Tee Higgins' Super Bowl nothing like Bill Anderson's (which wasn't even super)
I wish Bill Anderson was still around this week to have a chat with Tee Higgins.
On Sunday in Los Angeles, Super Bowl LVI (56) will tether us to our TV screens. In a second straight Super Bowl without a former Tennessee Vol in uniform, Higgins, the Cincinnati Bengal from Oak Ridge, serves as the local rooting interest in the greatest of all American sporting extravaganzas.
Anderson, a 1950s UT star, was the first of 72 former Vols to make a Super Bowl Sunday, according to UT’s media guide. Higgins, a onetime UT commitment who ended up starring at Clemson, would have a hard time believing Anderson’s description of the original.
Of the 72 former Vols, 39 won Super Bowl victory rings. The most recent was Kansas City’s Dustin Colquitt in 2020.
Anderson got his on Jan. 15, 1967, a member of the Green Bay Packers, 35-10 winners over Kansas City in the Los Angeles Coliseum.
There was no Roman numeral yet. There wasn’t even a “Super” attached to the game. The official name was the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.
The mighty Packers of coach Vince Lombardi were expected to smash the Chiefs from the upstart AFL. Eventually they did, after a tight first half.
Anderson was a reserve tight end for Green Bay at the end of an NFL career that included two Pro Bowl appearances in his Washington Redskin days. A Vol teammate of Johnny Majors, he had retired from the NFL once already, serving as an assistant coach at UT in 1964 under Doug Dickey.
But Anderson wanted to give it another shot and landed on Green Bay’s 1965 and 1966 NFL champion teams. The first Super Bowl was his final game. By the 1968 season he debuted as color commentator on the Vol Network alongside John Ward, a post he manned through 1998.
Anderson died in 2017.
If he were here this week, he could tell Higgins how basic that first Super Bowl was.
Los Angeles wasn’t picked as the site until Dec. 1 — six weeks before kickoff. On game day, the 94,000-seat Coliseum was only two-thirds full, 33,000 tickets unsold. That, despite a local TV blackout.
The game was simulcast on CBS and NBC. The second-half kickoff was blown dead and re-kicked when it was learned the NBC feed had come back late from a commercial break.
There were two footballs, too. The Packers used a Wilson on offense, the Chiefs a Spalding.
The over-the-top halftime show was years away. Marching bands from the University of Arizona and Grambling State entertained, along with Al Hirt and his trumpet. Many pigeons and balloons were involved.
Green Bay quarterback Bart Starr was the MVP. The winning players got $15,000 each, the losers $7,500. Sunday’s winners will get about $150,000 each.
Through the years, Vols have been well represented, although not so much the past five games or so.
Five VFLs suited up when the Packers beat the Steelers in 2011 and five more in 2014 when Seattle beat Denver.
Bill Bates takes honors with three rings, all from Dallas wins in 1993, ’94 and ’96.
Peyton Manning is one of seven VFLs with two Super Bowl rings. The others are Craig Colquitt, Jack Reynolds, Mickey Marvin, Raleigh McKenzie, Alvin Harper and Marcus Nash.
Manning is tops with four Super Bowl appearances, two each with Indianapolis and Denver. No VFLs will be added to the list Sunday.
This is Higgins’ big day, back in the City of Angels. Los Angeles has changed in 55 years, but maybe not as much as the Super Bowl.
Mike Strange is a former writer for the News Sentinel. He currently writes a weekly sports column for Shopper News.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tee Higgins Bill Anderson Super Bowl 2022 AFL NFL World Championship Game 1967
