Hog Day Afternoon

Hog Day Afternoon
by Rob Holecko

We resume our look back at past Super Bowls that we are adding to our database by taking a look at Super Bowl XVII.  Super Bowl XVII was played on January 30, 1983.  This was the latest a Super Bowl had ever been played.  The players' strike had resulted in a loss of seven weeks of games during the season and the ninth and final week of regular season games were played in the first weekend of January.  With teams playing shortened schedules, not all teams played the same amount of divisional games, so they abandoned divisions and just seeded the top 8 teams in each conference 1-8 and played a sixteen-team tournament, with the Championship being Super Bowl XVII.

The Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins reached this game, and the 'Skins rushing attack of John Riggins behind one of the greatest offensive lines ever, known as the "Hogs", and also led by QB Joe Theismann and season MVP K Mark Moseley, won the game 27-17, with Riggins breaking for a touchdown on a key fourth down late in the game.

We are proud to add this game to our database.

Two later Super Bowls were also played on January 30, in 1994, the Dallas Cowboys won their second of two back-to-back championships, beating the Buffalo Bills in Atlanta for the second year in a row in Super Bowl XXVIII

Six years after that, the St. Louis Rams culminated their fantastic 1999 season, also in Atlanta, by stopping Kevin Dyson one yard short of the end zone and defeating the Tennessee Titans 23-16 in Super Bowl XXXIV.

These Super Bowls also are now in our database.

And now, we are also proud to debut a new segment that will run all week leading up to the Super Bowl.  It's a daily Super Bowl trivia question brought to you by our website historian, Tim Brulia.  It's called, "Do You Know As Much As Timmy B?"  Here's Tim with the first question:

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What four instances did the "home" team of the Super Bowl NOT wear the home jersey that they normally wore that season? Bonus: can you tell me why?

Put your guesses in the comments and look for the correct answer and another question tomorrow!

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Well, we'll be back tomorrow with more exciting Super Bowl related content, including another trivia question and Tuesday is also Media Day, and we'll be unveiling here in the blog the uniforms the Giants and Patriots will be taking the field in Sunday.