San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Scott Ostler: 49ers were there just a year ago.
One year ago at the Super Bowl, my biggest challenge was finding the media entrance to Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, which is harder to get into than a PBS documentary on mimes.
Chronicle sidekick Ron Kroichick and I slogged around and around the Stadium in the 137% humidity, looking for the secret entrance. Considering how the day turned out for the team we had come to cover, we should have given up and gone back to the hotel and sat by the pool, keeping a sharp eye out for iguanas and Burmese pythons.
The point is, can you believe that was only one year ago?
We’ve learned a lot in the last 12 months, haven’t we? Don’t stare at me blankly. We learned a lot, such as: Pandemics suck. Super Bowl LIV was on Feb. 2, two days after the White House declared COVID19 a public health emergency. The first U.S. case of the virus had been reported a week earlier, and even though our president assured us that nobody else would get sick, there was growing concern that before the virus could be stopped, hundreds of Americans might be sickened and dozens might die.
If I could go back a year, I could do a Paul Revere, roll my Super Bowl program into a megaphone, lean out of the press box in Miami and bellow, “Run, everybody! Cover your faces and run for your lives, and don’t touch anything, ever!” Dance with who brought you.
Raheem Mostert didn’t run with the ball until midway through the second quarter, and finished with just 12 carries for 58 yards. The Chiefs couldn’t stop the 49ers’ running game, but Kyle Shanahan could.
Football games are more fun and exciting with real people in the stands. Cardboard fans, pipedin crowd noise? Yeah, no. Who knew that game a year ago was featuring the last packed NFL stadium of 2020?
One thing we learned in the past year: That tomahawk chopandchant by Chiefs’ fans needs to be retired to the Museum of Bad Ideas. Patrick Mahomes isn’t just a onequarter wonder. The 49ers surely take some solace that Mahomes followed up his Super Bowl lategame heroics by carving up the NFL in 2020 like a brain surgeon with a chainsaw. Human interaction can be fun.
One of the cool things about covering a winning team is the process of getting to know the players, through inperson interviews and casual discussions.
In 2020, every team, winners and losers, was reduced to a procession of faces in little boxes on laptop screens. You gotta go for the gusto. Just before halftime, the 49ers reeled off five consecutive plays of 10 yards or more, then elected to let time run out rather than try for another score.
That gave the Chiefs a shot in the arm. “Shot in the arm” doesn’t mean what it did a year ago. Never look at your work and think, “OK, I’m in pretty good shape here.” With the fourth quarter half over, I was halfway to a Pulitzer for my game column on the 49ers’ return to world domination.
Rewriting at warp speed, I felt like a waiter at the French Laundry frantically scooping up the plate of food I just dropped, hoping the diners wouldn’t notice. 49ers dynasties aren’t what they used to be.
That Super Bowl was just the start! The 49ers had gone from 412 the previous season to 133 and a Super Bowl, and it was no fluke. Shanahan was a genius. Poets told of the emergence of Jimmy Garoppolo. And why not? Kyle and Jimmy G were really, really good ... for 183⁄4 games. Football is a stupid game.
The brutality and injury rate are part of the game’s charm, but c’mon, football gods. Travel will never be the same.
We have learned that the air in an airplane cabin is a teeming aquarium of evil microbes. Forget about a mask, I’ll never fly again without a full deepsea diving helmet. Nothing is permanent, not even the location of major American cities.
After the game, the president of the United States tweeted congratulations to the “victorious Kansas City Chiefs and their fans in the great state of Kansas.” A loss can be a win.
The coronavirus was just smacking America, and it was hitting the big coastal cities first and hardest. Had the 49ers won and held their parade down Market Street, that mass gathering might have become an early superspreader event. Levi’s Stadium can be a house of hope. The 49ers and Santa Clara are hosting mass vaccinations. Sometimes bumpertobumper traffic can be a blessing.
If the 49ers and Santa Clara can work together for the good of humanity, there is hope for the world.