Thirty-three years ago, Lin Dawson woke up the morning after Super Bowl XX unhappy, but not looking towards the future.

Dawson was a star tight end on a New England Patriots team that was making their first-ever Super Bowl appearance in 1986 when they faced the Chicago Bears – the shuffling crew led by Walter Payton, William "Refrigerator" Perry and a host of other personalities.

But after being the first team to win three straight playoff games on the road to Super Bowl, his Patriots fell that day in New Orleans to Chicago 46-10.

"It's kind of numbing," said Dawson, now the athletic director at Clark Atlanta University where his office is less than a mile away from the site of this year's Super Bowl in Atlanta. 

"They had big parties scheduled for you and you don't go.  I certainly didn't go. I hurt my knee during the game so I went back to my room and iced, ordered room service and visited with my family.  And that was it. Some guys went out and partied, others went out to the big shin-dig they had prepared for us. I certainly wasn't in the mood for that.

"I had to learn though….you have got to move on," Dawson said. "When you have family who drove 17 hours or so to be there, you cannot be selfish and not entertain them or not want to be with them because you lost.  You have to put that behind you as a professional, at least after the game, to be able to entertain the people who came to see you."

Still, the Super Bowl experience was something very special, Dawson said.  Especially in a place like New Orleans where tons of fans and media flooded the scene that week 33 years ago.

The Bears had gone 15-1 that season, had several future Hall of Famers on their team.  The Patriots were making their first ever appearance in the Super Bowl.  And, well, it was the Super Bowl. In New Orleans.

"It was much more intense, simply because the Super Bowl was in New Orleans," Dawson said.  "We would practice during the day and your family was there at night and you wanted to go out with your family and let them feel the Super Bowl experience.  You would go walking in the French Quarter and it was so jammed up that you could lose your family when they are trailing behind you. It was just that thick.  I haven't seen anything to mirror that type of excitement."

One of the main things he and his teammates tried to do was to keep to their week of game preparations as normal as possible, though that's hard to do with all of the hoopla and activities during Super Bowl week.

But by game time, Dawson remembers being nervous as the world looked on.

"I was very nervous," he said.  "I remember one of my favorite jazz artists came out to play the National Anthem.  That was Wynton Marsalis. I think that relaxed me a little.  But it was just a different scene.  It was a crazy scene. 

"But we knew it was something special about this game," Dawson said.  "You knew this would make you world champions.  You weren't just a football player, but You had the ability to make you walk away as world champions.  I hear people say that's why they play. That's not necessarily why I played.  That's why I played THAT game – to be world champions."

That didn't happen that day and Dawson believes his life and those of his teammates would
have been very different had they won that day and become world champions. In fact, the Patriots played the Bears in a game a couple of years later and easily defeated them.

"I played on the first Patriots Super Bowl team," Dawson said. "But that could have been the first winning Patriots Super Bowl team and I think that stands out to me more than anything."
Dawson played for the Patriots for ten seasons and was named to their "All-Decade-1980s" team, catching 117 passes in 105 games for more than 1,200 yards in his career.

This year, Dawson – who sported a Patriots pullover a couple of times at work last week – he saw some of his former teammates and NFL friends.  He takes part in various events with fellow New England Patriots alumni, though he doesn't get much time to get Boston as often anymore. 

But the Super Bowl continues to be special, then and, now for Dawson.

"I remember the excitement of the people," he said. "And I tell you, the excitement looks like it gains a step every year."