Ronnie Lott, Anthony Munoz elevated USC's NFL draft reputation
· Yahoo Sports
USC football made history on a significant scale in Super Bowl IX in January of 1975. Lynn Swann of the Pittsburgh Steelers played Steve Riley of the Minnesota Vikings in the Super Bowl one year after they were drafted. Two USC rookies, both first-round NFL draft picks, met in the Super Bowl. This doesn't include Minnesota's Ron Yary, the No. 1 pick in the 1968 NFL draft. The quick rise of USC rookies from the first round to the Super Bowl was the story attached to the Swann-Riley plot line. Several years later, USC greats Ronnie Lott and Anthony Munoz met in Super Bowl XVI between the San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals.
Yes, this was not a meeting of USC first-round rookies. Munoz was in his second year with the Bengals after being drafted in 1980. Lott was a rookie, coming out of the 1981 NFL draft class. Nevertheless, Super Bowl XVI -- at the conclusion of the 1981 NFL season -- gave USC's NFL draft reputation (which was already sterling) an even bigger boost.
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Both Lott and Munoz were top-10 picks in the NFL draft -- Lott at 8, Munoz at 3. The two men instantly changed the trajectories of their respective franchises. The 49ers beat Munoz's Bengals in SB XVI to win their first Vince Lombardi Trophy in Lott's rookie season. Lott gave the 49ers essential toughness and physicality in the secondary to lead them from nowhere in 1980 to the promised land in 1981.
Munoz similarly changed the equation for the Bengals. He gave veteran quarterback Ken Anderson a lockdown offensive lineman, who enabled Anderson to distribute the ball to an array of talented pass-catchers such as Isaac Curtis, Cris Collinsworth, Dan Ross, and others. The Bengals, like the 49ers, made their first Super Bowl in the 1981 season and emerged from pro football obscurity.
To underscore the impact these two USC NFL draft studs had on their franchises, this was not the last time either team reached the Super Bowl. They both came back to the big game, San Francisco three more times under Lott and Munoz once more with Cincinnati. The 49ers nipped the Bengals 20-16 in a thrilling Super Bowl XXIII in January of 1989.
USC had churned out great NFL draft classes for much of the 1960s and 1970s, but the early 1980s continued to lift the Trojans' NFL draft reputation to an even higher level.
This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Ronnie Lott and Anthony Munoz created a major USC NFL draft milestone