Fifty years later, one particular image from the first Super Bowl remains etched in Bud Lamoreaux’s memory, and it wasn’t of legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi or any of his players.
Working as a producer for the CBS News team assigned to the historic event, Lamoreaux’s eyes were scanning the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum crowd when they came upon then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle sitting in his booth.
“He was watching the game on television,” Lamoreaux was saying last week, when we spent more than an hour talking on the back porch of his Vero Beach home about his 40-plus years at CBS, where he worked with Walter Cronkite, Charles Kuralt, Roger Mudd and Harry Reasoner.
“Right then and there, I knew – from the way he was fixated on that TV screen – that Rozelle knew television was going to make this game into something big,” he added. “I didn’t know how big or how they were going to do it, but we caught that picture on film and I’ve never forgotten it.
“Nobody, though, could’ve imagined the Super Bowl would become what it is today.”
It would have been difficult, indeed, for anyone connected with what was then billed “The AFL-NFL Championship Game” to predict what has happened since: The Super Bowl, an annual football festival so grand that it’s marked by Roman numerals, has become the most celebrated sports event in America.
When Super Bowl LI kicks off Sunday night in Houston, more than 160 million people worldwide – including 110 million viewers in the U.S. – are expected to watch the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons play for the NFL championship.
And it’s only fitting that, for the Super Bowl’s golden anniversary, advertisers are paying $5 million for a 30-second TV commercial and online brokers are selling tickets for an average price in excess of $4,500.
“That’s a long way from where it started,” Lamoreaux said. “That first game in ’67, Los Angeles treated it like an unwanted stepchild. Tickets were selling for $10, $12 and $15, and people thought they were overpriced.
“I’ll never forget the headquarters hotel,” he added. “It was a nondescript Marriott in downtown L.A., and the marquee out front had no mention of the AFL or NFL or the game. The sign welcomed some machinist union that was having a meeting there.”
Lamoreaux chuckled, then continued.
“A few days before the game, I was riding around town, trying to find some semblance of Super Bowl fever,” he said. “I remember seeing the city buses, which you’d think would have been used to advertise the game. Instead, they were promoting horse racing at Santa Anita.
“Nobody seemed to have much interest.”
Two years later, Lamoreaux found himself in Miami at the third of the seven Super Bowls he would cover, and this time plenty of people were paying attention. Joe Namath made sure of it.
The New York Jets’ star quarterback ignored the oddsmakers, who made the AFL champions an 18-point underdog to the NFL’s Baltimore Colts, and boldly guaranteed his team would win. The future Hall of Famer then backed up his boast, earning Most Valuable Player honors after leading the Jets to a 16-7 victory that still ranks among the most stunning upsets in sports history.
“I was standing right behind the Baltimore bench when two of their big offensive lineman came off the field shaking their heads,” Lamoreaux recalled. “I could hear one of them say, ‘These guys are for real.’ That’s when I knew the Colts were in trouble.”
Lamoreaux fondly recalls his relationships with Lombardi and Namath, two of the most recognizable figures in the country. But they were only two of many notable people he dealt with during four decades at CBS that took him beyond Super Bowls and, at times, outside the realm of sports.
He knew at an early age he wanted to be a journalist.
“I went to Washington & Lee University in Virginia for a year, then transferred to the University of Missouri because it had a big-time journalism school,” Lamoreaux said. “But I was in the ROTC program, so when I got out of college, I spent a couple of years in the Army in the guided-missile corps.
“I wanted to get into journalism, but when I came out of the Army in 1957, I couldn’t find a job,” he continued. “I probably wrote 100 letters to radio stations, television stations and newspapers. Nothing happened.”
Then a college friend who had joined CBS as a marketing executive in New York offered to help him get a job – in the mailroom. Lamoreaux jumped at it. He wanted to work at CBS, even if it meant starting at the very bottom.
Lamoreaux made it out of the mailroom and moved up in the company but it wasn’t until 1966 that he got his big break: CBS was adding a Saturday evening news broadcast, anchored by Mudd, and the show’s producer, Gordon Manning, was a former Newsweek executive editor who wanted to include a sports segment.
Manning chose Lamoreaux to produce the segments and paired him with former sports writer Heywood Hale “Woodie” Broun, a colorful essayist whose past assignments included covering Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941.
“Woodie was a gifted writer and wordsmith, and he knew sports, but he knew nothing about television,” Lamoreaux said. “I had been a TV producer and writer, so we ended up being a pretty good team.”
Lamoreaux spent seven years on the road with Broun, producing 600 five-minute segments on the most compelling sports people and events of the 1960s and ’70s, and telling wonderful stories not found anywhere else.
Lamoreaux, who also owns a summer home on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, moved to Vero Beach in 2009 after coming here for visits for more than 20 years.
A youthful 82, Lamoreaux said he has been “married to the same beautiful woman for 58 years” and spends most of his time here playing golf – he’s a member at The Moorings at Hawk’s Nest – and writing.
“I had a varied career and covered all the bases,” Lamoreaux said. “I was able to experience so much.”
Including a few Super Bowls.
“I don’t go to Super Bowl parties,” Lamoreaux said. “People invite me and get miffed when I tell them no, but I went to seven Super Bowls and didn’t get to watch any of them because I was working.
“I want to watch the game.”
On television … same as Rozelle 50 years ago.
