IRVING, Texas - Look, I've got a feeling a bunch of you out there are just miserable, and it's getting worse and worse as Super Bowl XLV approaches.

Now it's like bad enough this huge dream everyone seemed to have of the Dallas Cowboys becoming the very first team to participate in a Super Bowl in its own stadium turned into a veritable nightmare the first half of the season with the Cowboys wiping out whatever suspense there might have been with that gosh-awful 1-7 record.

But now this: These pictures of preparation taking place inside Cowboys Stadium with the east end zone now black and gold and STEELERS emblazoned within those all-important 10 yards, and the west one now green and gold with PACKERS taking up the vital 10 yards.

Like, could anything be worse for the Cowboy fan. The Steelers and Packers playing in the very first Super Bowl to come to North Texas, the Super Bowl gods dumping the coarsest of sea salt into the bitter wounds of this 2010 season of 6-10 that cost the head coach his job, sent several assistant coaches fleeing and possibly dumping some of the team's higher-profiled players into free agency once a CBA is finalized.

And not to mention giving Cowboys owner Jerry Jones an epidural-sized shot of humility, having to set his jaw while constantly answering questions about how disappointing it must be that his beloved Cowboys failed to create further history at Super Bowl XLV.

"I'd like to have been the first and only team ever to have played in their own (stadium in the) Super Bowl, but I knew the odds on that one," Jones said rather realistically, since no team had previously done so, not Miami, New Orleans, Houston, Atlanta, Arizona, Detroit, Minnesota, San Diego or Tampa Bay with the game being played in their own backyard. "But I saw the other day where there had been 15 years since the Packers had been, so I'm glad they're doing it at Cowboys Stadium. I'm proud of that (and) just what that game does represent.

"I heard last night about how the same team in the NFC hadn't been in there in 10 years. That's one that had slipped by me. I did notice the other teams on the (AFC) side, they had three quarterbacks that had been there all but one game and that was Oakland. Those three quarterbacks (Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Peyton Manning) have really dominated helping get those teams in the Super Bowl."

That the Cowboys are among that group of six NFC teams without a Super Bowl appearance now over the past 10 years (Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, San Francisco, Washington, Atlanta) adds a little more pain, now knowing that the dreaded Steelers, responsible for two of the Cowboys' Super Bowl defeats, will be on one sideline and the Packers, responsible for the Cowboys losing their first two NFL Championship games and falling short of advancing to the first two AFL-NFL World Championship Games as they were known then, will be on the other.

So imagine how Roger Staubach feels, and you know how competitive he is - still - because as chairman of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee he has been chosen to present the Lombardi Trophy to the winning team after the game, meaning either the dreaded Steelers or the Packers. He says he can do it, but with some hesitation if the Steelers are the grabby ones.

"It would be real interesting if it were the Steelers," Staubach said with an uncomfortable laugh prior to the conference championship games, acting as if he would hang on to the trophy just a little bit longer before giving it up. "I would be, uh . . . be glad to do that. It might be a little . . . ."

So yeah, we understand your pain, Roger.

But come on, dwell too long on the negatives and you forget to live life - will fail to enjoy watching the first Super Bowl ever to be played at a Cowboys stadium, certainly an historic event you won't forget, and certainly neither will the millions of people here in North Texas, many of whom have worked so hard to not only gain the Super Bowl bid, but facilitate next week's extravaganza.

So to help ease your pain, and since we're talking about the first Super Bowl to be held in North Texas anyway, here is a little story from the very first Super Bowl, then called the World Championship Game, AFL-NFL, the Green Bay Packers of the NFL meeting the Kansas City Chiefs of the rival AFL, and yes, owned by Lamar Hunt, who broke into professional football with the Dallas Texans in 1960, and sharing the Cotton Bowl and the local fan base with the Cowboys.

The game was being played at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, capable of seating 93,000, but only 61,946 people attended, paying all of $10 a ticket. Can you imagine for that price 30,000 empty seats for what is now known as a Super Bowl? The date for this historic event was Jan. 15, 1967.

