapo, Belafonte’s old ass would have been dragged to some secret prison camp.....I really believe some of these left-wing entertainers make these ridiculous statements just to make the news.....
Super Bowl decided in the last few plays.....and it also produced the first defensive player to be named Super Bowl MVP and the only MVP from the losing team....Chuck Howley had two interceptions in the game, with one of the interceptions coming in the end zone denying Baltimore points.....
