"Waiting for the Super Bowl"

Waiting for the Super Bowl

      I took a nap about 8:00 this evening. When I woke up, I had the strangest feeling that I was ready for the Super Bowl to begin. Then I realized that it -- or something like a Super Bowl -- had already been played. Bruno Mars sang; so did Queen Latifah. But if it happened, it had been mostly played in some unreal way. I felt like the couple in the episode of The Twilight Zone, who woke up in a strange town and discovered that the trees were artificial, the people were manikins, and the train made one stop -- back at the same station it had started at. Surely, the real Super bowl was about to begin.

      But soon the quiet concern with which my dear wife(a Seahawks fan) did not mention the game to me, together with a distorted collection of memories of East Rutherford, New Jersey, began to bring my senses back into line with reality. There had been a Super Bowl, but only one team showed up. I longed to climb into my DeLorean and dial back in time to January 19, 2014, to the exact moment when the universe diverged into two separate realities and then redirect Marty and me to the time when the not-so-evil Biff is washing cars and the Super Bowl is about to begin. The football has not yet sailed over Peyton Manning’s head and anything can happen. But…I don’t have a DeLorean, and that accessory on my ‘95 Thunderbird stopped working years ago, with the brake lights.

      Yes, Virginia, there had been a Super Bowl, and my Broncos played like the Washington Generals versus the Harlem Globetrotters. At least the Globetrotters let the Generals score once in a while. 43 to 8! What in the world! I began to look for an excuse for this embarrassing outcome. For example, I don’t think the real Peyton Manning showed up. I think the guy wearing number 18 should be DNA tested or drug tested or both.

      Because I had previously asserted that this was the Broncos of the ’90’s(2 Super Bowl wins), after the game one fellow fan responded to my previous blog by asking me whether this game reminded me of the Broncos in the ‘80’s instead(3 Super Bowl losses.) He was right. This game did remind me of the Broncos of the ’80’s and the ’70’s: Super Bowl XII: Cowboys 27 - Broncos 10; Super Bowl XXI: Giants 39 - Broncos 20; Super Bowl XXII: Redskins 42 - Broncos 10; Super Bowl XXIV: 49ers 55 - Broncos 10(Heck, the Broncos didn’t even score their usual 10 points in Super Bowl XLVIII.)

      I note that you can see the Broncos’ loss differential getting steadily worse. They lost by 17 points in 1978 and then by 19, 32, and 45. One bright spot is that the Broncos only lost this Super Bowl by 35 points, so improvement from 1990. 10 points improvement in 24 years. By that fact, we can see the Broncos breaking even by 2098 in Super Bowl CXXXII. So there is something to celebrate and to look forward to.

      But I digress.

      Another possibility that might explain to the superstitious the loss in today’s Super Bowl is that I was personally jinxed by a well meaning loved one who gave me a John Elway jersey from the ‘80’s not the ‘90’s for my birthday. I am not superstitious and love my jersey, which has barbecue rib, ketchup, and glazed donut stains all over it. But it makes you wonder. … diabolical(?!)

      More seriously, though, let me confess that my “scientific” proof of the score being 33-13 Broncos was tongue in cheek. I’m sure most people immediately realized that the coincidence that the Chinese New Year had just occurred and that this is the year of the Horse is no scientific proof of anything. Neither is my backing into the 33 - 13 number by choosing an over/under score of 46 and then multiplying the also coincidental percentage of 71% of old hand victors versus newbies times the 46 to get 33 - 13. But it looked good. So much so that I got a little out of hand discussing Champ Bailey and Knowshon Moreno, et al.

      Feeling a little guilty, I did straddle the fence on this game by providing my Facebook friends with a statistically verifiable estimate of the eventual score from my alter ego, Arnold: Seahawks 27 - Broncos 16. I did this at 2:00 a.m. before the game, and Arnold was prescient, as he warned us that the game would go the Seahawks way due to turnovers. I didn’t want to hear it, but there it is. By the way, a couple of the numbers in my spreadsheet were incorrectly put in, so before the game I recalculated it. Arnold’s final number as of noon of game day was Seahawks 28 - Broncos 15.

      The game went as Arnold predicted. From my viewpoint, the Seattle defense defanged the “greatest passing offense in history” by smothering Eric Decker with Richard Sherman, forcing Demaryius Thomas to go long in the face of coverage from Maxwell and Kam Chancellor(who was the guy I had most respect for), and mugging Thomas if he went over the middle. I’m not complaining; that’s the way it’s done -- I’ve seen the Broncos do it, too. They got enough of a rush to hurry Peyton, who threw some bad passes.  The Seahawks also did not draw into a shell but continued to pass even with a 29 point lead. With a huge Quarterback rating(127?), I think Russell Wilson should have been MVP.

      Wes Welker(84 yards) and Demaryius(118 yards) had good days despite that. Where was Julius Thomas? The Broncos defense handled Lynch very well and the rest of the offense well. Manning had an okay day with 280 yards passing. But it has always been very hard for a team to move the ball when it cannot run because of lack of time, and this was the Broncos’ situation.

      In Manning’s case, I’m reminded of the famous line from A Raisin in the Sun, a Broadway play and movie by Lorraine Hansberry about a black family that comes into some money. The young man of the family gets into trouble, like Peyton did today, and -- rather than condemning him -- the mother says, “When’s the time to love someone? When they done good? Or..”. I still love Peyton Manning.

      Finally, let me offer some advice. Why? Because when your team gets its bottom spanked like the Broncos did today(or am I dreaming and I‘ll wake up soon for the kickoff?), what is left but to fall back on the consolation of philosophy. To my fellow Bronco fans and Arnold, who warned me against my foolhardy prediction, I offer the following clichés: “There’s no fool like an old fool” and “Hope springs eternal.” I’m looking forward to next year.

      How about also some perspective. When I was 27(1978) years old, the Broncos lost their first Super Bowl. I watched it with pride but with chagrin. They kept going back to the Super Bowl and getting, as we have seen, worse and worse(I was told that in 1990, they were the number one defense in the league, like the Seahawks this year, but surrendered 55 points.) The Broncos finally won a Super Bowl when I was 47(1998). Now, I’m 63. At that rate, I’ve got to wait until 2018 for the next Bronco team winning the Super Bowl. They’re almost due. Oh, well, not so bad.

      Hug your kids, kiss your wives, and enjoy life. It’s only football.mm