So this story comes thanks to Pat Summerall, the venerable announcer working for CBS at the time, the network holding the television rights to NFL games. Rights to the AFL games belonged to NBC, and since this game was seen as somewhat of a grudge match between the then competing leagues, the networks agreed to simulcast the game each using its own announcers, with both crews off the CBS camera feed.

Kurt Gowdy and Paul Christman were the NBC TV announcers. For CBS, it was Ray Scott, Jack Whitaker, Frank Gifford and Summerall, working the very first of his 26 Super Bowls as either a television or radio announcer - 10 on radio, 16 on TV. Gosh, I was still in junior high, but remember watching the game, on pins and needles for sure since even though I grew up in Chicago, dad and I were Green Bay Packers fans. Probably had something to do with a guy by the name of Lombardi being the head coach.

Anyway, the game was huge, the NFL trying to defend its superiority against the upstart AFL, sort of the non-BCS automatic qualifier team of its day. All meaning the pressure was on Vince Lombardi and the Packers to uphold the integrity of the NFL. After all, the Packers had just won their second straight NFL title, and the fourth in six years. Tense day for all involved.

To the shock of many, the Packers led only 14-10 at halftime. Summerall recalls being in the booth for the first half, with Gifford on the sideline, and the two switched places for the second half, Summerall getting in position to handle sideline duties. He's on headset for the second half, Green Bay kicking to the Chiefs, and well, let him tell you the rest of the story:

"When I went to the sideline, first thing I heard was, 'Ask Coach Lombardi if he would mind kicking off again because NBC missed the second-half kickoff.'"

Say what? Summerall, then 36 years old and just embarking on what would be a fabled television career, was flabbergasted. Evidently NBC still was in commercial when the Packers kicked off, a glitch in the simulcast. Some request, right?

Well, Summerall knew better. He was the New York Giants kicker in 1958, Lombardi's final season as offensive coordinator before moving on to become the Packers head coach in 1959. He knew how incorrigible and bombastic Lombardi could be. Plus, Summerall already had heard Gifford's pre-game report about how up-tight Lombardi was before the game.

So even though the CBS guys figured Summerall's relationship with Lombardi would grease such an unreasonable request, the former NFL player remembers saying to himself, "This is the end of my sideline reporting because I'm not about to ask Coach Lombardi that." Like, were they kidding? Ask Lombardi to do what again? Kick off?

But lo' and behold, the game was stopped, and the Packers were lining up to kick off a second time, actually restarting the second half for of all things, TV.

"Somebody from NBC came down and asked him," Summerall says. "I don't know who did it, but it wasn't me."

And you undoubtedly know the rest of the story, the Packers upholding the NFL's perceived superiority, defeating the Chiefs, 35-10, and would go on to win the second World Championship Game, beating the Oakland Raiders, 33-14, the following season. Not until the third World Championship Game did the AFL break through, the New York Jets beating the Baltimore Colts, 16-9, behind Jets quarterback Joe Namath, the game's MVP, and the 121 yards rushing by Matt Snell, who should have been the game's MVP.

The AFL's victory help forge the final steps of the NFL-AFL merger, where the leagues came together in 1970 under the NFL umbrella and the game, thanks to Hunt and his wife Norma Hunt, finally became known as Super Bowl IV. Norma will be attending Super Bowl XLV at Cowboys Stadium next Sunday, her 45th, and is the only known female to attend every one of the Super Bowl games. This will be the first time she doesn't have to travel afar to attend a Super Bowl.

My, my, the game has come a long, long way, from $10 tickets back then to $600-$1,200 face value 44 years later; from 30,000 empty seats back then to manufacturing more seating so a potential record crowd of 105,000 can attend; from the Packers earning an extra $15,000 back then to next Sunday's winners each pocketing $83,000; from the University of Arizona and Michigan marching bands providing the halftime entertainment back then to next Sunday's Black Eyed Peas.

And now, from the first 14 Super Bowls that were played in either warm-weather cities or the Louisiana Superdome all the way to North Texas . . . finally.

Come on now, smile . . . and enjoy.

DallasCowboys.com wrote: