Sports Watch

By Bill Kwon

Monday, February 3, 1997

Game needed kick-start,
then wouldn’t end

TALK about a warped sense of humor.

It's one thing that the Pro Bowl - the last football game of the season - went into overtime, extending the year a little longer. "I couldn't believe we were going into overtime," said Green Bay's Reggie White, who played in his record-tying 10th Pro Bowl.

It's even more of a trip that the most talked about field goal wasn't the one that gave the AFC its 26-23 victory over the NFC.

Cary Blanchard's 37-yard field goal 8:16 into overtime gave the AFC the bragging rights in the NFL all-star game. But the sellout crowd of 50,031 fans at Aloha Stadium yesterday was still buzzing about the 35-yarder that an investment banker from New York booted through the uprights to win a million dollars at halftime.

For a while, Lance Alstodt, 26, looked like the best kicker in the house as Blanchard of the Indianapolis Colts and his NFC counterpart, Carolina's John Kasay, kept missing field goals that could have won it for their teams.

The irony of it, too, is that Kasay had given Alstodt a few pointers earlier in the week.

Kasay missed on attempts of 40 and 39 yards in the fourth quarter. Blanchard then failed on a 41-yarder on the AFC's first possession in overtime before redeeming himself with the game-winner.

Both coaches - Carolina's Dom Capers of the NFC and Jacksonville's Tom Coughlin of the AFC - were probably trying to find out where Alstodt was sitting in order to give him a tryout - on the spot.

AFTER all, both Pro Bowl kickers couldn't buy a field goal yesterday. And to think Kasay even tried a 66-yarder, which must be some kind of record for optimism.

The erratic kicking created emotional rollercoaster rides for both teams, who were playing more for pride than the $10,000 difference between winning and losing. Each member of the victorious AFC team got $20,000.

While the kickers had their problems, the NFL's best came up with some big plays after a slow-starting first half in which the NFC took a 9-3 lead behind Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre, who sat out the rest of the game after playing the first three series.

Ashley Ambrose became the first Cincinnati Bengal to score in the Pro Bowl when he intercepted a Kerry Collins pass and returned it 54 yards for a touchdown to give the AFC a

16-15 lead to start the fourth quarter. It was the Pro Bowl's longest scoring interception.

Washington's Gus Frerotte hit Minnesota's Cris Carter for a 53-yard scoring strike and a two-point conversion by Frerotte to Wesley Walls put the NFC up again, 23-16.

Then Jacksonville's Mark Brunell, the game's MVP, took charge ala John Elway, whom he was replacing on the AFC team.

FIRST, Brunell teamed with Oakland's Tim Brown on an 80-yard touchdown with 44 seconds left in regulation to send the game into OT. Then the scrambling Brunell avoided the grasp of Minnesota's John Randle and found New England's Ben Coates for a 43-yard completion that set up Blanchard's winning field.

The question arose: OT or not OT.

There were a few noticeable groans among the players when Coughlin decided to kick the extra point to send the game into sudden death instead of going for two and the win.

"It crossed my mind. I was tempted to end it right there," Coughlin said. "But I didn't want to put a game played hard as that was played to have it come down to one play."

And so they played on and the fans who stuck around enjoyed the bonus.

It was the second overtime game in Pro Bowl history. The first was in 1993 and the AFC won that one, too.