Secrets of the Super Bowl Quarterbacks
SUPER BOWL I
One of our favorite teammates was a fella named Max McGee, a wide receiver. Max was what you would call a character. All of us loved him because of that. He was unbelievable, his lifestyle and what he did, you know, so on and so forth. When Coach Lombardi came to Green Bay, Max was just one of those guys who didn't like curfews. And he had several violations of it, in which he was fined severely. We used fines to pay for the team party at the end of the year. In training camp in Lombardi's first season in Green Bay, Coach put up on the board the level for the fines he was going to give out and the comments among the teammates were all directed at Max. They said, "Well it's easy to see who was going to pay for the team party this year." I love that story. Typical of Max, on the morning of the Super Bowl, I'm heading down to the lobby of the hotel for breakfast and to grab my morning newspaper and I just happened to glance to my left to the front door and it's 7 a.m. and Max McGee is walking in through the door, coming into the hotel after being out all night. I first thought, "Oh my God, here we are in the biggest, greatest game of our lives and this guy had been out all night." But typical of him, when our starting receiver Boyd Dowler went down with an injury, Max came in and played like gangbusters [seven catches for 138 yards and two TDs]. He probably played as well in that game as he had ever played in his entire life, but that was Max, he was incredible. A few weeks later, Max and I appeared at a father-son breakfast in Green Bay and the whole place just broke up when I told them what had happened that morning. We all loved Max because he was a character but a team player. And in a clutch situation, like that first Super Bowl, he was as strong as anyone on our team.-- As told to David Fleming of ESPN The Magazine
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