It is Finally Time: Frey’s Super Bowl Pick

At this point, you are all probably thinking that I have about as much credibility when it comes to the art of predicting playoff outcomes as would Hitler were he to teach a course in ethnic sensitivity and tolerance.

Playoff record 2-6-2

Charting the same course as my beloved Broncos, I opted to follow up a stellar regular season with laughable ineptitude in the playoffs.  Under such circumstances, it would be easy to start to equivocate, lose one’s confidence, and perhaps, even, to feel shame.

But fear not my friends!  As my wife will tell you, no amount of catastrophic bumbling has ever coerced me into shutting my yap and it is not about to begin this day.  This day, we prognosticate!

SuperBowl XLVII

Baltimore at San Francisco (-3 ½) *prediction at the end of the post

To me, this is one of the most difficult big games to predict in recent memory.  In fact, in the time I have spent writing this entry, I have altered my prediction a half-dozen times. 

Clearly, the Ravens in their current incarnation (antlers and all) are a reflection of the team sitting pretty at 9-2 before getting ravaged by injuries. 

The 49ers (the ass-kicking suffered at the hands of the Seahawks notwithstanding) have been equally impressive in that they have displayed the ability to stomp a very good team (Green Bay) and to win a hotly contested game on the road against the Falcons.

Baltimore has ruled the post-season with an epic run that gives hope to underdogs everywhere that miracles do happen, fate shapes our existence, and the “Miracle on Ice” was not a fluke. 

Hell, by all accounts I should be cowering in a dark closet in shame after this year’s playoff predictions but, channeling my inner Raven, I decided to come out and give it another go. 

In a way, for the aforementioned reason, I feel a strong affinity for this team.  In another, more important way, they are a bunch of wife-beating, PED-taking, knife-wielding felons.  It is said even Carmelo Anthony blanches upon the mere mention of the Ravens' team rap sheet.

Conversely, San Francisco put up unbelievable numbers during the regular season, averaging double the yards per play that the Ravens posted.  They have remained healthy, defeated a multitude of strong opponents, and seem energized beyond belief by the strong personality of their coach and the dynamism of their new QB.  I absolutely love the fact that they took the copy-cat NFL and all the 4-wide sets and zone blocking and gave it a humiliating kick in the crotch. 

Bucking trends.  Innovation.  Surprises.  The Niner’s s are like the Patriots from 10 years ago when they were still cheating and Belichik had balls.

San Francisco is 22-0-1 in their last 23 games when they scored more than 20 points and I have a hard time believing that even the revamped Ravens D that has been giving up an average of 378 yards per game is going to hold the Niners to 19 or less.

In a way, one might say that my kinship lies with these cats.  In another, more important way, any franchise from the Bay Area stupid enough to put a gay-basher in front of microphones on media day with millions of people listening may just be due for a crap game.

On paper, San Francisco is younger, stronger, faster and better. 

On paper, Baltimore should have lost to both Denver and New England by 20.

There is something to be said for destiny.  It is the force that froze over New York Harbor so the Continental Army could escape the Limeys during the revolution.  It hurled the Divine Wind at the invaders of Japan, struck the great Kahn dead at the gates of Vienna, and enabled Union officers to find Lee’s battle plans in a discarded cigar wrapping before the great battle of Antietam during the Civil War.

One would be a fool to completely disregard the forces of history particularly in a game so fueled by emotion.  When fate (or the hand of God as the Ravens players say) is on your side, the impossible becomes commonplace.

But then I start thinking.  Unless God is a real butthole, there is no way he can possibly favor the Ravens right?  Right?

It can be said that strength, planning, and skill wins the day and that fate is a bunch of horse poop.  These things enabled the Mongols to drive across the length of 3 United States’, embarrassing the combined might of the Christian world at every turn.  It allowed the British Army to beat the Rebels like circus monkeys and drive them to the sea where they would need a miracle to save them. 

I am a realist; a practitioner of Realpolitik.  In a battle of intangibles vs. tangibles give me the latter my friends.  Better to do what’s right and suffer the faith-based admonitions of one’s friends and foes than to fall into the band of shamans and hippies who buy into this poppycock about fate.

 My heart tells me Ravens but my brain tells me 49ers.

As Hank Hill once said (and as I often restate to my 6 year old daughter) your heart is your brain’s employee.  Don’t listen to it.  It’s a monkey.  You know better.  If you let your heart become uppity, pretty soon you’re doing and believing all sorts of stupid things.

On Sunday, the San Francisco 49ers strike a blow against mumbo-jumbo and cover while doing it!

San Francisco wins 27-19.

And that, good readers, is the season.