Lewiston man was an eyewitness to Super Bowl history

As each year passes and the Super Bowl’s Roman numerals become harder to decipher, there are a dwindling number of people who can say they attended the very first big game.

One of them is Bob Barrows, of Lewiston.

Barrows, 90, worked for more than four decades as a sports writer, including 31 years at the Lewiston Tribune. Early in his career, when he was with the Fullerton News Tribune in the Los Angeles area, he covered the first Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs.

That game, which wasn’t yet billed as the “Super Bowl,” took place Jan. 15, 1967, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It was the first contest between a team from the more established NFL and a club from the upstart AFL. The game wasn’t a sellout and it was broadcast by both NBC and CBS.

Super Bowl LIX (that’s 59) will be played at 3:30 p.m. PST today when the same Kansas City franchise takes on the Philadelphia Eagles. The game is not only America’s biggest sporting event of the year, but also a cultural touchstone, with things like the TV commercials, halftime show and celebrity appearances being of interest to some people who aren’t even football fans.

Back in 1967, no one could have predicted the Super Bowl’s future, including Barrows.

“I just didn’t know that this was going to be a great event and just get bigger every year,” he said last week during an interview at his home in the Lewiston Orchards. “I didn’t see that at all.”

Barrows attended the game as a sports writer and even finagled a spot on the sideline thanks to the camera he was carrying — “my little Yashica,” he called it.

His most memorable moment came before that game when he noticed Chiefs coach Hank Stram was standing just a few feet from him.

“I was going to go up and introduce myself, and somebody else came up instead of me — a guy named Lombardi,” Barrows said, referring to legendary Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi. “Boy, I just wish I had a photographer around. It would have been great to get a picture with those two.”

He has one other regret: The game’s program was sold for $1 that day, and can now sell for $1,000 or more on eBay.

“If I could go back, and just give me five minutes at the first game, I would buy up about 100 of them,” Barrows said.

Barrows mostly kept to himself during the game, partially because he was a bit embarrassed by his meager camera compared to the “beautiful cameras” carried by other members of the media.

He did mingle with other journalists on the shady side of the stadium during halftime, when the show consisted of marching band performances and a few tunes from trumpeter Al Hirt.

After the game, which the Packers won 35-10, Barrows went to the Chiefs’ locker room to hear their postgame comments. He noticed that fellow sports writers were dismissive of the Chiefs and the AFL, not thinking they could compete with the likes of the Packers and the NFL.

But the AFL would prove its mettle in the third and fourth Super Bowls, with the New York Jets winning on Joe Namath’s guarantee and Kansas City matriculating to victory under Stram’s guidance.

Barrows was pleased with those outcomes, since his hometown Oakland Raiders were a member of the AFL. Those victories also removed any doubts about the merger of the two leagues and the supremacy of the championship game, which officially adopted the name Super Bowl with the third game.

Barrows has watched all of the Super Bowls, including being in person for the 1988 game between Washington and Denver. This afternoon, he’s planning to watch at home with his family.

And he’s also starting to notice that many of the players he covered in 1967 are fading away.

“The players from that era are starting to drop like flies,” he said.

Barrows retired from the Tribune in 2003. He has pursued ministry as a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses church, but isn’t as mobile these days and isn’t able to proselytize in person.

Barrows said he reflects on that first Super Bowl this time of year, when highlights from all of the old games are played on TV.

“It was just a great day,” he said. “I just wanted to get near the players and be part of it.”

Baney may be contacted at mbaney@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2251. Follow him on X @MattBaney_Trib.