And now, for a -- of local flavor, we bring you a taste of Art Donovan

Hey, Jim Kelly! Try some warm olive oil on top of your head, ya big crybaby.

Hey, Marv Levy, put a bookmark in it. Patton never won a Super Bowl, and all that history hasn't done you much good, either.

And Thurman Thomas, hang on to your helmet. Art Donovan once played with a guy who didn't think he needed one.

You, Cowboys. America isn't big enough for America's team and Donovan, America's most loquacious and irreverent former Baltimore Colt.

As the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills prepared for Super Bowl XXVII today, The Sun checked in with Donovan, the Hall of Fame defensive lineman, to record his unvarnished opinions.

Donovan is often seen on local television and nationally on "Late Night with David Letterman." But this time, he was pontificating from the Valley Country Club in Towson, which he owns and operates. As usual, Donovan was, how shall we say . . . candid.

Question: If the Bills lose this Super Bowl, it will be their third straight Super Bowl defeat. Can you imagine what it is like to lose something that big, that many times?

Answer: You have to take one game at a time. It doesn't matter if they lost two in a row or five in a row. This game is a completely different game all together. If they lose, it's not the end of the world. They'll just be richer.

I was never in a Super Bowl, but I know in the championship game in '58 in New York, we were so much better than the Giants, and we're losing in the fourth quarter and I said to [Gino] Marchetti, "Hey, if we lose this game, what a damn shame." But hey, life doesn't end there. There are more things in life than the Super Bowl.

I don't know about this Bills team though. I don't like [quarterback Jim] Kelly. I don't like the way he acts. He's a damn crybaby. He throws an interception, and he comes over and complains to the ballboy that there's not enough air in the football. But when they win he's throwing the balls up in the stands. But I like Frank Reich, and if he was quarterbacking I'd be rooting for Buffalo.

Q: Which Smith do you like better, Bruce or Emmitt? And which one is going to have a bigger impact on the game?

A: Emmitt, he's a hell of a runner. But I think Bruce Smith, the right defensive end for Buffalo, is a vastly overrated defensive end. He couldn't hold Marchetti's jock. I think that No. 91, the middle guard, I don't even know him, [Jeff] Wright I think his name is. I don't even know where he comes from, but to me, he is the best defensive lineman they have. And they have some great linebackers.

I watch the game strictly as a guy who played defense all his life. I watch what they do to Smith and on running plays, they don't even have to block him on account of he takes such an outside rush. These guys on TV have built him up to where he's a Superman, and believe me, he's not.

The Cowboys, I never watch. They say they are America's Team. Well they aren't my team, and I'm part of America.

Q: The media has made quite a fuss over the fact that Thurman Thomas, the Bills' running back, misplaced his helmet at the start of last year's Super Bowl and missed the first couple of plays. Anybody you know ever do anything that dumb?

A: We had a guy who forgot to put his helmet on playing against the Rams out in the [Los Angeles] Coliseum. It was Don Shinnick, a linebacker, and Dick Szymanski says, "Shinnick, where's your helmet?" Shinnick went to feel for it, and says, "Oh my God, I forgot it. I'll play without it." But the officials made us take a timeout, and Shinnick was over on the sidelines looking for it while we were giving him all kinds of hell. And he says, "Hey, leave me alone, will ya? I'm nervous enough."

He didn't even know he didn't have it on until Szymanski said something.

Q: Pro football has been pretty tough on Jim Kelly's hair. There isn't much left. Or is the game, with its situation defenses and no-huddle offenses, just tougher on what's underneath the hair?

A: Hey, he's gonna be a young guy and be bald, that's all. There are a lot of bald guys that are young. I thought I was going bald when I was young, and I used to put mud in my hair because a guy told me it was good for your hair. It must have worked. I still got some.

What did work was warm olive oil. I came out of the Marine Corps in 1945 and my mother every night put warm olive oil on my hair. Whatever hair I have she saved.

Related topic galleries: David Letterman, Jimmy Johnson, Troy Aikman, Baltimore Colts, Super Bowl, Clubs and Associations, Jim Kelly

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