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Points East
FINALLY, a memorable Super Bowl. Everybody will remember how Kurt Warner went from zero to hero, from Euroball bush leaguer to Super Bowl MVP in just a little longer than the gestation period of an elephant. Whodaguy saved
day for RamsEverybody will remember how Steve McNair almost gave Dick Vermeil something to really cry about, as he drove the Tennessee Titans down the field in the closing minutes in Montana style, only to come up a yard short.
Everybody will remember the arm that couldn't reach belonged to Kevin Dyson -- if only because it was Dyson who took the Hawaiian-style pass on a last-minute kickoff to the house so the Titans could beat the Bills in the playoffs.
But who will remember Mike Jones, and how he stopped Dyson short of a touchdown to win Super Bowl XXXIV by tackling the way they show on page 27 of "How to Play Football?"
Some Rams' fans and guys who know sports have already forgotten.
Ernie Goenaga, a manager at Players Sports and Entertainment Club, has been a Rams fan for 20 years. I asked him what the name Mike Jones meant to him.
"Absolutely nothing," he answered.
Gary Dickman, another Players manager, is a human encyclopedia when it comes to sports knowledge - if you listen to him on the radio as Bobby Curran's sidekick, you know this is true.
I asked Dickman who is Mike Jones and what bearing did he have on Sunday's Super Bowl.
"He's a defensive player," Dickman said. "I'm not sure if he's an end or tackle. Is he the guy who did the face mask near the end of the game?"
Keith Niebuhr, a sports website producer in New York, is a diehard who has been rooting for the team since it was in L.A.
"Do you know who made the game-saving tackle for the Rams?"
"Who cares? I don't know, but I want to marry him," answered Niebuhr, whose taste before this ran way more toward cheerleaders than linebackers.
Who is Mike Jones, anyway?
He is a 6-foot-4, 280-pound defensive tackle, a ninth-year NFL veteran out of North Carolina State . . . whoa, wait a minute - that's the other Mike Jones, the one who played for the Titans on Sunday. (He was a Ram in 1998, though. The Mike Joneses started 31 of a possible 32 games and combined for 153 St. Louis tackles in the 1998 season.)
The Mike Jones who will forever live in undeserved obscurity - the Mike Jones who won the Super Bowl for the St. Louis Rams - is actually a 6-1, 240-pound linebacker in his eighth NFL season who played his college ball at Missouri.
Jones was matter-of-fact after the game.
"I knew I was about at the 3 or the 2," he said. "And when he caught the ball, I knew he was short of the end zone by a couple of yards. I was right on top of him. I knew I had to get him down and that's what I did."
Jones was a running back for much of his Missouri career. He learned to play linebacker with the Sacramento Surge in the World League in 1992. Maybe if he had stayed on offense he would be more appreciated by the general public.
Nah - some pretty boy quarterback with the same name would just come along and steal the glory.
Just ask Curt Warner.
Dave Reardon, who covered sports in Hawaii
from 1977 to 1998, is a sportswriter at the
Gainesville Sun. E-mail reardod@gvillesun.com