February 3, 2013: Super Bowl XLVII is played at the Superdome in New Orleans. It was the 7th time the building had hosted, a record. But it was the 1st time since Hurricane Katrina forced the building's renovation in 2005-06. (UPDATE: There has since been an 8th played there.)
The San Francisco 49ers were the NFC Champions for the 1st time since the 1994 season. They came in with a 5-0 record in Super Bowls. The Baltimore Ravens were the AFC Champions, having made 1 previous Super Bowl appearance, winning Super Bowl XXXV in 2001.
The 49ers' head coach was Jim Harbaugh. The Ravens' head coach was his younger brother, John Harbaugh. On John's staff was Jim's son, Jay Harbaugh. The family is from the Toledo area in northwestern Ohio. Jim and John were the sons of Jack Harbaugh, a running back at Bowling Green University in Ohio, who later served as head coach at Western Michigan and Western Kentucky.
John (left) and Jim Harbaugh
Jim had played quarterback for the University of Michigan, and had gotten both the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts to Conference Championship Games. He had even played the 1998 season with the Ravens. He was on Jon Gruden's staff when the Oakland Raiders reached Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003. John had played safety at Miami University of Ohio, a.k.a. "The Cradle of Coaches," and went right into coaching, serving on Andy Reid's staff as the Philadelphia Eagles reached Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005. Jay's playing career ended with an injury as a high school defensive lineman. He graduated from Oregon State, and went into coaching.
This was the first time I followed a Super Bowl on social media, in my case both Facebook and Twitter. And when Jacoby Jones of the Ravens took the 49ers' opening kickoff of the 2nd half a Super Bowl record 108 yards for a touchdown, the score was Ravens 28, 49ers 6. I wrote on Twitter, "It's been a while since we had a good old-fashioned smackdown in a Super Bowl."
Beyoncé Knowles reunited with her Destiny's Child teammates Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams to perform the halftime show. A little while later, with the score unchanged, I wrote: "Looks like the Ravens are following Beyoncé's advice: They're putting a ring on it."
A moment after that, I cited the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback turned ABC Monday Night Football announcer, who liked to announce a blowout by singing a Willie Nelson song, before his retirement in 1985 and his death in 2010: "Cue the ghost of Don Meredith: Turn out the lights! The party's over!"
And then, somebody did turn out the lights. A power outage caused the lights to go out in half of the stadium, stopping play for 34 minutes. The outage was caused by equipment failure near the stadium.
Thinking of the line about the roof being on fire in House Party, I wrote, "The roof! The roof! The roof is ill-wired!" About a dozen others, thinking of the Superdome being an inappropriate haven for refugees during Hurricane Katrina, wrote words to the effect of, "Now it's the rich people trapped in the Superdome."
But once power was restored, the 49ers seemed restored as well. Quarterback Colin Kaepernick drove them, and threw a touchdown pass to Michael Crabtree, cutting the deficit to 28-13. They forced the Ravens to end their next drive with a punt, and Kaepernick went to work again, the drive ending with a 6-yard touchdown run by Frank Gore. It was 28-20, and the Niners were back in the game. On the Ravens' next drive, Tarell Brown forced a fumble by Ray Rice, and recovered it. David Akers missed a field goal attempt, but a Raven penalty gave him a second chance, and he cut the lead to 28-23.
The Ravens finally woke up, but their drive stalled, and a Justin Tucker field goal made it 31-23. The 49ers' last drive included the last catch of Randy Moss' career -- in spite of regular-season totals of 983 catches for 15,295 yards and 157 touchdowns, he went 0-2 in Super Bowls -- and Kaepernick rushing for 15 yards, the longest touchdown run by a quarterback in Super Bowl history. But they missed what would have been a tying 2-point conversion, and the score stayed 31-29.
With 4:19 left in regulation, another Tucker field goal made it 34-29. The 49ers got to a 1st & goal on the Ravens' 7, but couldn't punch it in, and turned the ball over on downs with 1:46 left. The Ravens took an intentional safety, leaving time for one more play, a kickoff from their 20. Ted Ginn Jr. could only return it 31 yards, and the Ravens won, 34-31.
Those of us who saw the 49ers go 5-0 in Super Bowls from 1982 to 1995 had begun to think they would pull off the great comeback. But then, as Rick Pitino would say, Joe Montana, Roger Craig and Jerry Rice weren't walking through that door.
The Ravens had their 2nd title, and the 5th NFL Championship for the City of Baltimore. Raven linebacker Ray Lewis kept his word, and retired. In the end, though, despite the controversy that followed him during the Ravens' successful pursuit of Super Bowl XXXV, the most controversial player in this game turned out to be Colin Kaepernick -- not because he lied to the police, as Lewis did, but because he exposed them.
UPDATE: Jay Harbaugh won a Super Bowl ring in 2026, as special teams coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks.
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February 3, 2013 was, like all Super Bowl days, a Sunday. Baseball was out of season. There were 3 games in the NBA:
* The Boston Celtics beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 106-104 at the TD Garden in Boston.
* The Miami Heat beat the Toronto Raptors, 100-85 at the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) in Toronto.
* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons, 98-97 at The Palace in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan.
And there were 4 games in the NHL:
* The New Jersey Devils beat the New York Islanders, 3-0 at the Nassau Coliseum.
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Ottawa Senators, 2-1 at the Bell Centre in Montreal.
* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Washington Capitals, 6-3 at the Verizon Center (now the Capital One Arena) in Washington. Chris Kunitz scored 4 goals for the Penguins. Neither Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby nor Washington's Alex Ovechkin scored a goal, although Crosby had 2 assists, and Ovechkin 1.
* And the Florida Panthers beat the Buffalo Sabres, 4-3 at the First Niagara Center (now the KeyBank Center) in Buffalo.
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