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.

My second annual Super Bowl prediction.

It is time for my Super Bowl prediction. This is my second annual prediction; last year’s being the first annual. Last year I did not do so well with the prediction thing, but this year I have fine-tuned my equations, sharpened my data collection techniques, and have amassed large amounts of data to be analyzed and processed.

Who am I trying to kid? I do not think I have watched either of these teams play a single game this last season. In truth, I had to Google to find out that Eli Manning is the quarterback for the Giants and Tom Brady is throwing the ball for the Patriots.

It is the names of these two men that are most important. Forget all the other hoopla about interceptions, completion percentages, and number of times sacked. Football fans want a quarterback for whom they can cheer. Imagine a few thousand people cheering for Tom Brady. As they shout his name it begins to sound like thousands of hippies from the 1970’s starting to meditate. “Tommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm”. The gentle humming fills the stadium as the fans and players start to center on their happy place and become one with the universe. That is, until a 300-pound linebacker sacks Mr. Brady, making him one with the astro-turf. Fortunately, for the astro-turf, Mr. Brady has a last name; that being Brady. It is a good last name for a crowd to chant, with a mixture of sharp vowels, hard consonants, and easily adapted to a militaristic singsong marching cadence that will inspire a trip to the end zone.

Mr. Manning, on the other hand, is not so fortunate. His last name, I fear, will deteriorate into the kind of hubbub and din that one would expect at a cocktail party; a large, boisterous, rambunctious cocktail party, but still without any ability to inspire.  His first name is only slightly better. Eli has sharp vowels and the possibility of becoming a terrifying war chant. My suspicion, however, is that the “L” sound in his name will get lost as the crowds chant. This is a particularly reasonable expectation considering the large amounts of Super Bowl grog quaffed by the chanters. Losing the lone consonant in Eli’s name, will reduce the chant to the sound of schoolchildren returning from a field trip, singing “Old McDonald” on that long bus ride home. But, they get stuck part way into the chorus and keep singing, “E-I, E-I” never quite reaching the “ohhhhh”.

Another deciding factor is each team’s upbringing, or more specifically, their home fields and the impact it has on the team psyche. The Giants share their stadium with the New York Jets, who are known for breaking out into dance and singing at the Giants, “Once you’re a Jet,/ You’re a Jet all the way/from your first cigarette/To your last dying day.” This poor behavior and the obvious friction is not good for the Giants. Additionally, their stadium is known as the MetLife stadium. Met Life is most famous for two things, blimps and paying people to die.

The Patriots have a stadium all to themselves, the Gillette stadium, which is, as everyone knows, “The best a man can get.”

A lawyer and an actor/TV producer own the Giants. This makes them only slightly more trustworthy than a politician. The Kraft family owns the Patriots. This brings to mind bowls and bowls of Kraft macaroni and cheese, which millions of family’s across the country put in their supper bowls. It is only a small step for this family to fill out a Super Bowl.

Therefore, my expert insight and analysis predicts that the winner of this year’s Super Bowl will be the New England Patriots.