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Day 2: The Daily News' Stan Hochman at Super Bowl I

The late Daily News columnist Stan Hochman covered Super Bowl I, Jan. 15, 1967 in Los Angeles.

By Stan Hochman

Philadelphia Daily News

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — They called him Golden Boy. He came out of Notre Dame, which is a very glamorous school to come out of. And when he started doing wonderful things for the Green Bay Packers, he swaggered through the limelight like a man who enjoys it.

They wrapped him with a year's suspension for betting, but the charm of the man is so intense, people trampled each other to be the first to forgive him. He has played for the last six years with a left arm that goes lifeless when he is hit a certain way. The numbness comes and goes. The last two months he hardly played at all. Elijah Pitts was doing the job and Vince Lombardi is supposed to rank sentiment only slightly ahead of treason.

On Sunday, though, the Packers will be involved in the richest game of them all. They play Kansas City at the Coliseum, which may go down in the history of the sport as the Half-Empty Bowl. The winners get $15,000 a man, the losers get $7,500. It is the kind of ante that suits the Golden Boy's talents and Lombardi might just throw away that grumpy mask and start Hornung.

"I've been asked it so many times," Lombardi said yesterday at lunch. "All I can say is that I won't know until Sunday morning who will start. Pitts has played very well. But I am a great hunch player."

There was that game in Baltimore a few years ago," Lombardi reminded people. "Hornung hadn't played much, but I started him and he scored five touchdowns in one game.

"He's an outstanding young man. I know he gives the impression of being flippant but he's a fine competitor. I'm proud to have him as a Packer.

"The game will dictate who starts. He may be our best pass receiver as far as running patterns. He reads defenses better than anyone I know."

It isn't a promise, but it is a clue. If Kansas City elects to stack its defenses to blunt Green Bay's trademark sweeps, perhaps Hornung can be used as a pass receiver to bedevil the linebackers. The trouble with that approach is that Hornung cannot catch too many passes with one arm dangling in pain. "The arm goes numb and I don't have too much mobility," he said. "Sometimes it goes away in a minute, but I got it pretty good in Chicago."

He tested it in combat against the Rams on Dec. 18, carrying five times for 19 yards. "I took some pretty good shots," he said. "Naturally, you want to play. But if the arm isn't 100 percent I'd have to carry the ball in my right arm all the time. I wanted to play against Dallas, but Elijah has done such a fine job, you just don't take him out."

He doesn't sound like a man who will badger Lombardi for a start on Sunday, which may be what the shrewd coach is waiting for. "I've had guys bug me on the sidelines about getting in," Lombardi said. "I've put them in and they've done well. Hornung, though, is an asset to the team even when he's not playing."

It is a side of the Golden Boy that few people know about. "He constantly studies the defenses," quarterback Bart Starr said later on, sitting near the motel pool. "He's always alert for something that will help the club.

"I don't know how many times he's come back to the huddle and said, 'I can beat this guy on such-and-such a route.' Or he'll suggest a play and say to make sure the block goes a certain way because of the way the defender is coming. "Paul Hornung is a great competitor. It's been a great experience to play with him."

It sounds as though Starr would like to have Hornung back there with him for the richest game of them all, one final golden fling for the Golden Boy.

............................................

By Stan Hochman

Philadelphia Daily News

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — There was that one year coach Vince Lombardi got up at a team meeting, growling with exasperation. "I can't understand," he said, "how you can make so many mistakes. We have a simple offense . . . designed for simple-minded people."

Bart Starr, who quarterbacks that simple offense for Green Bay, told the story yesterday, lounging near the shimmering little pool of the Santa Barbara Inn. On Sunday, the Packers play Kansas City in that great football game in the sky.

The winners get $15,000 apiece. The losers get $7,500.

If it is true that the Eagles grumbled when Jack Concannon's intercepted pass led to a loss that cost them $700 apiece, then must not Starr's dreams be haunted by thoughts of an interception that could cost his teammates $7,500 each?

"You don't think in terms like that," he said. "You think positive. If it happened I'd have to think I'd let them down. I'd be awfully sorry. But I'd like to think that no one on this team would grumble. We think in terms of 40 people. We win and lose as a team."

"The thought of the money won't affect the way we play," Lombardi said earlier. "If guys grumbled, I'd think we'd be a pretty poor football team. As a matter of fact, we'd be a pretty poor group."

It is not hard for Starr to think positively. He has a fantastic championship game record. In five title games he has completed 69 of 118 passes and had only one snatched by the enemy. No one belittles the figures by suggesting that Starr swallows the football rather than launch it into a crowd.

Option Passes with Several Receivers

"Our passing attack is different than most peoples'," Lombardi explained. "Lots of teams, the passer  goes back, one receiver goes out. He lets it go or he eats it.

"We have option passes with three or four receivers. It takes a real fine quarterback to read the defenses. He doesn't look here, then there, then there. He reads the defenses as he goes back. Sometimes he reads the linebacker, sometimes the safety, sometimes the cornerback. "Knowing the defenses, he knows which receiver should be open."

It does not sound very simple and it is not. Starr did not master it in three weeks. "The more you play," he remembered, "the more things start to fall into place. You grow in poise and self-confidence. The only way to gain that is to succeed.

"Football is a great game of cat-and-mouse. The defenses throw something at you to defeat something you do. If it does stymie it, you have to find something not as strong in their defense. There are days when the defense guesses right more often than you do. They happen. They're frustrating."

"Defense," Lombardi said clinically, "is nothing but play recognition. The more you see something, the quicker you recognize it and the quicker you defend against it. We have passed more and run our sweep less because of the defenses.

"Starr has always been a great passer. I don't know how the story got out that he couldn't throw long.  He's had more bombs this year than any quarterback in the league. What was it, 12-or-16 of them over 50 yards? Far be it for me to argue with people who write that he can't throw long."

Only 3 Interceptions During Season

Starr threw 251 passes during the season, some long and some short, and only three were intercepted. He has to remind people that it is a team game when they flutter around him with praise.

"People don't realize how much help a quarterback gets from the players that surround him," he said. "Not just the pass blocking, but the help he gets from receivers who can see things he can't. It's probably true that the quarterback gets too much credit when the team wins."

If he doesn't seek the credit, he does not flinch at shring the blame for a loss. And he will not see dollar signs in the defensive backfield when he goes back to pass on Sunday.

"The money was an added incentive for us to get here," he said. "Whoo, what an incentive. But once we got here, we're so busy with the preparation and procedure that the money factor is secondary. We just don't have time to think about it.

"We just might wake up Monday morning and realize it, but right now, nobody's thinking about it."