TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -The thought of the Pittsburgh Steelers owning more Super Bowl titles than the Dallas Cowboys doesn’t sit well with Roger Staubach. So the Hall of Famer likes the Arizona Cardinals in Sunday’s NFL championship game.
The Steelers and the Cowboys both have won a record five titles, and the former Dallas quarterback would just as soon it remain that way – at least for now.
The Cowboys won two Super Bowls in the 1970s with Staubach leading the way, but also lost twice to Pittsburgh in the title game that decade.
“We beat the Steelers, too, by the way. Of course I wasn’t on the team, but the Cowboys did,” Staubach said, referring to Dallas finishing the 1995 season with a 27-17 victory over Pittsburgh.
The Cowboys have not been back to the Super Bowl since.
rt of North Texas Super Bowl host committee that’s planning for the 2011 game, which will be played in the new Cowboys stadium.
“I really respect the Steelers. I grew up in Ohio. I’m a Midwest guy. … But I’m not in love with them. You know? We lost twice to them. So I’m pulling for the Cardinals, and they’re an NFC team, too.”
Staubach said efforts to raise private money for the 2011 game are progressing well and that so far the sagging economy has not hindered fundraising or forced the North Texas host committee to scale back.
“We’re in pretty darn good shape. Our goal is to get 15 founding sponsors. We have eight and we’ve got prospects, hopefully, for the other seven,” he said. “Those are million dollar sponsors, and they have a lot of good benefits.”
Next year’s Super Bowl will be played in Miami, a week after the Pro Bowl, also scheduled for Dolphin Stadium. There’s been speculation that if shifting the annual all-star game from Honolulu to South Florida is a success, the NFL might consider holding it at the site of the Super Bowl every year.
Staubach knows of no plan to continue the experiment in Dallas in 2011.
i next year to see how it works out. I’m glad we’re not the first year. At least we’ll have Miami to look at.”
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WALSH HONORED: The NFL’s minority coaching internship program was the brainchild of the late Bill Walsh, and the league decided to honor the Hall of Fame coach by re-naming it the Bill Walsh NFL Minority Coaching Fellowship.
More than 1,300 minority coaches, including four current head coaches, have participated in the program Walsh introduced to the league during San Francisco’s training camp in 1987.
Every team participates today. Last summer, clubs invited a record 90 coaches to camps around the league.
“Bill Walsh is known for his coaching tree that produced many NFL coaches, such as Tony Dungy, Mike Holmgren and Dennis Green,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. “But that tree has even more branches because of Bill’s initiation of the minority internship. That is why the program will now bear his name.”
Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin, whose Steelers face the Arizona Cardinals in Sunday’s Super Bowl, is one of four active head coaches who are graduates of the internship program. Chicago’s Lovie Smith, Cincinnati’s Marvin Lewis and Tampa Bay’s Raheem Morris are the others.
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ll, becoming the most prolific athlete yet to partner with the energy drink maker.
The partnership was announced Thursday in Tampa as part of the Super Bowl festivities. Red Bull’s jet ski team performed, and Bush flew over Raymond James Stadium in a sea plane.
Before Bush’s signing, Red Bull’s sponsored athletes consisted mostly of competitors from nontraditional sports. Red Bull’s current roster includes NASCAR drivers Brian Vickers and Scott Speed; Olympic beach volleyball gold medalists Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser; motocross champion James Stewart; and X Games champion Shaun White.
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WORDWIDE COVERAGE: Sunday’s game will be televised in 230 countries and territories in 34 languages.
The NFL said 15 countries – Canada (CTV), China (Shanghai Media Group), Belgium (Telenet), Brazil (ESPN International), Denmark (Viasat), France (France 2), Germany (ARD), Hungary (Sport 1), Italy (RAI), Japan (NHK, Nippon Television), Latin America (FOX), Mexico (Televisa, TV Azteca), Russia (NTV Plus), Spain (Canal Plus, Cadena Ser), and the United Kingdom (BSkyB, BBC TV) – will cover on site at Raymond James Stadium.
Meanwhile, the English world feed will be translated into 33 languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian, Chinese Cantonese, Chinese Mandarin, Czech, Croatian, Danish, Finish, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Montenegrin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Taiwanese Mandarin, Thai, Turkish.
The American Sports Network in Asia will provide the world feed to Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.
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JUST IN CASE: The big game is still days away, but a few thousand people are already winners: the staff and students of the Pittsburgh Public Schools system.
Superintendent Mark Roosevelt says the district will delay classes by two hours on Monday morning in hopes of reducing absenteeism the day after the game.
City school officials did the same thing the day after the Steelers won the Super Bowl three years ago.
The district normally reserves the two-hour delay for weather conditions that make it difficult to get to school.
A statement by the district says the delay is being used “for the safety of our students.”
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NFL LEGENDS: Many of the 100 former NFL players who attended Mike Ditka’s Gridiron Greats Dinner of Champions filed into the Super Bowl media center Thursday for a news conference to raise awareness of the effort to improve pension benefits for retired players.
ones, Deacon Jones, Lem Barney, Jim Hart, Mel Renfro, Dwight Harrison, Robert Brown, Rocky Bleier and Michael Irvin.
The plight of retired players also has caught the attention of Minnesota’s Matt Birk, who is working with Gridiron Greats to educate and generate support among other current players.
“I look at this problem that’s facing some retired players, and it’s a problem that shouldn’t exist because of the financial success of the league today,” Birk said.
“It’s important, as we go forward, to remember those who built this game up. … The game isn’t as big and successful as it is today because we showed up. It’s obviously taken a long time, generations, to get to this point. Our voice isn’t as loud as it should be, but there are current players out there who care about taking care of retired players, first and foremost because it’s the right thing to do. There is a debt of gratitude that needs to be repaid.”
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