The Line To The Super Bowl...

The line of appearances, that is.

Sometime between 6 and 6:30 tonight, the Super Bowl will kick off. About four hours later, there will be a National Football League champion.

Representing the National Football Conference is the Green Bay Packers. Representing the American Football Conference is the Pittsburgh Steelers.

As for news and comments about the Super Bowl, please look for it elsewhere. There's a lot of it on the Internet.

Instead, I want to iemphasize this fact: The AFC has been represented in three teams for eight straight years and nine of the last ten. Besides the Steelers, the others are the Indianapolis Colts, my home team, and the New England Patriots.

This is no coincidence. They are among the bestrun franchises in the league because the owners -- the Rooney family of the Steelers, Jim Irsay of the Colts, and Robert Kraft of the Patriots -- hire the best people they can for personnel and coaching.

AND THEN STAY THE HELL OUT OF THEIR WAY.

That's worth repeating.

AND THEY STAY THE HELL OUT OF THEIR WAY.

This is opposed to two types of owners of NFL franchises:

• Those who interfere to the point of micromanagement. Among them are Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys, Al Davis of the Oakland Raiders and Dan Snyder of the Washington Redskins.
• Those who don't seem to care. Those include the Bidwell family of the Arizona Cardinals and the Brown family of the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Steelers have been among the premier franchises since Dan Rooney took over the franchise in the 1970s and moved it out of the Cardinals/Bengals situation. During that decade, they won four Super Bowls.

This is relatively new territory for the Indianapolis and New England but their glory days started when Kraft bought the Patriots in 1994 and Irsay took over the Colts from his father in 1997.

As for which team I favor, I won't mind if either of them wins. A sentimental favorite among many seems to be the Packers.

However, I'll be listening to the game on the radio. My television set went on the fritz and I can't get it fixed until later this week.

I had planned to rent a room in a nearby motel and watch the game there, but bad weather has come across central Indiana during the last week. Heavy snows and freezing rain have fallen, and they have made traveling a little too tricky for me.

I remember that the Super Bowl is only a game. That's why I'm not going to a motel to watch it. If I fall asleep during it and miss a great deal of it, I can find out the results by going on the internet.

I hope you remember that it's only a game, too.