Miami – When the Super Bowl bash – with a “Latin Sizzle” – is staged tonight on Miami Beach, Tom Tancredo probably wouldn’t be welcome, but John Elway would.
A couple of Coloradans, one with his mouth and the other with his arm, have made a major impact in South Florida.
Tancredo, the Republican congressman who represents parts of Denver, said during a speech in mid-November at the posh Breakers resort in Palm Beach that Miami has become a “Third World country.”
Don’t blame this one on me.
Tancredo won’t be doing the salsa with Emmitt Smith today on South Beach.
Elway, who represented all of Colorado when he was quarterback of the Broncos, played his last professional game in South Florida eight years ago, winning his second Super Bowl and ending up as the game’s most valuable player.
Elway was dancing with the stars late into the night.
The Super Bowl hasn’t been back here since Elway and Tancredo left their lasting impressions in the sand.
I’m quite happy to be where it’s not snowing and where it’s happening.
This is my sixth straight Miami Super Bowl. In January of 1976 I saw Pittsburgh beat Dallas in a great, great Super Bowl (21-17), during which scenes of the movie “Black Sunday,” featuring Charlton Heston, were filmed.
It was about terrorists trying to blow up the Super Bowl, using a blimp loaded with a nuclear device. Little did we know.
I saw Pittsburgh beat Dallas 35-31 in a great, great Super Bowl in 1979.
I saw San Francisco beat Cincinnati 20-16 in a great, great Super Bowl in 1989.
I saw San Francisco beat San Diego 49-26 in an awful, awful Super Bowl in 1995, a couple of days after the 49ers offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan told me his team would blow out the Chargers. Shanahan also indicated he would be taking the Broncos’ head coaching job.
And I saw the Broncos, under Shanahan and with Elway, blow out the Atlanta Falcons 34-19 in 1999. The Falcons were coached by Shanahan’s and Elway’s ex-boss, Dan Reeves.
It has been an interesting time here.
I saw the Avalanche win Denver’s first major professional championship in 1996 when Uwe Krupp scored the only goal of the fourth Stanley Cup game in triple overtime against the Florida Panthers.
I saw Colorado lose to Notre Dame in the Jan. 1, 1990, Orange Bowl (21-6), but return the next year to defeat the Irish 10-9 (despite the loss of quarterback Darian Hagan to injury and because a clipping penalty was called on Notre Dame in the final moments to nullify a touchdown return by Rocket Ismail).
I saw Nebraska stand taller than ever in defeat when the No. 1-ranked Cornhuskers rallied from a 17-0 deficit in the Orange Bowl of the 1983 season and had a chance to tie Miami with an extra-point kick in the last minute. Instead, coach Tom Osborne, in one of the gutsiest moves ever (until Boise State), went for a two- point conversion, and the Huskers were just off, losing 31-30.
When I was in college I saw my school, Tennessee, lose to Oklahoma 26-24 in the 1968 Orange Bowl when the Volunteers’ kicker missed at the end of the game.
I saw two expansion teams, the Rockies and the Florida Marlins, play in their first season, 1993, at the same (football) stadium where Elway would finish his career.
I saw American Basketball Association games in the 1970s in the studio on Miami Beach where Jackie Gleason taped his show, and Johnny Neumann set the all-time assist record one night. I stayed in a decrepit hotel on what is now called South Beach for $18 a night, ate breakfast at Wolfie’s and met an old guy named Meyer Lansky.
My grandfather, my dad, my mom and my sister drove from Memphis to Miami Beach for our first vacation in the late 1950s. I’ve taken cruise ships out of Miami four times, eaten the stone crabs at my favorite restaurant in the world, Joe’s, two dozen times, spent the most money I’d ever have for a hotel room – a suite at the Fontainebleau (because James Bond stayed there in “Goldfinger”), smoked Cohibas and drank mojitos and danced at a Christine Aguilera concert on the beach off Ocean Boulevard.
I do love Miami for what all the different things it was in the 1950s, the ’60s, the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s and what it has become in the 2000s. I love Miami, Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Coconut Grove, Doral Country Club’s “Blue Monster,” Parrot Jungle, pink flamingoes, Cuban sandwiches, palm trees, the ocean, the Latin American flavor and everything there is about to love about life itself.
And I’m sure I’ll love the Super Bowl back in South Florida on Sunday.
Staff writer Woody Paige can be reached at 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com.
