Super Bowl College Quarterbacks?

Leading up to Super Bowl Sunday obviously a lot of attention this week will be focused on the two star quarterbacks, Ben Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers. Oddly enough, their respective alma maters are not big college football powerhouses. Big Ben went to Miami of Ohio, in the non-BCS MAC, while Rodgers graduated from Cal, which is in the more heralded PAC-10, but is not considering a football factory like USC. This got me thinking, how do other Super Bowl quarterbacks and college programs compare?

Of the 90 Super Bowl quarterback starts, only 41 different schools are represented. Stanford and Notre Dame lead the way with seven, helped by five from Elway and four from Montana. Four programs share the tie for three different quarterbacks, with Alabama (Namath, Starr, Stabler), Purdue (Dawson, Greise, Brees), and Notre Dame (Montana, Lamonica, Theismann) looking more impressive than Cal (Kapp, Morton, Rodgers). Roethlisberger’s Miami Redhawks would be considered a lot more well known than some of the schools mentioned during the starting lineups. I have still barely heard of the following schools, and I just looked them up; Alcorn State (McNair), Augustana (Anderson), Louisiana Tech (Bradshaw), Morehead State (Simms), Northern Iowa (Warner), Southern Mississippi (Favre), Youngstown State (Jaworski).

The more amazing stat is the lack of starting quarterback representation at the top of college football’s elite. Storied programs like Texas, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and USC have never seen one of their Saturday heroes play on the biggest Sunday of the year. In fact, when looking at top 20 winningiest current D1 schools in history, only 10 have had a produced a Super Bowl starting quarterback. Meanwhile, #42 Purdue has six and #62 UCLA has four.

I guess you win college football games by running the ball and playing good defense instead of throwing the ball all over the field with a NFL-style quarterback. Lame.

What Really Matters When Picking a Super Bowl Champ

Just like last week, I have no idea who to root for in the upcoming NFL conference championship games. All the teams remaining have won a Super Bowl before. Therefore, I must find some more categories to choose from in order to pick two teams to root for this weekend.

· The Jets still have the longest Super Bowl victory drought, appearance drought, and only one title, like the Bears, so they get all the points here. Meanwhile the Steelers have the most rings and won the most recently.

· