Sunday, February 06, 2005

Quick Super Bowl review - Philadelphia's defense was tighter than I gave it credit for. - Tom Brady's red zone fumble was disconcerting as it was the stuff that upsets are fermented from. Nonetheless the Patriots won as I expected, albeit by a closer margin.  Good thing I did not bet on the game. Deion Branch was the only reasonable choice for MVP.  Can't justify giving it to Brady due to the turnover in such a crucial spot. Favorite commercials were the Mustang convertible (despite being played more than once), the CareerBuilder.com monkeys, and Budwiser's designated driver  (a type of commercial that is usually dull and preachy managed to be amusing for once).  None of these are anything near classics, however. Jackpotzrebie comment []11:50:55 PM   trackback []

Super Bowl Prediction  Inspired by Steven Taylor's Super Bowl Post On the Sunday night of the conference championships I pondered what the opening spread for the Super Bowl was going to be.  Of course, I considered the fact that the odds are not designed to be predictors for the game, but instead, are intended to create equal amounts of betting on each team.  Because of that, they reflect the public's perception of the game, not necessarily the reality.  Following that line of thinking, I considered the public's perception of the game.  If New England had anything resembling flashy media adorned stars, they would certainly be double digit favorites, as there would be talk of an inevitable dynasty in the making.  Of course, that is not the case, New England has always been underrated, sometimes to extremes, the widespread predictions of an Indianpolis victory over them being just one example of this.  So it was clear that New England wouldn't get much boost from that.  But I did think that they would get a boost from the fact that they come from a conference that has proved to be superior this year.  The AFC had three 9-7 teams that did not make the playoffs.  On the other side, three 8-8 teams did so.  The NFC had only two teams with winning records against their AFC opponents (Minnesota and Atlanta).  I thought these stats might offset the lack of hype for New England, and result in a spread of about ten points or so. So I was only mildly surprised when I found the opening spread to be around seven points.  I was then curious to see how the story would be covered over the next two weeks.  Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the coverage has revolved around the Eagles, with coverage of the Patriots seeming like an afterthought at times.  An uninformed observer could come away from the coverage thinking that the Eagles were the favored team. They are not, and even though many have come out predicting a New England victory, they seem to be quiet.  The opposite of these are people like Michael Wilbon who are predicting a Philadelphia victory.  One common thread in these predictions is an acknowledgement that New England is the better team and would win a seven game series, but that Philadelphia will win for some magical reason. I am not making one of those predictions.  New England is the better team, has played (and beaten) better opponents, and will come out on top in this game.  How anyone can discount a team that put up 41 points on the top defense in the league is beyond me.  I am a Redskins fan but I was symphathetic to the Eagles when I lived in southeastern Pennsylvania.  After living there, I lived in Maine when the Patriots were a bad team and if anyone at my school were  fans of theirs, they were deeply in the closet.  So it's with a mind unclouded with the biases of team loyalties that I predict: New England 31 Philadelphia 17 Jackpotzrebie comment []3:43:18 PM   trackback []