Superbowl Sunday

The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. This game is held at a selected site, usually a city that hosts an NFL team. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather than the year in which it is held, with Super Bowl I being the 1966 season championship game. The upcoming game, Super Bowl XLVI, will be played at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, on February 5, 2012, to determine the champion of the 2011 season between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots.
The game was created as part of a merger agreement between the NFL and its then-rival league, the American Football League (AFL). It was agreed that the two leagues' champion teams would play in an AFL–NFL World Championship Game until the merger was to officially begin in 1970. After the merger, each league was redesignated as a "conference", and the game was then played between the conference champions. Currently, the NFC leads the series with 24 wins to 21 wins for the AFC.
The day on which the Super Bowl is played is now considered a de facto American national holiday, called "Super Bowl Sunday". It is the second-largest day for U.S. food consumption, after Thanksgiving Day. There's a lot of hype about the Super Bowl and almost as many myths and superstitions. Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner tackles three of the most common misconceptions about the Super Bowl, including one that could determine the outcome of the game.


Myth #1) If the Giants Win, the Market Will Cheer: According to the so-called Super Bowl indicator, a win by any team from the original NFL (like the Giants) is good for the stock market while a win by a team from the AFL (like the New England Patriots) is bad. To date, 36 out of 45 Super Bowl championships have given support for this indicator or an 80% success rate, according to Investopedia. "I love to hear people chatter about it but I ignore that stuff," Dubner says. “We know that predicting the future based on an independent variable that has nothing to do with anything is a bad idea. I might as well take hen's teeth and a cast them in the dirt." Statistically speaking, the "Super Bowl Indicator" just doesn't add up, but it makes for good party conversation if the game gets boring.

Myth # 2) Super Bowl Ads Are Too Expensive: This year, NBC is charging a record $3.5 million for a 30-second Super Bowl ad, generating about $250 million for the network.  Sounds like an obscenely ridiculous amount of money, right? Well, according to Dubner, NBC "might be leaving tens or even hundreds of millions [of dollars] on the table."
How's that? As Dubner notes, the "market" for Super Bowl ads is not really a market at all. "It's a weird set-price auction with one seller and the price set the previous year by a competitor," he says, noting the Super Bowl rotates annually between NBC, CBS and Fox who are rivals the other 364 days of the year but "collaborators" in this particular piece of price-fixing.
Rather than a set price for ads, Dubner thinks the networks would do better auctioning off each ad slot. Plus, "they can take the auction of ad sales and make it its own half-hour show and sell ads against that," he says. "I would watch that."
Who wouldn't? Given all the hype around Super Bowl ads, it's a pretty good bet that show would be a ratings bonanza.

Myth # 3) In Sports, Home Field Matters: Home field does matter in sports but not for the reasons you probably think, according to Dubner, making OK, this less a myth buster than a myth explainer -- giving new meaning to the term "demystify."
Citing the book Scorecasting, which is sort of like Freakonomics for sports, Dubner notes the home team wins about 55% of football games, suggesting there is a real home field advantage.
But the advantage doesn't come from players sleeping in their own beds, eating home cooking or the impact of travel on the visiting team, he says. Rather, the bulk of home field advantage comes down to one factor: Referees.
Although professional referees and umpires "work very hard to be unbiased, the home crowd influences them," Dubner says. "Refs are human and they want...to make people happy."
While the Super Bowl is played on a "neutral" site, this year it happens to be in Indianapolis, where Peyton Manning—big brother of Giant's QB Eli Manning - is a legend. In addition, the Colts and Patriots have a long and nasty rivalry, which could further tip the fans in the Giants' favor, Dubner notes.
"The players will determine the outcome," he says. "But it's likely we might see a little home field advantage toward the Giants, which might influence one whistle that's blown or, more interestingly, one that's not blow."
And in a close game between two evenly matched teams, one call (or non-call) could make all the difference.
Good Luck to the Teams (Patriots)

Comments

  1. Ray's CowboyFebruary 6, 2012 at 9:47 AM

    Loved this AD way to much. I also would love to play ball with any and all o fthese fine looking Men. Mostly 1,4, and 9 and 10. 1 and 10 are my HOT ones.

    WOOF
    Ray

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

History of Homosexual: Ancient Greece

Image
How we from being happily accept in society to being hate and have to fight for equality? Let start begin in the ancient world work our way to the source of the problem. The Ancient Greece "The noble lover of beauty engages in love wherever he sees excellence and splendid natural endowment without regard for any difference in physiological detail." - Plutarch The ancient Greeks are widely known for their gay exploits. Many people are aware of Greek homosexual love poetry, the same-sex relations of Greek gods and heroes, and the gay relationship between Alexander the Great and Hephaestion. It is important in the beginning to define our vocabulary. The term ’homosexuality’ as it is used and understood today is not mainly applicable to Greek of ancient times for three reasons: First of all, most Greeks were bisexual. Second, homosexuality and 'gay' as sexual identities are recent developments. They were emerged only in the 2Oth Century (our idea of what i
Please read more »

Seven Wonders of the World: Colossus of Rhodes

Image
Travelers to the New York City harbor see a marvelous sight. Standing on a small island in the harbor is an immense statue of a robed woman, holding a book and lifting a torch to the sky. It is sometimes referred to as the "Modern Colossus," but more often called the Statue of Liberty. This awe-inspiring statue was a gift from France to America and is easily recognized by people around the world. What many visitors to this shrine to freedom don't know is that the statue, the "Modern Colossus," is the echo of another statue, the original colossus, which stood over two thousand years ago at the entrance to another busy harbor on the Island of Rhodes. In the late 4th century BC, Rhodes, allied with Ptolemy I of Egypt, prevented a massive invasion staged by their common enemy, Antigonus I Monophthalmus and his son Demetrius. In 304 BC a relief force of ships sent by Ptolemy arrived, and Antigonus's army abandoned the siege, leaving most of their siege equi
Please read more »

Daily life of Roman life: Slavery

Image
Slavery had a long history in the ancient world and was practiced in Ancient Egypt and Greece, as well as Rome. Most slaves during the Roman Empire were foreigners and, unlike in modern times, Roman slavery was not based on race. Slaves were considered property under Roman law and had no legal personhood. Unlike Roman citizens, they could be subjected to corporal punishment, sexual exploitation (prostitutes were often slaves), torture, and summary execution. The testimony of a slave could not be accepted in a court of law unless the slave was tortured—a practice based on the belief that slaves in a position to be privy to their masters' affairs would be too virtuously loyal to reveal damaging evidence unless coerced (yeah right). Over time, however, slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. How did people become Roman Slaves? People became slaves among the Romans by the following ways: Prisoners of war Sailors
Please read more »