It's been 11 seasons since we had a Super Bowl in New Orleans. (Which is about 10 seasons too long.)
The game's return to the Crescent City naturally brings back memories of the last classic played in the Superdome. It was the day the New England Patriots' dynasty was born, and one of the biggest upsets in NFL history. (I'd argue it was the biggest upset. The New York Jets should not have been such big underdogs to the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.)
The losing team that day, of course, was the St. Louis Rams. Their best player, Marshall Faulk, still has strong feelings about how his team lost.
"Am I over the loss? Yeah, I'm over the loss," Faulk, now an NFL Network analyst, told Tom Curran of Comcast SportsNet New England. "But I'll never be over being cheated out of the Super Bowl. That's a different story. I can understand losing a Super Bowl, that's fine ...
"But how things happened and what took place. Obviously, the commissioner gets to handle things how he wants to handle them, but if they wanted us to shut up about what happened, show us the tapes. Don't burn 'em."
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell destroyed tapes of the Patriots videotaping sideline calls from the 2006 regular season and 2007 preseason. Goodell said at the time there was absolutely no truth to the accusation that the Patriots videotaped the Rams' walkthrough before the Super Bowl.
Fellow NFL Network analyst Willie McGinest doesn't buy into the accusation.
"If ... we had any extra information, then that game wouldn't have been as dramatic as it was, coming down to a field goal," McGinest said on WBZ-FM in Boston on Wednesday. "Trust me. It would have been a blowout."
Follow Gregg Rosenthal on Twitter @greggrosenthal.
