Chiefs-49ers? Blah. Detroit in it is the Super Bowl America wanted, the one that got away | Opinion

The NFL’s AFC and NFC championship games were going to deliver a good Super Bowl matchup no matter the results on Sunday — and did. We’re not here to complain (much) about what we got. Chiefs and 49ers is fine, and we will get to that in a minute.

First, though, we are here to lament the one that got away, the one Super Bowl dreams are made of: Ravens and Lions.

Actually, Lions and anybody.

Detroit last won an NFL championship before the Super Bowl existed, which is sports tantamount to prehistoric times. The Cretaceous Period, perhaps. It was 1957. Anything that almost predates the birth of me is officially ancient. Those Lions had a player named Hopalong Cassady. Bobby Layne was the star quarterback and also kicked extra points. I believe his helmet was the shell of a box turtle.

In the annals of our longest standing big four sports leagues — MLB, NHL, NFL and NBA — only baseball’s Cleveland Guardians-nee-Indians, who last reigned in 1948, have a longer current championship drought than Detroit’s 67 years.

(The Miami Dolphins’ title drought dating to 1973 marked its 50th year this season. Happy anniversary! Except Clevelanders and Detroiters are heckling that whippersnapper Dolfans have nothing to cry about.)

Yes, had they all followed the script: Here came kneecap-eating coach Dan Campbell to lift a franchise, a city and its starved fans along with the unexpected career rescue by a once-discarded Jared Goff! Eminem was poised to be a somehow street-grittier Taylor Swift. Flashbacks to Barry Sanders would have come in a torrent. And of course the tender interviews with the boy who attended that ‘57 game and is now a weeping 81-year-old who cannot believe he lived to see the day.

And riding sidecar to the dreamy narrative of Detroit in a Super Bowl would have been Lamar Jackson cast as the villain trying to deny Lions fans as he sought to cement his own Hall of Fame-headed path with an elusive first Super Bowl ring.

Instead Jackson’s Ravens fell 17-10 at Baltimore and then Detroit did the most Detroit thing ever, blowing a 24-7 lead in the third quarter and somehow losing 34-31 at San Francisco. That was at least partly because Dan Campbell kneecapped his own team by being stupid-brave on fourth-and-short and failing twice in the fourth quarter, leaving an easy six points on the field.

A pass caromed off a Lions defender’s helmet for a long Niners catch. There were dropped passes. Jahmyr Gibbs’ fumble really hurt. But it was Campbell’s fourth-quarter decisions costing his team six points that will simmer in infamy.

Detroit in a Super Bowl would quite literally have been once-in-a-lifetime stuff, the kind of story that is the very best sports can offer. Damn you, Dan. Damn you, fate.

So we settle for Chiefs and 49ers on Feb. 11 in Las Vegas.

San Francisco has not won a Super Bowl since 1994, the 11th-longest drought in the league, but nobody cares outside of that city. Even in it, you never think 49ers when the topic is greatest fans. The team and coach Kyle Shanahan are corporate-efficient, somewhat boring in their excellence. The quarterback, Brock Purdy, was the last pick of the 2022 Draft; neat story. Also, he has the last name of a Saturday morning cartoon character.

The only people outside of San Fran rooting for the 49ers in this Super Bowl will be people cheering for the bets they placed ... and people who are tired of the Kansas City Chiefs — a number that is legion.

Chiefs are in their fourth Super Bowl in the past five years and won the last one. K.C. being back yet again is boring. A rewind.

Patrick Mahomes with his TV commercials — past it. Jason Kelce and his brother and their mother — spare us. Andy Reid and his portly charm — enough! (Expected media narrative I’m already sick of: Would Mahomes winning a third SB crown put him in the G.O.A.T. company of Tom Brady?)

And don’t even get me started on Kelce’s BFF Taylor Swift up in a suite cheering! (Although I do have the “over” on 5 1/2 on a prop bet for CBS showing that during the Super Bowl, so if they are going to show Swift up there a lot, at least make it an awful lot!)

Chiefs-49ers is a near pick-’em game. And it could be great football, don’t get me wrong. It’s a Super Bowl rematch from four years ago, so there’s that, too.

But the matchup is not as broadly compelling or with the universal emotional underdog appeal as the Super Bowl we almost had, the one that got away.

The one with Detroit in it.