American Football: Cowboys reinforce aura of NFC invincibility: Matt Tench reports from Pasadena on the problems of one-way traffic in American football's showpiece game

AS A troop of press men made their way off the bus returning them from Pasadena to Los Angeles, where they had just witnessed the devastation that was Super Bowl XXVII, one disconsolate journalist turned to his colleague and said: 'I'm never tipping an AFC team again. Not ever.'

The manner of Dallas Cowboys' 52-17 mauling of the Buffalo Bills a few hours earlier did have a certain finite quality about it. Despite the historical evidence to the contrary, many commentators here felt this would be the year for the Bills and the AFC. As things turned out we had instead the traditional mismatch, an NFC team won for the eighth consecutive year, and the NFL was left to fret further about a showpiece which has become more of an inauguration than a contest.

Most sports become boring when they are one-sided but few can match the tedium of an American football game long since won. The Bills' fans will point to the calamitous effect of nine turnovers and claim that without these the outcome might have been different. The score, certainly, but not the outcome.

The truth is the multi-talented Bills are prone to errors, but compete in a conference where they can make them and still win (Jim Kelly threw two interceptions in the AFC Championship game). The Cowboys, schooled in the altogether less forgiving environs of the NFC East - which has now provided three different Super Bowl winners in the last three years - know better. Jimmy Johnson, their head coach, spoke afterwards of their deliberately cautious game plan, designed to strip the ball and keep it. They worked for those turnovers.

The curious thing about this monopoly is that it developed from nowhere and flies in the face of the league's parity policy. This allows many bad teams to become good, the Cowboys being a striking example, but no AFC team to become the best.

After this year's Super Bowl a change appears as unlikely as ever, with perhaps two glimmers of hope. One is that San Diego, unlikely winners of the AFC West this season, do appear to have some of the toughness associated with NFC teams. The other is the appointment of Bill Parcells as the new head coach in New England. Parcells was the epitome of the NFC coach when in charge of the New York Giants and has already appointed a lot of former colleagues to his new organisation. If anyone can produce an AFC team with an NFC mentality it is surely him.

It is not just the AFC who will have watched Dallas's victory with trepidation. They have a young team, built to last, and in the last month have taken their performance to a new level. If they can emulate those standards next season, they must be favoured to repeat as champions. Nor are they likely to be greatly affected by the new free agency rules. Under these, players who have been in the league for five years, and are out of their present contract, can negotiate with other teams in order to seek the best deal available. As a result, a number of leading players will probably be playing for different teams next year (see table).

However, the Cowboys are unlikely to lose any of their leading performers, and Jerry Jones, their owner, suggested that his team would continue to trade aggressively. The uncertainties created by free agency make it very difficult to foresee the shape of next season, but it is hard to see Philadelphia not suffering a decline. Reggie White and a number of others look set to leave, with White being linked with Washington, Dallas and most recently Houston, where his old mentor, Buddy Ryan, is the new defensive co-ordinator.

That appointment will bring a bit of vim to a franchise that has never fulfilled its potential and means the Oilers remain in the running for the AFC next year. Miami, with their young defense, also looked very competitive.

As for the Bills, they have six months to regroup and in their head coach, Marv Levy, just the man to inject a dose of perspective. He was asked beforehand whether this Super Bowl was a game his team had to win. 'Must win?' he asked. 'World War Two was a must win.'

The Super Bowl gained the highest American TV audience ever recorded for any programme, according to NBC. An estimated 133.4 million people watched the game, beating the 127 million who watched the 1986 Super Bowl between Chicago and New England.

----------------------------------------------------------------- TEN TOP NAMES WHO ARE FREE TO MOVE ON ----------------------------------------------------------------- Player Club Position Age Steve Young San Francisco Quarterback 31 Reggie White Philadelphia Defensive end 31 Neil Smith Kansas City Defensive end 27 Lomas Brown Detroit Offensive lineman 30 Wilbur Marshall Washington Linebacker 30 Gary Clark Washington Wide receiver 30 Tim Harris San Francisco Linebacker 28 Bobby Hebert New Orleans Quarterback 32 Keith Byars Philadelphia Running back 29 Carl Banks New York Giants Linebacker 30 -----------------------------------------------------------------