It's a blip in the historical record. In the long run, it couldn't matter less. But for an instant, for a single play, Joe Montana was freaking. His club was down three, first-and-10 at the Cincinnati 35 with 1:22 left to play in Super Bowl XXIII, and he couldn't breathe. His head was spinning. He motioned to Bill Walsh for a timeout, but the coach waved him off. So he took the snap, dropped back quickly, and heaved the ball out of bounds, just hoping he could gather himself before the next play.

The moment passed. Forty-eight seconds and three completions later, as John Taylor clutched a 10-yard pass and a come-from-behind 49ers victory, it was a distant memory. Montana had gone eight-for-nine on an 11-play, 92-yard drive. The stuff of legend. But if the drive and the strike to Taylor are the height of Super Bowl glory, the seized-up feeling in Montana's chest and the wayward ball he sent frantically out of bounds just might be the essence of the game.

"The pressure is suffocating down there; there's no air to breathe," says Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films and witness to all 39 Super Bowls. "You make a mistake or come up just short in the Super Bowl, and it feels like the end of the world."

As Janet Jackson and The Fridge can attest, the Super Bowl is a special case. The biggest audience. The longest pre-game hype. The most intense analysis. And that's just the commercials. No other game, no other cultural event of any sort, really, compares. "The Super Bowl is the seventh game of the World Series, the NCAA championship basketball game, the Stanley Cup, the NBA Finals, and a heavyweight title bout all rolled into one," says former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and four-time Super Bowl winner Lynn Swann. "And actually, it's probably bigger than that." Everything you do, every move you make, is observed and recorded. "There's no hiding in that game," says Super Bowl XVII MVP John Riggins. "Any of us who played in it are defined by it. The Super Bowl is when our legacies go from pencil to ink."

For Riggins, Swann and Montana, the indelible word is Hero. They won the moment, they won the day, and years later their memories lift them up.

But there are others - talented players who wanted it just as badly, prepared just as fiercely, gave every bit as much, and were, in the end, equally defined by the game - to whom the Super Bowl dictionary was not so kind.

You may never have heard of, or have likely forgotten, these men. They came up wanting. In some critical moment, they played the frustrated yin to another guy's triumphant yang.

Their memories are more burdensome. Their word is Vanquished.

The heroes are all we talk about this time of year. The heroes you know.

Now meet the vanquished ...