The AFL Teams Doing Nothing in the Super Bowl Yet Again

Two notable things have happened this year in the world of NFL football. One is something that has been going on all year long--the 50-year commemoration since the AFL began. All right, way to go, yeah-heh, love the old AFL and all that cool high-octane offense stuff, yay AFL! This is not to mention that Chiefs main guy Lamar Hunt started the whole thing. Awright!

The second thing happened yesterday.

When the New York Jets lost to the Indianapolis Colts, my main thought was, "Hmm, that's the NFL's revenge right there." What I was referring to was the exact same match-up in Super Bowl III, the one in which the upstart Jets and their Joe Namath swagger defeated the powerful Baltimore Colts, a game widely considered the seminal game in NFL history. The idea: The AFL showed it could play with the big boys.

Then I thought about it. Have you thought about it? Has anyone thought about it?

That second thing: Yet again an AFL team has failed to get into the Super Bowl.

Yes, I used the words "yet again." This year's match-up will feature the very-much-not-old-AFL Colts versus the always NFL-NFC Saints.

I thought about it for a while, and I did the mental gymnastics to go back and look at all those good ol' AFL teams and their success in Super Bowls past. I discovered something pretty amazing. In Super Bowls, AFL teams have actually, really, truly, splendiferously

Sucked.

So I took the time to really do the math. And here it is, with each AFL team featured in an order with some semblence of meaning. You'll see it as we go. (Simple point of fact: by AFL, I mean the American Football League teams, most of them starting out in 1960 with two more added later in the decade. The league was absorbed into the NFL in 1970 with all of them becoming the AFC with the addition of three old-NFL teams. The NFC consisted of all the other teams and both conferences together became the NFL.)

10. Chargers. Super Bowl record: 0-1. In the one Super Bowl they got into they got crushed by the 49ers. Countless times they've had fine teams, but each and every time stumbled in the playoffs.

9. Titans/Oilers. 0-1. The Oilers had the first two AFL titles but, alas, the Super Bowl was not played back then. Since then the team, like the Chargers, had fine teams but just couldn't get into the big game at all. (Do you think of that complete collapse against the eventual Super Bowl participants, the Bills, in like, 92 or 93? I always do.) The Titans made it in 2000 only to have Kevin Dyson come up an inch short of the goal line giving the Rams the win.

8. Bengals. 0-2. The only post-season success the Bengals have ever really had was in three of their many AFL/AFC years. One of them was a one-win-but-then-out, the other two they went the distance, right into the big game, only to face the 49ers each time. Each game was relatively close, but the Niners prevailed both times.

7. Bills. 0-4. Four straight trips to the Super Bowl, four straight defeats. The first was that narrow loss to the Giants on the Scott Norwood last-second FG miss, but the next three were utter debacles at the hands of the Redskins and Cowboys.

6. Jets. 1-0. Oooo! Wow! Jets legitimize the AFL! Wowwie wow-wow! But, that was way way way back in 1969, it was their only appearance ever. That's, oh, lessee, 40 years ago.

5. Chiefs. 1-1. The Chiefs win over the heavily favored Vikings the very next year was just as important as the Jets win because it proved it was not a fluke. In fact to the not-surprise of those who knew, the Chiefs were an exceptionally good team, and coach Hank Stram's game plan in the big game was one of the most ingenious ever. But as has been attested to in this blog, the Chiefs have pretty much shlurped ever since, at least as far as doing anything Super Bowl-wise.

4. Dolphins. 2-3. Yes, that's right, a 2-3 record. You'da thought that with the Dolphins so dominant in the early 70's they'da had 57 straight Super Bowl victories. But the year right after their undefeated season they beat the Vikings for a two-fer, and then after that, nada. Even Dan Marino's team got into only one, and in that one they got clobbered by those 49ers.

3. Raiders. 3-2. This team could easily be considered the best among the AFL teams in Super Bowl play. Their three wins were all convincing efforts, but the last of those was 26 years ago. (And, it really should be noted that the two Raiders losses were themselves convincing. This team has never been in a close Super Bowl contest.)

2. Broncos. 2-4. Put here at number two because their Super Bowl wins were some of the more recent among the AFLers. We still can't forget that the four losses that occurred before them were all some of the most embarrassing shellackings in Super Bowl history. Indeed the last of those four was a 55-10 slaughterhouse special at the hands of those, yet again, 49ers--the most lopsided loss ever in the history of the event.

1. Patriots. 3-3. Listed here as first because they've had the most recent wins among AFLers, three of four from 2002 to 2005. But before that, they too were generally pathetic up until they got there for the first time in 1986 whereupon, yes, they got mauled by the Bears in the second most lopsided score ever in a Super Bowl. While taking nothing away from the fine play of this team during their Super Bowl run, they did win each of those early 00's games, each one of them, by only a field goal. And need we say anything about the one game just a couple of years ago which they were supposed to win more than any other in Super Bowl history, the one in which they went in undefeated and then let the Giants squeak away with the win?

Now, is this pathetic or what? Really, look upon the horror, if you dare...

An overall 12-21 record in Super Bowls for this bunch encompassing the entirety of all of the 43 Super Bowls played so far (with no chance this year to improve on even that putridity). Only two of the ten have a winning record (the Jets and Raiders), six have a losing record. (Hey, at least the Chiefs are even. Whee.)

AFLers have a miserable five wins since the Raiders won in 1984. Just so you know, that's 26 years in all-- only five wins. And those by only two of the ten. Right after that 1984 win, by the way, AFL teams went on an eleven-game losing streak. Eleven straight, all lost by not just AFC teams but Ay-eff-ehl teams, every one of the them, six different teams in all.

And how about this one: If we say, for these purposes, a blowout is any victory of 13 or more points. Sure there could be argument about what really makes a blowout, but 13 would qualify as a good whupping. There have been 15 such losses by AFL teams, to only six of AFL teams over NFL/NFC teams. That means for every one time an AFL team really put it to their Super Bowl opponent, there have been three times that an AFL team has been blasted.

Wow. This is just amazing, the irony of all the celebrating about the AFL's beginning and all, and we're in the Super Bowl week with not an AFL team to be found. How about this thing called "The Super Bowl," the very term itself coined by none other than AFL founder Lamar Hunt.

All this tells me is that an AFL team is really really due to kick some Super Bowl butt, like, oh...

Hey! The Kansas City Chiefs! They're one of those teams! It's gotta be them!

Next year, it's the Revenge of the AFL! It can only be the Chiefs! The spirit of Lamar Hunt lives on!

Awright!
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