THIS DAY IN SPORTS…January 24, 1982, 40 years ago today:
Two weeks after Dwight Clark makes “The Catch”, the San Francisco 49ers win the first of their five Super Bowl titles, beating Cincinnati 26-21 in the Pontiac Silverdome. Second-year quarterback Joe Montana moved the Niners into position for four Ray Wersching field goals, offsetting a 300-yard day by Bengals quarterback Ken Anderson. Both the 49ers and Cincy had rebounded from 6-10 campaigns the previous season to make their first Super Bowl appearances. But it was the Niners who would sustain success into the mid-1990s.
Montana and the 49ers had a lot of busy Januarys moving forward. They defeat Miami in the Super Bowl in 1985, and they’d meet Cincinnati for the title again in 1989. Montana, who famously started the winning 92-yard drive by telling teammates in the huddle, “Look, isn’t that John Candy,” marched San Francisco to the winning score, a touchdown pass to John Taylor with 34 seconds left. Montana triumphed again a year later in Super Bowl XXIV, a 55-10 win over Denver that remains the biggest rout in the game’s history. The 49ers’ last Super Bowl victory came following the 1994 season with Steve Young at the helm. The former BYU star, always in Montana’s shadow, finally had a crown jewel to call his own with a dominating 49-26 victory over San Diego.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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