Think the Super Bowl Sucked? Get Use to It.

From HoraceClarke66...

I have to say, football’s big game turned out to be one of the biggest stinkeroos of a Super Bowl I’ve ever seen—and I have literally seen them all.

 

I had no rooting interest, just wanted to see a good game.  Instead, we got a Kansas City team that had looked like world beaters suddenly imploding against a Tampa Bay squad the Chiefs had beaten by three points in Tampa, back in November.

 

Hardly an insurmountable margin, I know.  But who could’ve predicted KC would fall apart so completely?  The game, as they say, wasn’t even as close as the 31-9 score indicated.  And strangest of all was how the Chiefs, a team that had seemed adept at coming back from almost any deficit, utterly lost their composure.

 

Kansas City seemed to have no adjustments to make as the pass rush clobbered its brilliant young quarterback time after time.  The body language of the chief Chiefs, even before the half, was already that of a beaten team—that is, when they weren’t altogether losing their cool or committing yet another key penalty.

 

So what gives?  Most likely, it had something to do with the horrible accident Coach Reid’s son got into.  And with Tampa Bay, and a ball-deflating man named Tommy.

 

But more than both those things, it was probably the grievous injuries KC had suffered on its offensive line—much as Tampa Bay got a break when Green Bay also suffered a big injury on the line before their playoff game.

 

Hey—injuries are part of the game, and this is not to take anything away from the Bucs.

 

But let’s face it: Tampa Bay was a piddling 7-5 after the regular-season loss to the Chiefs, playing very erratic football all year.  Then the Bucs got an off-week late in the season, and came back like gangbusters, averaging over 34 points a game in 8 straight wins.

 

Te salud.  But what made TB champs as much as anything was a late breather and no serious injuries—while all sorts of other teams that had seemed invincible early on (looking at you, Pittsburgh Steelers!) wore out or just broke down.

 

The Bucs didn’t even win their division.  But the team that did, New Orleans, was also an injury-laden wreck by the time the playoffs rolled around.  Out the window went two Saints wins against TB, by a total of 46 points, with Tampa winning its third “do-over.”

 

And yet, next season the NFL intends to add yet another game to its regular season.

 

More and more, this is what all pro sports, with their endless regular seasons, are coming down to:  a extended exercise in futility, with whoever happens to be hottest or most injury-free at the end, winning. 

 

The baseball equivalent of this is going to be adding yet another playoff round. 

 

This might actually help our beloved Pinstripers, with their continuing devotion to just grabbing a wild card slot so Poor Hal can limp by on food stamps for another season.  But it’s one more element that will make regular-season games more meaningless, championship games worse, and championships themselves all the more fraudulent.