Sunday, February 01, 2009

I hardly write about sports, if ever, but with this Super Bowl I have to make this point. If the Arizona Cards win, it will be the biggest fraud to occur in any sport in quite some time. Many will protest, saying "But they won the Super Bowl! End of story." Sorry, in most years the winner of the Super Bowl is more often than not the best team in the NFL that season, or certainly one of the top 3. Yet this year with the Cards making it all the way to the big one, it proves that on rare occasion an impostor can have everything break their way and stand to be crowned #1.

What do I mean? The Cards finished the regular season a mediocre 9-7 to win the weakest division in the NFL. They won their home games (6-2) but had a losing record on the road (with several losses absolute blowouts), meaning they frequently took advantage of teams having to make the long trip to Phoenix, but then faltered badly when they had to make same trip to East Coast. Thanks to their divisional standing, they were fortunate to get home field advantage in two post-season games, a huge edge, and the one game they did not (as +10 pt. dogs to the Panthers) they again were fortunate with the Panthers turning the ball over six (!) times). Note: typically if a team has a net turnover margin of two or greater in a game, they don't win. Six turnovers makes it near impossible to win.

The NFL should re-evaluate their playoff rules. It should not be that the winners of each division get home field advantage. These teams should obviously get into the playoffs but it should be the W/L record that dictates home fields. The fact is the Cards should have never been at home in the post-season given their pedestrian record. Meanwhile, we saw the 12-4 Indy Colts have to play on the road versus the 8-8 SD Chargers -- it's simply not right.

I fully expect the Steelers to win by double-digits. They're simply the better team, esp. on defense (which typically is what matters most in these big games). However, the better team does not always win and again, in this case not only would the lesser team prove fortunate to win, but the clearly lesser team is lucky to have made it this far in the post-season. Kudos to them for making it so far with a subpar team, but I'm sorry, if they hold up that Super Bowl trophy, I for one will not suddenly erase their stats and their regular season record and salute them as best in the league. Not even close.

No comments: