I think this game really has become less a football game and more a national holiday. I don't think it's out of the question that the Monday after the Super Bowl becomes a holiday where everyone across the country gets a day off. It's not even remotely about the game as we all know. It could be an absolute blowout and I'll watch every minute of it, for the commercials obvi! Everyone and their cloned dog watches the Super Bowl, so that means that people who have work the next day will be leaving their parties or their living rooms at around 11, maybe not going asleep until 12am. I suppose the Super Bowl could be played on Saturday, but I imagine that the revenue made in Tampa for the whole weekend event is too great to cut it short a full day.
Plus, what's more American than the Super Bowl, especially when Bruce is playing at half time? The only thing I can think of is July 4th and Thanksgiving. One of those already is tied to Football, and July 4th is usually around the time that Brett Favre decides he is going to play again. He's toyed with retiring the last 5 or so years always coming to the same decision and if guys like Dan Orlovsky, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Tyler Thigpen can all start games this year then Favre could probably give teams 20 tds 20 ints for another 10-15 years.
I clearly am no originator of this idea but I am a huge fan of it. I'm a huge fan of any 3 day weekends in general because the best part about having Monday off, is that Friday comes quicker. One day off makes 2 weeks infinitely better, pretty impressive. A problem with a Super Bowl holiday might be too many vacation days, but come on do we really need Columbus day. Although we rarely think of of the veterans during Veterans Day or the our lost ones during Memorial Day, I would never recommend removing those. But Columbus Day? Not every state recognizes it for good measure, so we can just axe it completely and in its place install a Super Bowl Day? This would make the Super Bowl weekend longer and would inevitably make more money, maybe this is part of Obama's plan for the economy, let's hope it is.
I guess the point of that ramble, if there is one beyond my boredom, is to how how bad this game is, yet we'll all watch it. The Steelers and the Cardinals. If you were to tell me that's the Super Bowl game after the first round of the playoffs I'd probably tell you I wouldn't care to watch it. Yet it's now the Super Bowl and I care to watch it.
With that said, I'm going with the Steelers to win. I've hinted at it a few times on this blog and I'll say it again, I believe the NFL playoffs and obviously the Super Bowl is a lot of luck. "Analysts" talk all year about momentum, yet the Cardinals stink up the end of the season and randomly get hot in the playoffs. 3 games is all you need to get to the Super Bowl, and if you were actually good during the season you only need 2 games. That is such a small sample size it's actually quite funny. No playoff system really sets up for the best team to win, but in the NBA you have to play like half a seasons worth of games to get to the finals, in the NFL you have to get lucky a few times. The NFL can't pride themselves on 'Any Given Sunday' then give credit to the teams that make it. The Cardinals aren't that great a team, they were 9-7 in a horrible division. But on 3 any given Sundays or Saturdays, the Cardinals won and now they're in the Super Bowl. "Analysts" will point to their momentum during these playoffs as reasons why they'll win completely forgetting momentum as the same reason they'll lose in the first round. I doubt it takes 16 games for something to 'click' for a team. The fact the Giants did something similar last year just helps my thinking that this happens, it doesn't disprove it.
If you haven't gotten my drift, I believe the Cardinals are largely lucky to be in this game. Not lucky as in a few balls bounced in their direction to allow them to win games they shouldn't have, but lucky as in they only had one game against each team to determine who is the better team. Could you imagine if the baseball playoffs were one game each round? Not that football can play a series, but it just shows you how random the results can be. That's why when picking who's going to win I'm going to look at the regular season pretty hard, unless someone was hurt all year who's now healthy or any other special circumstance.
In the beginning of the year the Steelers were tagged with the hardest schedule, they went on to win 12 games. The Cardinals won 9 games and were able to play 6 games against teams that went 13-35, 37.5% of their games were against teams that had a winning % of .271. The Steelers have the best defense in the league and have proven themselves over the entire season. You may not agree with me but I'm not going to give the Cardinals much credit for their postseason in terms of it meaning that they'll win this game. I think the Steelers will win pretty convincingly. Of course this whole thing has set up to this prediction being void of meaning because really for one more game the Cardinals can outplay themselves but I'm not going to be convinced the Steelers aren't the far better team.
Prediction: Steelers 31 Cardinals 17
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