American Football: America's Craving Fulfilled by Faulk ; SUPER BOWL XXXVI Rams' Running Back Combines Sublime Talent with a Decency That Promises to Make Him the Player of the Age

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IN THE opening pages of Don DeLillo's remarkable novel Underworld a nimble black kid runs exultantly beyond the stewards and cops and leaps, Beamon-like, over the turnstiles and into a World Series seat just behind Frank Sinatra and J Edgar Hoover.

It is the decisive game. You can smell the clammy, sulphurous air and the beer suds and the hot dogs.

Times change. If he had tried it at the Superdome here tomorrow the FBI would probably have got him in his third stride. Or maybe a sniper from Delta Force. Super Bowl XXXVI between the St Louis Rams and the New England Patriots is supposed to set the mood for next week's Mardi Gras here in "Big Easy", but in the …