The 42 Stops to Super Bowl XLII is a series that will feature stories, stats and interesting trivia that you can use to act smart as you prepare for Super Bowl XLII.
You know, Super Bowl XLII isn't the first time that a team comes into the game undefeated and there are whispers of spying and cheating floating about. Same thing happened in Super Bowl VII when the undefeated Miami Dolphins took on the Washington Redskins.
Paranoia was rampant before Super Bowl VII. Watergate was the nation's headlining act. But in Washington, it was Redskins head coach George Allen that was famously worried someone was watching and/or filming his team's practices. He tried to keep his practices as secure as possible. He just knew some team wanted in on his game plan. He knew this because he would try to do it to opponents.
Heck, Allen hired someone to chart the sun's position in the sky at Los Angeles Coliseum, site of the game. Allen was quite a character:
"We overtrained for that game," said [Redskins WR Charley] Taylor, noting that the Redskins had curfew all week while Shula gave the Dolphins three nights off. "We had two weeks to work and burned ourselves out a little bit."
Taylor said the Redskins were just happy to be in the game, but Fischer said they lost their excitement along the way.
"If we could've gone right into it the next week after Dallas, whether we would've won or not, that's a different story, but we would've played better," Fischer said. "All the practices and meetings were the same, and they were long. You can get mentally exhausted. We didn't play with the same sort of intensity that got us there."
