I don’t think that’s cheating. Often times the team that gloms onto new technology first wins. Nobody has declared Gatorade against the rules, maybe if it had been outlawed you’d have a point, but it isn’t. It’s just like those gloves that enable all these insane one handed catches. Early on the teams that used them generally beat on the teams that hadn’t found out about them yet. That’s not cheating, that’s thinking.
I can accept that, but I use cheating, because I am a fan, and somebody should at least recognize the difference it made.
Yet it has been able to go down in history as the Chiefs were so much better because of the game, when in fact the Vikings were the victims of a trick that was not considered illegal.
I am reminded of the game that had the first forward pass. It was considered cheating, but the team that lost did not get ridiculed in the media and destroyed by the critics.
Viking players had their futures put in question about how good they were.
Add three more loses and it cemented them as losers, when it all started with a game that could have been different if the Vikings has Gatorade instead of the Chiefs.
Interestingly, the next year Kansas City failed to make it to the Super Bowl by losing by a field goal I overtime to Miami. Interesting because Miami also had Gatorade on their sideline in that game.
One can just wonder what would have been, yet History holds Chiefs in high regard for that game, and there Vikings are considered the joke.
You know that sports writers who decide what players will be in the Hall of fame actually held back their votes for most of the Vikings except for a few, based upon their shopping in that game. Today, Jim Marshal is still not in the Hall.
A lot more of the Chiefs players from the game are in the hall than the Vikings, and yet the Chiefs had only one more good year, while the Vikings were in the playoffs for the next 10 years, and even made it back to the Super Bowl 3 times.
Sometimes a gimmick can be the difference between a great team and one that just missed the mark in the minds of millions.