On Watching Super Bowls 49 and 50

Normally at this time of year the blog would be chock full of content, with comparison-contrast pieces on the relative awfulness of Carolina's nickel back versus the karmic weirdness of Evan Mathis playing for a Super Bowl title after getting run out of Philly, or whatever. 

But.

The Ten People You Meet After Every Super Bowl

There are some who say that sports bring out the best in us. I disagree. Sports brings out the us in us, for good or for ill. And a big sporting event, like the Super Bowl, brings out really primal archetypes, ones that must be allowed to run free until at least mid-February. They include:

1. The one who is convinced that by all rights and logic, their team actually won the game, and that it's just that pesky score thingie that came out inaccurate. Has endless reams of supporting evidence as to why this theory is correct, most of which boils down to "Well, we beat Jacksonville in Week 6"

The Official Sportsthodoxy Super Bowl Drinking Game

Take one drink if...

• Every time someone goes "Aww, come on!" over a non-existent holding or pass interference call.
• Every time someone goes "Aww, come on!" over a holding or pass-interference non-call.
• Someone says "I'm just here to watch the commercials."

Super Bowl 49 Coaching Breakdown

With Super Bowl Sunday fast approaching, it's important to get your scouting down right so you can know who's who at the big game.

Not the players, of course - we've long since passed the point where players were anything but the mechanistic imposers of their godlike coaches' will and schemes. Or so, at least, said coaches' agents will tell you, especially at contract renegotiation time. 

But with that in mind, here's your handy-dandy comparison/contrast of the two Super Bowl coaches:

The Super Bowl Grift And Its Wider Applications

The dirty secret is out.

The mayor of Glendale, AZ - home to a football game you may have heard about this weekend - has gone on record as saying that hosting the Super Bowl is going to cost his city money.

This is, of course, anathema to the NFL and its mindless boosters. Look at all the money that will be spent, they howl. Look at all the exposure. They've already started pillorying the poor guy for daring to question the NFL's narrative. 

Feeling Minnesota

In the other football news last Tuesday, the NFL awarded the 2018 Super Bowl to Minnesota. Apparently the stiffest competition came from Indianapolis, which meant that the owner who got four felony charges knocked down to two misdemeanors got beat out by the one who's already had a judge call him a racketeer.

Official Sportsthodoxy Super Bowl XLVII Prop Bet Betting Lines (for entertainment use only)

Yes, I know we warned you about gambling yesterday. But if you are going to bet on the Super Bowl, we can't stop you. We can only hope to inform you with the official Sportsthodoxy Super Bowl XLVII Prop Bet Betting Lines (for entertainment use only). Because let's face it, just betting on the game or doing one of those cockamamie grid things are boring. You want to know what are the odds that:

Important Things We Learned During The Super Bowl

1. Deer antler extract's main benefit is causing the guys on the other team to drop the ball.
2. The best plays that were called were the ones that planned on the other guys missing tackles. The last time I saw that many flubbed attempts to wrap something up, it was on the set of a mummy-themed porn flick.
3. If your play-calling is questionable, you don't deserve to get penalties called.
4. The 49ers definitely needed to pull Colin Kaepernick and replace him with Alex Smith. Except when Kaepernick was en fuego, a time that oddly enough coincided with the 49ers' brain trust abandoning their love of "running Frank Gore up the middle to set up 2nd and 9".
5. When my wife, the brilliant and talented and not-at-all-interested-in-football Melinda Thielbar, watches a play and says "That's holding, right?", it's probably holding.
6. The lights went off in the Mercedes Benz Superdome (and boy howdy, is that ever weird to type) because of an "external power surge". Which only makes sense, as the stadium does not have either a small nuclear power plant or a chained Pikachu in the basement to provide for its electrical needs.
7. Pass interference is no longer a thing. 
8. Steve Tasker and Solomon Wilcots cannot do math. To be fair, they should not be asked to do improvisational math on live television. Even if it is just subtraction.
9. Not sure whose idea it was to have someone under 60 do the halftime show, but as concepts go, it might be a keeper.
10. The momentum shifted in the 49ers' favor when the power went out. And thus, with the momentum swinging their way, they took the field after the partial blackout and gave away the ball on downs.
11. The refs may want their face time when the cameras are on them before the game (I'm talking to you, Crew Chief Boger), but none of them want to be the ones making a call when it's a big moment. 
12. According to the booth crew, it's a good thing they stop enforcing the rules toward the end of the game. Because inconsistency in enforcement just adds to the excitement
13. For the record, the Puppy Bowl had power thoughout the whole game.
14. At any given moment, the number of Harbaughs freaking out was = 1. This may be a new mathematical constant.
15. The appropriate response to a blackout at the Super Bowl is to make a Bane joke. The second appropriate response is to realize that Ray Lewis actually is Bane.

