Super Bowl Sunday

Championship  Sunday                     0-1-1

Season                                                 34-29-1(54%)

The end is near. I'd have to say that while my opening sentence is obvious, at least the NFL lets us down gently. With diminishing games on the schedule since Wildcard Weekend it isn't like the league goes cold turkey on us. And if you consider what they propagated upon the universe last Sunday night in Hawaii as something relatively close to football, you've been eased out of this better than that time your girlfriend dumped you but still let you live at her apartment...with the added benefit of sharing her bed on the rare occasion when she had one too many zinfandels. Truth be told, my season of crappy picks would have been much better had the league closed up shop after about week 14 or around December 10th. As always, it's hard to argue with the numbers. Up until that point my record against the spread was 31-13, I had gone 7-1 over the span of two weeks with a few bonus picks thrown in for good measure and was hitting at the magical clip of 70% on the year. Since then I've been absolutely brutal with a horrid 3-16-1(WTF!) record and an embarrassing 19% against the number. Eeeesh, I believe that's proof of everything balancing out in life. So 70% over 14 weeks and 19% over 6 weeks, at least I can say I was consistently great over a much longer period of time and that I was playing with house money but I can also say that I'm happy it's almost over because with a few more weeks like this I'm not even sure I could pick a salad dressing with confidence.

Baltimore +4 vs San Francisco

This pains me because my disdain as a Patriots fan for some of the Ravens players runs as deep as it does for Broncos, Jets and Giants players, Phillip Rivers and Ryan Leaf. That's deep to the core. Ray Lewis is a murderous, seed-spewing, Jesus freak fraud of a human being, Terrell Suggs is a bombastic thug, Bernard Pollard is a cheap shot artist with the intelligence of a D-student 5th grader and Ray Rice is a punk who talks way too much for me. I doubt they would become a more respectable bunch with a victory today because grace and modesty is something they just don't seem to understand even though their head coach and quarterback show both consistently. Plus they're so far over the cap next year that this is it for them today, they won't be the same team next year and while they could still be competitive, getting back to this game is going to take a few years. All that said, they are a hotter team than San Francisco in my eyes, they've manhandled two better teams than the 49ers did in getting here and recent history has shown that the hot team wins this game. Add to that the fact that they are far more veteran-laden than San Francisco and oh yeah, their quarterback has started more than 10 games in the league. Sorry, I have to agree with Aaron Rodgers on this one, the pistol will be figured out sooner as opposed to later. This should be a field goal game either way so I'll hold my nose, take the points and hope that the 49ers win by a tres. Ugh...David Akers.

Unlike just about everyone else I like the under as well. Historically, Super Bowl offenses start slowly and with the defense that both of these teams can bring it should stay under the 48 that's on the board.

Enjoy the game and I'll be in recovery until September.

Thanks.

-P