The Sports Curmudgeon®

OK, the Super Bowl media circus is about to whirl completely out of control; so before I’m reduced to reading about some farmer in Nebraska whose chickens have predicted the last 21 Super Bowl winners correctly in some totally bizarre manner, I want to go through a few things about the Super Bowl and then try to ignore some of the silliness.

In the first Super Bowl game, tickets cost $6 each. And they didn’t sell out the game. The face value of tickets this year is just over $600. There is no worry about selling all the tickets. If you happen to be a season ticket holder for either the Bears of the Colts, the only way you got a Super Bowl ticket is by winning a lottery among all the season ticket holders. Both the Bears and Colts got about 13,000 tickets but most of those tickets (probably 80% of them) went to players, coaches, sponsors and the owners. Season ticket holders for the Bears and Colts probably got less than 5000 tickets in total. Unless, of course they went online to buy them at a slightly inflated price…

I checked on CompleteTickets.com to see what the asking prices are at the moment. The cheapest ticket I could find there was $3,720. There seem to be lots of tickets available for $4200 - $4300. If you want to be “near the 50 yard line”, be prepared to pay something north of those figures. Or you could have one of the Luxury Suites at the stadium which “accommodates up to 50” folks. That will cost you $570,000. Hey, you’re not really going to need that money in your IRA, are you?

During the upcoming week, ESPN will have 90 hours of Super Bowl programming. That’s the amount of pre-game hype for a game that should take less than 4 hours from start to finish. And that’s not all, the NFL Network will broadcast 100 hours of Super Bowl programming during this week. And then there’s the stuff on local stations and sports radio stations and … Prepare for the onslaught. I hope to find enough self-control to avoid jamming knitting needles through both of my eardrums later this week.

A reader sent me an interesting observation from the conference championship games last weekend. In the spirit of full disclosure, he is a graduate of the University of Florida and so his tone had a bit of gloating in it when he pointed out that the two winning QBs last weekend were from the SEC while both losing QBs were from the Big Ten. I hadn’t made that connection until his e-mail arrived. Of course, I had to inform him in return that there was now a 100% guarantee that a QB with an SEC pedigree would be a loser in the Super Bowl. It’s what curmudgeons do.

The last time the Colts’ franchise won the Super Bowl, it was 1971. John Unitas was still playing and the Colts won on a last second field goal over the Dallas Cowboys. That was the only Super Bowl in which the game MVP came from the losing team. Chuck Howley was a linebacker for the Cowboys that day and all he did was intercept two passes and recover one fumble to reel in that MVP Award.

In 32 of the previous 40 Super Bowl games, one of the teams committed more turnovers than the other team. In those 32 games, the team with the fewer turnovers won 29 times. So, if you’re looking to forecast the winner of the game, think about picking the team that will turn the ball over less than the other one. Based on the regular season stats, there’s not much to choose from between the Colts and the Bears. The Colts were a net +7 in turnover differential for the year and the Bears were +8.

Here’s another trend to look at. Ever since the LA Raiders won the Super Bowl in 1983, each and every Super Bowl winner has been in the top 10 in scoring defense during the season leading up to the Super Bowl. There seems to be a logical basis for kind of correlation because to win games it behooves a team to prevent the opposition from scoring a ton of points. On a much shorter time scale, the Bucs led the NFL in scoring defense in 2002 and won the Super Bowl; the same was true for the Pats in 2003; the Pats were second in scoring defense in 2004 when they won again; last year the Steelers were third in the league in scoring defense. For the 2006 regular season, the Bears were third in scoring defense and the Colts ranked 23rd.

Enough Super Bowl stuff, I’m sated already and there are still 6 days to go. I wish this were National Talk Like A Pirate Day because the word “Arrrgh!” is filling my head at the moment. So, let me change the subject…

The Dolphins’ hiring of a new coach fetched this observation from Mike Bianchi in the Orlando Sentinel:

“Cam Cameron is the new coach of the Miami Dolphins. Guess the Fins figured that hiring a successful college coach didn’t work, so why not hire an unsuccessful college coach? Cameron went 18-37 as the head coach at Indiana before becoming the San Diego Chargers’ offensive coordinator.”

And the Cowboys’ search for a new coach continues with Norv Turner’s name the one most frequently mentioned despite the fact that Turner has two unsuccessful head coaching stints in his past. Frankly, I think that Turner going to the Cowboys should be declared unconstitutional on cruel and unusual punishment grounds. If he went to Dallas and worked for Jerry Jones, that would mean he will have worked for Danny Boy Snyder, Al Davis and Jerry Jones. That’s just wrong. This man has suffered enough!

I’m sure you’ve heard about 34 bazillion times by now that Lovie Smith is the lowest paid head coach in the NFL. Some folks are very angry that the Bears have not given him a new contract with a huge raise by now even though Smith has another year left on his contract. I surely have no problem with Smith getting a raise such that he receives compensation commensurate with his peers. But will all of the people commenting on this matter with huge doses of righteous indignation take a breath for a moment and recognize that Lovie Smith and his agent took his current deal and agreed to it a few years ago. He did not sign the deal to retrieve a family member from a hostage situation; he wasn’t coerced. So, let the negotiation processes happen and turn down the volume on the righteous indignation.

Finally, here’s a note from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. will feature Britney Spear’ ex, Kevin Federline, in an ad to air during the Super Bowl. Apparently, Nationwide now offers insurance policies in the event you accidentally hear a performance by a talent-less white rapper.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…