The Super Bowl, Harbaughs, and Classic American Poetry

This Sunday is the Superbowl, and for the third year in a row, I am going to share my prediction as to who is going to win. My prediction is based on highly specialized scientific analysis, astute insight into the human psyche, and using Google to scour the internet for data.

I am proud to report that I have a 100% record in wrongly predicting the winner for the past two years. I, therefore, have made a few tweaks in my process for this year, and am excited to test these new and improved analyses.

The first item to consider is the coaching staff of each team. In this case, the head coaches John and Jim Harbaugh, are brothers, which renders the analysis futile. I have a brother and having a brother makes me an expert on all things about brothers.

One fine day, my brother and I were engaged in a delightful conversation about some fact upon which we disagreed as we strolled along the suburban subdivision in which we lived. My brother, a stubborn knucklehead, was not able to see the folly of his point of view, and our conversation quickly escalated to a heated argument. From that heated argument, my brother and I began to engage in mortal combat on some distant neighbor’s front lawn. That is, until the unsuspecting neighbor poked his head outside and demanded that we stop or he would call the cops.

My brother may be a stubborn knucklehead, but nobody threatens to call the cops on him. Apparently, he felt the same about me since we both stood up, and in unison, angrily told the neighbor we could fight if we wanted since we were brothers, and that we were leaving since he did a poor job of lawn maintenance and his grass was all scratchy.

Trying to predict the winner of the Superbowl by analyzing the head coaches, being brothers, would immediately skew the results and therefore will not be factored into my analysis.

Since football is a great American classic, my analysis turns to two great pieces of American poetry. The first, "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe, who lived, died, and is buried in Baltimore. In this poem, a young man allows a raven to enter his room and sit on the bust of some dead Greek guy. The young man talks of his love for some chick named Lenore and the raven repeatedly responds, “Nevermore.” The young man, neither able to engage in meaningful conversation with the bird, nor to shoo it from his room, falls deep into madness.

In the folk ballad, “Oh My Darling Clementine” a young man has fallen in love with a miner forty-niner’s daughter named Clementine. All is well, until he sees his beloved Clementine stub her toe, fall into a raging river and drowns to death. He mourns her demise. That is until he finds her younger sister, they kiss, and he forgets his sorrow and Clementine.

Based on these two great American poems that describe, in allegorical form, these two great American football teams who will meet on Sunday, I predict that the Ravens will collapse into a deep sinking madness and that the 49ers will be resilient in the face of adversity and win the game.