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Football's super prize reaches icon status
By Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY
PARSIPPANY, N.J. — Such a to-do over a 7-pound lump
of silver.
Of course, this isn't just any 7-pound lump of silver.
It's the one, crafted by jeweler Tiffany, for which 106 grown men from New England
and St. Louis are going to spend roughly 3 hours in New Orleans on Sunday beating
the bejeebers out of each other.
It's the Super Bowl trophy. It was renamed the Vince Lombardi
Trophy in 1970 after the legendary Green Bay Packers coach, whose team won the
first two Super Bowls. But most folks still know it as the Super Bowl trophy.
Except Super Bowl champions the Baltimore Ravens, who dubbed theirs "Big Silver
Betty."
She's a looker, for sure.
Unlike hockey's Stanley Cup — one cup passed on each
year to the new champion — the winner each year of the National Football
League's championship game gets one Tiffany trophy for keeps. And one more,
if the team wants to buy it. There are lots of trophy tales.
One was dinged in an errant victory toss by former Denver
Broncos quarterback John Elway. Others have been used to attract visitors to
state fairs and Kiwanis Club meetings.
One has been displayed on a pedestal at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York. Another was photographed — along with a newborn
— for a birth announcement by a Baltimore Ravens executive. A publicity-hungry
DJ in Baltimore smothered one with cake — and ate away.
But some teams treat their Super Bowl trophies like the
crown jewels. Whenever any of the San Francisco 49ers' five Super Bowl trophies
travel outside the team's offices, an armed guard goes along.
Winning the trophy has made many a grown man cry. When
former 49ers quarterback Steve Young was handed the trophy in 1995, he remembers
screaming as loud as he could, then bursting into tears.
"There was this huge sense of relief — and accomplishment,"
he says.
The Super Bowl trophy was supposed to be just for team
owners. No longer. Owning one — at least a copy — has emerged as a
status symbol with such allure that some players and coaches now flaunt them
in their own living rooms.
"The Super Bowl ring is something you either wear or don't
wear. And the money, well, you quickly spend it," says John Madden, former coach
of the 1977 Super Bowl champion Oakland Raiders, now a Fox commentator. "But
there's nothing in your life with more meaning than that trophy. Everyone wants
to touch it."
Madden got his from Al Davis, the Oakland Raiders renegade
owner who defied league officials in 1977 and knocked off replica Super Bowl
trophies for all team members. Not the $20,000 sterling silver trophies Tiffany
makes for the NFL, mind you, but $500 silver-plated versions that looked remarkably
like the real thing.
Since then, a handful of team owners have ordered knockoffs.
They're hard to get — even the copies are only available through Super
Bowl-winning teams. But some of the copies have been sold at auction for big
paydays.
In 1999, the estate of Weeb Ewbank, the head coach who
led the New York Jets to a victory over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III,
sold his miniature Super Bowl trophy for $18,700. That same year, former Oakland
Raiders running back Carl Garrett sold his replica for $13,560 at auction.
The value of real Super Bowl trophies is unknown. None
have been sold. They could probably fetch $100,000 to $300,000, estimates Margaret
Olsen, a sports collectible expert in Denver.
Joe Theisman badly wanted his own Super Bowl trophy.
The former Washington Redskins quarterback had a Super
Bowl ring, but his real desire was for a trophy. About 10 years ago, he went
on a quest to get one. He started by approaching team owner Jack Kent Cooke.
But Cooke turned him down. Then, Theisman went to Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry
Jones and asked if, perhaps, he could help him purchase a replica.
Jones delivered. "This is the Holy Grail," Theisman says.
"It's a symbol and validation of my career."
Theisman keeps his in his living room — right next
to the Emmy Award he won for his ESPN broadcast work. When people visit his
home, he says, they are immediately attracted to the trophy.
One team almost lost theirs. Back in 1991, after the New
York Giants won the Super Bowl, there was a wild celebration.