Sportsthodoxy's Official Super Bowl Prediction

The 49ers will win tonight because they have a more explosive offense.
But the Ravens will win tonight because they're on an emotional high, ready to have Ray Lewis go out a winner.
But the 49ers will win tonight because the Ravens haven't seen a quarterback like Colin Kaepernick.
But the Ravens will win tonight because Kaepernick is just a rookie and Joe Flacco has taken the step to elite status
But the 49ers will win because of their more balanced attack.
But the Ravens will win because once you convert a 4th and 29 on your way to the Super Bowl, you have unstoppable momentum.
But the 49ers....

All of these unassailable facts and more have been offered up as irrefutable evidence of who's going to win the Super Bowl tonight. In the end, we only know a few things for sure:

Roughly half the pundits currently making predictions will be wrong.
The guys who were wrong will never mention their incorrect predictions and the strongly held beliefs and expert analyses that led to them ever again.
The guys who were right will crow about it until next year, when they have a 50-50 chance of being wrong all over again.
Nobody actually knows nuthin'
And a guy named J. Harbaugh is going to be the winning coach.

The Night Before The Super Bowl

Not Pictured: Jase, Willie or Uncle Si (Special Teams)

The first Super Bowl I really paid attention to was after the 1980 season. (You want the Roman Numerals, you can get them yourself). It was the Eagles and Raiders, and I was living in suburban Philly, and all of us were entranced with our wacky Iggles. We had a 6'8" wide receiver named Harold. We had a quarterback nicknamed "The Polish Rifle". We had a star defensive end named Claude and a star running back named Wilbert and a middle linebacker named Bill Bergey who, thirty three years on, would have fit in just fine on Duck Dynasty. And we'd beaten the hated, the loathed, the screw-Santa-lets-throw-snowballs-at-these-guys Dallas Cowboys to get to the Super Bowl.

Eagles coach Dick Vermeil was really the prototype for the modern football coach, in that he ate, slept, breathed and dreamed work. He'd retire a couple of years later citing burnout, the result of too many years catching a few hours' sleep on a couch in his office at the Vet after yet another late night studying film. By all accounts he wasn't a Sabanesque tyrant or a Belichickian commissar, demanding complete autonomy over the team and infusing his job of coaching large men in tight stretchy pants with militaristic fervor, but he did up the bar on intensity and the sort of effort expected from coaches. The coaching landscape of today is thus an unfortunate part of his legacy.

But back in January 1981, that sort of intensity manifested the night before the Super Bowl in a fairly straightforward way: curfew for the Eagles. Rather than risk having his team get sideswiped by the temptations of the French Quarter - all they needed was for Louie Giammona to show up at gametime wearing beads - Vermeil sent Woody Peoples, Keith Krepfle and the rest of the boys to bed early. Their opponents, the Oakland Raiders faced no such restrictions. Led by Ringo Starr movie bit player John Matuszak, a guy nicknamed "the Mad Stork" and the finest football player ever to come out of Colgate (Mark van Eeghen), the Raiders stayed out all night, guzzled whatever the hell they felt like guzzling, and presumably dragged themselves back to their hotel fifteen minutes before gametime.

And then once the game started, they proceeded to beat the clean-living Eagles like they were Keith Moon's crash cymbal. It was over, for all intents and purposes, by halftime. There's a lesson in there somewhere, I suppose, but I don't think anyone ever learned it.

Super Bowl Prop Bets, Sportsthodoxy Edition

Every Super Bowl has a Vegas line. It also has innumerable side bets available, ranging from "who scores first" to "which team's cheerleaders have the first wardrobe malfunction" to "how many souls will wither and die during an uninspiring halftime show". With that in mind, here's your Sportsthodoxy Guide to some of the more intriguing prop bets you'll see leading into Sunday.


