Next stop for Kurt Warner: Super Bowl

ST. LOUIS - Kurt Warner's stardust appeared to be turning to sawdust late Sunday afternoon, but then he created one more shining moment.

The result is that the St. Louis Rams are going to the Super Bowl, and a quarterback who was raised in Cedar Rapids will lead them.

Warner, the former Regis High School/University of Northern Iowa standout, struggled through most of four quarters against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Sunday's NFC Championship in the Trans World Dome. He was intercepted an uncharacteristic three times. The National Football League's 1999 Most Valuable Player was in serious danger of having his season ended by the superb Tampa Bay defense.

But Warner's 30-yard pass to 10-year NFL veteran Ricky Proehl with 4:44 left in the game stunned the Bucs, lifted a nervous record stadium crowd of 66,496 to an eardrum-busting euphoria, and gave St. Louis an 11-6 lead that held up.

The upshot is that Warner is about to become the Super Bowl quarterback with the least NFL experience of anyone to play that position in the 34 years the game has existed.

"Hopefully I'll be the most inexperienced winning quarterback of a Super Bowl when it's all done," Warner said after the game.

This season, the 28-year-old made his first NFL start, threw more passes in a season than anyone in league history other than Dan Marino, got a breakfast cereal named after him, won the MVP, and was given a $500,000 bonus by the Rams for getting that award. Now he's going to Atlanta to clash with the Tennessee Titans in next Sunday's Super Bowl, after a week filled with hype and hoo-hah.

The Rams are to fly back to St. Louis today. Several thousand media people will greet them this week, seeking their every insight. And no player on either squad will be in greater demand than Warner, the former quarterback for the Arena Football League's Iowa Barnstromers. Warner has been one of the NFL's most amazing sudden success-stories of all time, coming from nowhere to the top of the NFC heap. His story of this season gets a concluding chapter in the Super Bowl largely because of his long pass down the left sideline to Proehl, who had caught none of the Rams' 42 regular-season touchdown tosses.

"It was time for Ricky to make a big play," St. Louis Coach Dick Vermeil said, "and time for Kurt Warner to make a big play. And we got it done."

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