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About 300 miles to the east in Nashville, passionate followers of the Tennessee Titans will be acting out a similar ritual, expressing their civic pride by painting their faces in team colors that just 13 months ago had yet to be decided upon by the NFL's marketing consultants.

Also Today Any Given (Super Bowl) Sunday Director Oliver Stone talks about his days on the field, why defensive calls are ruining the game and his favorite Super Bowls ever. By Anthony Lappé

Those 130 million or so of us who tune in to the game and don't hail from either of these cities -- die-hard football nuts, frustrated viewers of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" with nothing else to do for the evening, advertising junkies hungry for the latest dazzling commercials and those just curious to see who'll win the Bud Bowl -- will have to quickly resolve the dilemma of which squad to cheer for. Will it be the team that abandoned its city in 1995? Or the team that abandoned its city in 1997?

This Sunday is more than just the most important day on the TV advertising calendar -- slots for 30-second commercial spots, as you've no doubt heard countless times this week, cost their companies between $2.2 million and $3 million a pop to air. Sunday's contest marks a landmark moment in pro football history.

The game that the NFL is trumpeting as "Super Bowl 2000," the first Super Bowl of the new millennium, is indeed the coronation of a new era: All hail the first champion from the Age of Franchise Free Agency! With both teams involved having shuffled from city to city, much like many of the players themselves, the winner is guaranteed to have made a loser out of its abandoned fan base just a few short years before. One could even call the game the Carpetbagger Bowl.

Two years ago, the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl clothed in brand new uniforms. This year Tennessee boasts not only new apparel, but a new team name as well. The rich tradition of Tennessee Titans football dates all the way back to Dec. 22, 1998, when the Tennessee Oilers -- themselves only two years removed from being the Houston Oilers -- rechristened themselves and unveiled a helmet logo featuring a ball of fire surrounding a dagger-shaped "T." What better insignia to portray how owner Bud Adams stabbed the city of Houston in the back and forced 37 years of football memories to go up in flames? On the opposing sideline, the Rams were brought to town from Los Angeles by Georgia Frontiere to replace the Cardinals. Those birds had departed for Arizona in 1988, under owner Bill Bidwill's guidance, without ever having provided the fans of the Gateway City with a home playoff game in all the years since they arrived in St. Louis in 1960. If ever two teams deserved each other, it's these clubs.

When people discuss free agency, they tend to think of greedy players. But while the credo of "me first" often seems to prevail among the athletes on the field, it's up in the owner's box that avarice truly reigns supreme. In recent years, wealthy team owners have made a predictable routine of holding the loyalty of their communities hostage, playing the politics of stadium hardball by extorting tax abatements and rent-free leases to build their privately owned stadiums with public funds, almost always at the expense of local schools and other government services.

In virtually every case where an owner sought a new ballfield, the grim specter of his team being "forced" to seek greener pastures elsewhere has inevitably been raised, ultimately calling into question exactly what constitutes the "home team" that we root, root, root for. Who does a team really belong to, the people in the stands or the person who collects the money from the people in the stands? If citizens have to bail out their local sports teams by shouldering the load in tax hikes, then why don't those payments count as shares of ownership?

As sports has become big business, sports franchises have embraced the ethos of corporate culture, right down to the bigger-is-better philosophy that lurks behind the current merger mania. It's not just players' salaries that are being belted out of the park. Whether it's the TV deals that the leagues cut with networks or the price tags that new owners pay to acquire franchises, the financial numbers run less MVP than GNP. Management in some cities proclaims poverty because of "small market" status, while coffers are lined via concession stand profits, luxury skyboxes, personal seat licenses and soaring ticket prices.

Sportswriters like to paint their romantic attachments to their favorite teams in terms of a tradition-steeped legacy passed down from fathers to sons (and daughters too) over generations. But the sad truth is that "our gang" can be wrested away from us at any time. Not only will our heroes hold out for more money, demand to be traded and finally bolt town without regard for the feelings of the local folks, their bosses will too. It's a dysfunctional and downright abusive relationship. If you truly love us, say the owners, then you'll shell out what we demand. Otherwise, you'll never see your loved ones again. Repeating this betrayal time and time again, the owners never seem to "play" by "the rules."

Next page | St. Louis: The most abandoned professional sports city in America