The super bowl: big game, bigger party.(Brief Article)(Excerpt)

In 1972, my father was certain the Redskins would go to the Super Bowl. Before the season even began, he had designed a Super Bowl VII ring: a square ruby stone, inlaid with a gold Redskins medallion, around which were 14 diamonds (one for each regular-season game) all set in 18 karat gold. My father hung a design o] the Super Bowl VII ring in the trainer's room at Redskin Park. The trainer's room was where players were mended on cold metal tables. As a trainer assessed and tried to repair the damage with ice, tape and needles, the player could look up and see the ring as a kind of golden carrot at the end of a long season of torn Achilles' tendons, pulled muscles and separated joints."

It's Jennifer Allen's writing.

She's George Allen's daughter.

In Fifth Quarter, her sweet, aching, comic memoir of growing up with a father for whom coaching football truly was life, she goes on ...

"My father also left samples of the women's Super Bowl jewelry for us to see on the kitchen table. Daintier in design, sporting only one diamond, the ring was suitable for a wife's little finger. A bracelet with a gold charm of a Redskins headdress was suitable for a daughter. With these jewels, my father was trying to motivate everyone."

Thinking here of George Allen, again.

Walter Cronkite believes the wonderful thing about the Super Bowl is that so many people can get together in common cause for "something that means absolutely nothing." As wise as Uncle Walter always is, he must know nothing about any football coach. To say the game means nothing is to say the Lombardis and Landrys, the Shanahans and Johnsons, do work that is meaningless.