Atoning on Sunday for Saturday Night’s Sins

In the HBO documentary “The Wild Ride to Super Bowl I,” which airs Monday night, former Green Bay Packer receiver Max McGee talks about sneaking out after bed check to party the night before the game and not getting in until 6:30 a.m. It’s a story that has been well-chronicled over the years.

McGee, a backup, figured he wouldn’t play much, but then starter Boyd Dowler suffered a separated shoulder in the first quarter. McGee ended up being one of the stars of the game.

“He looked like he was 25 years old and fresh as a daisy,” Dowler recalls in the documentary, “and he was 34 and rather hung over.”

Trivia time: Where did the Packers practice for Super Bowl I, which was played at the Coliseum?

Super motivated: Dowler also says of McGee: “I think he was motivated by fear. If [Vince] Lombardi had found out what had happened the night before, boy, I wouldn’t have wanted to have been in his shoes.”

Face-saving: McGee has the distinction of scoring the first touchdown in Super Bowl history.

“I kind of like that,” he says. “It’s better to be known for doing something in your life besides sneaking out the night before the big game.”

You want me to what? The first Super Bowl was televised by both CBS and NBC, and CBS’ Pat Summerall served as a sideline reporter for both networks.

NBC missed the second-half kickoff because it was in a commercial break, so the producer asked Summerall to ask Lombardi if he’d kick off again.

Summerall, in the HBO show, recalls his response: “I said, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. That’s not part of my job. That’s not my responsibility. You better get somebody else if you want to ask him to kick off again because I’m not doing that.’ ”

Super inflation: Tickets to the first Super Bowl were priced at $6 and $12. Still, more than 30,000 went unsold.

Tickets to this year’s Super Bowl are priced at $500, and it is a sellout.

Revising history: Bill Livingston of the Cleveland Plain Dealer isn’t too high on Dwight Clark, the former San Francisco 49er receiver who is a Cleveland Brown vice president.

“If Clark had played the way he judges talent, that ball he caught against the Cowboys would be known as ‘The Drop,’ ” Livingston wrote.

A misfit: Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle points out that the February issue of “Men’s Fitness” magazine has a photo of bare-chested Karl Malone with the headline: “The NBA’s Fittest Man.” Adds FitzGerald: “When he’s not on the injured list, that is.”

Trivia answer: Santa Barbara.

And finally: “I’m not saying new [Tampa Bay] Buccaneer General Manager Bruce Allen is just a figurehead,” writes Mike Bianchi in the Orlando Sentinel, “but let’s listen in on his first meeting with Coach Jon Gruden: ‘More cream in your coffee, Jon?’ ”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at [email protected].