About 90 minutes after the locker room cleared out, Jim
Steeg, senior vice president of special events for the NFL, took one last walk
through. Left among the dirty towels and broken champagne glasses was the trophy.
The Super Bowl trophy begins as a mass of sterling silver
to be crafted by the company that makes some of the most expensive jewelry on
Earth: Tiffany.
Hidden away inside Tiffany's sprawling distribution center
in Parsippany, N.J., is an off-limits silversmith shop where every Super Bowl
trophy has been made.
Here, workers are pounding out everything from the NBA
championship trophy to the U.S. Open trophies. But there's just one trophy all
employees constantly jockey to work on: the Super Bowl trophy.
Few have made more than Bill Testra. He's a master spinner,
who forms the shape of the football from two sterling silver plates. Testra
used to play street football in Newark, N.J. But he never dreamed he'd be crafting
the Super Bowl trophy.
"It's an honor," he says, his hands black from working
silver. Testra feels the heat — literally. He shapes the trophy with the
help of a 1,200-degree blowtorch. "If it's not done right on my part," he says,
"you can throw the whole thing in the garbage."
When Testra has the two halves of the football done, he
passes them off to Joe Laczko, who solders them together.
Laczko has been at it for four decades. Over that time,
the long-suffering New York Jets fan has churned out dozens of Super Bowl trophies.
Team owners may order one extra trophy with league approval.
"This isn't Enron. It's Tiffany," Laczko says. "We do each
trophy right." Start to finish, it takes nearly four months to create.
The trophy's beginnings came in 1966, when a Tiffany design
chief was seated at a luncheon next to former National Football League commissioner
Pete Rozelle. The quick-thinking designer snatched his cocktail napkin and etched
a simple, elegant drawing of a slightly tilted football that appears to be awaiting
a swift kick.
Today, the trophy may be one of Tiffany's greatest PR tools.
The trophy may be almost as familiar as the copyrighted, powder-blue box in
which Tiffany gifts come wrapped. And with the possible exception of soccer's
World Cup, the Vince Lombardi Trophy has emerged as the world's most sought-after
team trophy.
"The trophy is treated like a celebrity here," says Scott
Shibley, Tiffany's vice president of business sales. "If it goes to a different
floor of the building, employees try to get a sneak peak."
Tiffany and the NFL both have tried to guard the Super
Bowl trophy from being copied, but with little success.
The king of Super Bowl trophy knockoffs is the company
that's best known for making Oscar and Emmy awards — R.S. Owens & Co. Teams
from the Raiders to the Cowboys to the Giants have sought replica trophies from
the firm. It makes 3/4-sized, silver-plated
versions for about $500 each.
"It took us a couple of years to perfect the mold," says
Scott Siegel, president of the company. Siegel says his company will make knockoffs
only for legitimate Super Bowl winners. But he says he'd love to license with
the NFL to make collectible Super Bowl trophies for fans. There's a huge, untapped
market, he says.
Not a chance. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue has made
it clear that he wants the trophy to remain pristine. Or, at least, as pristine
as possible.
But some team executives have recently taken great pains
to make their trophies more accessible, if not blue collar. Perhaps none more
so than David Modell.
Modell is the son of Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell.
He also is president of the team and its chief operating officer. After the
Ravens won the Super Bowl last year, he stayed long after the game and let remaining
Ravens fans pass the statue around the stands. That's when Modell started calling
it "Big Silver Betty."
Since then, he figures more than 250,000 fans have touched
the trophy that has gone everywhere from Ravens fan club meetings to a Super
Bowl celebration for Baltimore Ravens defensive tackle Tony "Goose" Siragusa,
held near his hometown of Kenilworth, N.J.
Since Baltimore won the trophy, it's never been polished.
Not once. That's the way Modell wants it. "She has the fingerprints of everyone
who has touched her," he says. "So when you touch the trophy, it's like you're
touching all those who have touched it before you."
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