Super Bowl Sunday

Bookmarks of the space and time continuum are transparently and yet indelibly marked by each Super Bowl. It is the final game of every NFL season and it marks the end of the previous year’s sports season. It is when men are legally required to tally the chits of the decisions that we made in our youth.

The earliest strains of Yard DNA can be traced to the Super Bowl Sundays of the 70’s and 80’s. Gator, Ricardo, Raja, Shack, Swaney, Hackney, Finn and the rest of the Yard boys from these seminal moments will always be embedded in the double helix spirit of this Sunday. Decoding the Roman Numerals of the game is getting into some murky waters but the Yard concedes that the game is worth the math.

Trivia: UCLA has had two QB’s start in the Super Bowl while the vaunted Trojans have never had a USC quarterback play a single down in Super Bowl history. Who were the Bruins?

The Yard roots for Arizona and there is no better story in the NFL than Kurt Warner this year. He is a humble man, who has remarkable skills and we all thought he had retired two years ago. He met his wife while at University of Northern Iowa when she already had two kids, one that was seriously disabled. They married and had two more kids. Along the way he got released from the Packers, worked for $5.50 an hour at a supermarket, played in the Arena Football League, won the Super Bowl with the former Los Angeles Rams and now is back in the big game. He is a 37 year old father who genuinely puts family first while winning the starting QB job over a 25 year old 1st round Heisman trophy winning fraternity father who genuinely puts beer bongs first. Kurt Warner’s story was amazing fifteen years and four sentences ago.

Pittsburgh will win and cover. The Birds were on a roll but a two week lay off is not what they needed. The Cardinals needed to play the Steelers on January 25th not February 1. The 2007 Rockies swept everyone right into the World Series winning seven games in 13 days. The Red Sox grinded through a seven games series with the Indians being down 3-1 at one point. The Rockies had seven days off before the World Series began. The Red Sox had three. It took the Red Sox the next five days to sweep the Rockies. When emotionally charged teams are put on the shelf, it is hard for them to get the mojo back.

The Steelers are grinders. They do not win on emotion, they win with emotion. And they win because of Troy Polamalu. With Polamalu playing safety, everyone else on the Steeler defense can take chances in front of him. It will be grand theater with Larry Fitzgerald, Warner and the Cardinal aerial attack. The story will not have a happy ending for our feathered friends. The Cardinals will be playing from behind, taking chances, and succumbing to late turnovers. The Steel Town wins those kinds of games and covers late. The Cardinals were on the cover of Sports Illustrated at the wrong time.

BTW: UCLA QB John Sciarra started at safety for his UCLA/Eagle coach Dick Vermeil in the 1981 Super Bowl. At UCLA, they upset Woody Hayes and his undefeated Ohio State Buckeyes during my freshman year. Bruin Troy Aikman won three Super Bowls with the Cowboys as well.