The Super Bowl was getting a bad reputation. Most of the games in its 23-year history had failed to live up to even reasonable expectations and the last five had been complete blowouts. The San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals rematched their 1981 battle when they met in Miami and they finally gave the fans a game to remember, a terrific conclusion to the 1988 NFL playoffs.
Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of sports history articles aimed at preserving the best moments of the modern sports era, from 1976 to the present. The focus is team sports—college & pro basketball and football, major league baseball and hockey.
This article offers a snapshot of 1989 sports, a year that saw an amazing sequence of events unfold for Michigan basketball, the World Series marred by an earthquake and Wayne Gretzky changing sides
Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of sports history articles aimed at preserving the best moments of the modern sports era, from 1976 to the present. The focus is team sports—college & pro basketball and football, major league baseball and hockey. This article offers a snapshot of 1988 sports, a year that saw an epic college football clash with cultural overtones, an NBA guarantee made good and a great Super Bowl drive finally save face for America’s most popular sporting event.
Sports in San Francisco for the year 1989 was a time of great triumph overshadowed by greater tragedy. Nothing can make up for the loss of life that resulted from an October earthquake that happened right before Game 3 of the World Series. But just as the city of New Orleans found joy in the Saints as they recovered from Hurricane Katrina, so too could the San Francisco of 1989 look back on the Giants’ run to the National League pennant and look ahead to the 49ers drive for a second straight Super Bowl title and fourth in nine years. The Notebook looks back on both teams.