5:4 - Ray Lewis will mention God in post-game interviews if the Ravens win
20:1 - Ray Lewis will mention God in post-game interviews if the Ravens lose
60:1 - Ray Lewis will stalk and mount Bambi on the sidelines of the game, rubbing the deer's antlers all over his face while shouting about how the Devil made quadrupeds
5:2 - Ray Lewis's helmet knocked off, revealing stubby antlers beneath
5:1 - There will be multiple shots of Alex Smith looking pensive and holding a clipboard on the sideline
4:1 - Someone will mention how Colin Kaepernick has only 10 starts as a QB
12:1 - Joe Flacco will actually prove he is an "elite QB"
8:1 - Someone will mock Joe Flacco with an "elite QB" reference after a bad pass
20:1 - Ed Reed lands a shot on a 49ers wideout that temporarily turns the poor guy into Enos from The Dukes of Hazzard
2:1 - There will be a lengthy discussion of how that's just good hard-nosed football after he does
7:1 - Kaepernick slides cleats-up into Ed Reed
6:5 - If Kaepernick slides cleats-up into Reed, Reed kills him right then and there
8:1 - Someone will realize Ray Rice is short
10:1 - There will be a shot of someone's wife or girlfriend looking horrified on the sideline after Ray Lewis takes the guy's head off, possibly with a hacksaw
9:1 - This play will be called "good, hard-nosed football"
5:1 - Someone will do a lengthy comparison-contrast of the brothers Harbaugh, not realizing we've already done one
3:1 - 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh will have a sideline meltdown because of a bad call
5:1 - Ravens coach John Harbaugh will make fun of his kid brother for doing so.
7:1 - 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh will yell at Ravens coach John Harbaugh that he's not being fair
9:1 - Ravens coach John Harbaugh will give 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh an atomic wedgie
11:1 - 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh will yell for his mom cause his big brother's being mean to him again
6:5 - Randy Moss will get alligator arms on a pass over the middle
10:1 - People will suddenly remember that Randy Moss is playing in this Super Bowl
3:1 - Someone at ESPN will start talking about how Tim Tebow would be a great fit with one of these teams.
20.5 - the over-under on "number of lingering shots of Jack Harbaugh"
1:3 - the person who knows least about football at your Super Bowl party wins your family-room betting pool

They Don't Want It For Ray

There's a lot of talk going around about how the Ravens want to "win one for Ray" Lewis.  About how he is the "heart and soul" of the Baltimore franchise.  Certainly in pregame warmups he is an enthusiastic cheerleader.  Coach Harbaugh let him on the field for the final snap of his last home game, as a tribute to his skills and legacy.

I don't dismiss or knock Lewis's skills and legacy.  The man was an absolute terror on defense.  Tenacious, ferocious, smart, strong, and fast. A great defender.  And I get the impression that he never took a down off. If he was on the field, he was going full-speed.

But let me ask you something.

Let's imagine that you are, I don't know, a software engineer.  You have a big-deal project coming up -- a public application that is guaranteed a pretty wide audience. Your name will be in the credits. On the project is Doug, a well-known, respected application developer in his early 60s, who contributed heavily to a big project early in his career.

Your project manager tries to motivate you by saying: "Let's make this project kick some ass for Doug. Let's let Doug retire with a big win on his resume."

Does this motivate you? Will you write better software because it's Doug's farewell project?

Hell, no, you won't. You might think: Well it would be nice for Doug's last project to go well. But I have a career in front of me. I want this big project to go well for ME.

Ray's teammates want to win the Super Bowl because getting to the Super Bowl (and/or winning it) is worth...

... cash money ($88k for the winner, about half that for the loser)
... increased chance for sponsorships and promotions (ask John Madden)
... increased chance to make good money in free agency (ask Neil O'Donnell, who parlayed a loss in Super Bowl XXX into a 25% raise, which he, in turn, responded to with an 0-6 start with the Jets)
... increased shot at entering the Hall of Fame (ask Richard Dent, who might not have made it into the Hall without his SB XX MVP performance)

So, yes, Lewis's teammates think it would be nice if Ray got a win.  But Anquan Boldin's out there trying to win it for Anquan.

The Sportsthodoxy Guide To The Coachin' Harbaughs

Now that the matchup is set for the Super Bowl (We're not monetizing this thing, so we're going to say "Super Bowl" all we want instead of, say, "The Big Game" or "The Uper-Say Owl-Bay" or whatever the NFL's lawyers insist on) it has become clear that the major storyline for the game will be Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh. Having the two coaches of the two Super Bowl participants be brothers offers an unprecedented opportunity to beat the topic of fraternal competition to death, and we look forward to the full weight of Fox, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and others being turned to pumping a glorified, billion dollar version of "Mom liked me better!"

With that in mind, here's your quick guide to telling the two coaching brothers apart so that in the weeks to come, you can have a better grasp on which one of them you think is being overexposed at any given moment:

	Jim Harbaugh	John Harbaugh
Best known for winning...	At Stanford	The loyalty of Ray Lewis
Coaches...	San Francisco 49ers	Baltimore Ravens
Has a star player who...	Is named Frank Gore	Might have once been drenched in gore
Lost last year’s conference championship game because...	He kept sending a kick returner with a concussion out onto the field	Forgot that special teams are actually part of the game
Played..	Quarterback in the NFL for over a decade, though not very well	Defensive back for the U. Yes, it was a shock to us, too.
Got his coaching break from...	Dad, and don’t think he’s ever going to hear the end of it	Andy Reid
Run in with authority...	DUI arrest in 2005	Once bumped a ref and got fined for it
Is going to win the Super Bowl because...	His head will explode during a sideline tantrum if he doesn’t	Ray Lewis has said that God wants him to. And even God is afraid of Ray Lewis