Boyd Dowler, who’s been there as a player and a coach and should know better than most, likes New England in the Super Bowl, over the New York Giants.

Only surprise is that Dowler’s time in the National Football League was on the National Division side, both as a player and as a coach and as a scout. But, you will like what he says.

“New England has gotten it figured out. They got the right players in place. They got the right quarterback, the right coaches, the right owners. Now, none of us can ever predict the way that ball will bounce but that is the way I see it,” said Dowler, who coached here and scouted here and at Atlanta and Washington for so long.

But, time passes and Boyd is now retired from the sport he so loved and to which he contributed so much. He is completely out of it, and living in Suwannee, Ga., 40 miles north of Atlanta, not too far from the Falcon workplace. Dowler was with the Falcons when he retired. He had been in Tampa with the Bucs as a coach, at Washington as a player and a coach and to Atlanta to end things.

Boyd Dowler is perfect for the lookahead. He played the game with the very best, was coached by the best and won the Super Bowl with the best. He played in the famous Ice Bowl in Green Bay and the very first Super Bowl in Los Angeles and starred in the second one in Miami. He has always been a very nice man and perhaps the first 6’4” wide receiver in the pros. He was the third player taken by Green Bay in the l961 draft, the year before Vince Lombardi became the coach and took the Packers to greatness.

These are among the reasons for asking Boyd Dowler who he thought would win the Super Bowl Sunday.

“I like New England,” he said by phone from north Georgia.

“I like the quarterback. I like the coach. I like the team. I like the owners. I like the way they have gone about things.” ‘What is there not to like?,’ he asked, but didn’t ask.

Truth be told, Dowler likely would have said, oh, he likes New York too, but, well, he did mention the great Packer wins over New York in which he played. But, he stuck with New England for this year.

Fine, and dandy, this choice coming from this terrific player of this terrific team, the Packers of Vince Lombardi, of Bart Starr and all of the others, from this two-time Pro Bowler who played 12 seasons for the Packers and the Washington Redskins. He was on that Washington team in that memorable Super Bowl game against the Miami Dolphins. He was an All-Decade team member of the Sixties, played in two Pro Bowls and those two Super Bowls.

“The second one, though,” said this first of the genuinely big men at receiver, at 6’4” and 240 pounds. “Forget the first,” he said. “I got hurt on the third play. Remember the second, though.”

In that second Super Bowl, in Miami, Dowler received and punted well. Yes, he was a solid punter. At Colorado, this big, coordinated kid from Rock Springs, Colo., was a running back, a quarterback and punter who won a scholarship to Boulder and then was the Packers’ second choice in ‘61. It was in Super Bowl II he was so heroic. For the Packers he was most valuable. He caught a 62-yard pass in that burner.

Now, in his rocking chair, he leaves a series of personnel/scouting jobs at Washington, Tampa and Atlanta. Has had a good time in his working years and surely done well. Don’t know of any people he hurt badly except the defensive backs he towered over and slam-ganged so often in his Packer playing days.