With a little more than 76 hours to go to kickoff, I've started making the first halting steps toward creating my Super Bowl Chili. My big game tradition started back in 1990 (which means this year's batch needs to be marked XXV) when I threw my first Super Bowl party, and while I don't traditionally play host anymore, my Super Sunday invitations usually come with a Chili clause.
In the meantime, here are a few interesting Super Bowl links. Peruse at your leisure, and leave your predictions for the BIG GAME in the comments box.
Allen Barra profiles Bud Goode, "the father of pro-football analysis".
Bill Simmons is keeping up with his Super Bowl Blog, even if lacks such niceities such as permalinks. Today's installment is pretty interesting:
For the past eight years, Sony PlayStation and 989 Sports have thrown a Super Bowl party together. For the past eight years, one star from each Super Bowl team has competed in the most current version of "NFL GameDay." And for the past eight years, the player who prevailed ended up winning a Super Bowl ring just a few days later.Now that's pretty impressive. Eight-and-oh? According to the strangest man I've ever met in my life, ABC co-worker Rick Rosner -- a guy who has a "Born to do math" tattoo -- the probabilities against this happening are very high. Clearly, something creepy was happening here.
This year, New England's Troy Brown took on Carolina's Steve Smith. Who won? Click here to find out.
How many different ways can you bet on the Super Bowl? Ian and Al at Football Outsiders know the answer.
Not only do I think the Panthers can win with the points, I think they have a legit shot to win overall.
The Rams came in a couple years ago with the “fastest show on earth” on offense, and a suspect defense and got tossed by the Pats. Now the Pats come in against a team with a pretty darn good defense themselves. I think the Panthers WRs are great, and they have a killer running game – which the Pats do not. But the WRs on the Pats side of the ball are all burners, and Brady is going to pump fake the hell out of Ricky Manning Jr., who everyone is all over at media week. So I’d say they’re a lot closer to “even” than one might like.
Think about it this way, since there’s no home field advantage 3 points in the spread, would the Pats be 10 point favorites if they were at home? Heck no – So why should they be 6 1/2 points or whatever favorites in Houston?
Wouldn’t that be XV on the chili?
My advice; throw out the number. Pick the winner. if you think CAR can win it all, take them on the ML at +190 or whatever. In 31 of 36 Super Bowls, the number is unimportant. The last time a team won, but did not cover was SBXXX, when Pitt, as a 13.5 dog lost by 10. So…it’s hard to do that, but if you like CAR, you have to like almost 2:1 on the ML.
That being said, I like NE to win and cover. Better conference, better competition and, oh yeah, 14 wins in a row. I also think CAR is prone to the bigger turnover than NE is.
Final score NE 23, Car 13.
Naaah, XIV it is, as there was one year I didn’t make chili.