Your Daily Sabol

Steve Sabol's favorite Super Bowl stories, part III

Super Bowl XIII, post-game, in the Steelers' victorious locker room. Sabol. 'da man at NFL Films, is chatting with Mean Joe Greene. He and his crew are the only non-team employees in there (NFL Films gets to go right in after the game), with one exception.

There's an older, short, bald white dude, buck naked, in the shower with a bunch of Steelers, drinking and whooping it up. Yeah, you read that sentence correctly. No amount of security guards and police dogs were going to keep this superfan away from his victorious heroes.

"He's like 5-8, in his early 40s, and he's totally naked, drying off in front of Bennie Cunningham's locker - a 6-5, 250-pound tight end, who did not play in the game," Sabol said. "And we look over there and there's three reporters in front of him interviewing him. I guess they didn't know any better."

It was about this time that Sabol realized how big the Super Bowl was getting. The media hordes were up around 1,000 by then, and it was beginning to be covered more like a cultural phenomenon than a straight football game.

The mystery shower-er, by the way, was allowed to do as he pleased. No one threw him out, and he went on partying with the Steelers.

"There was such chaos in there that nobody cared," Sabol said. "Joe Green is looking at him and laughing. He said, 'I sure know he's not one of us, but I don't know who the hell he is.'"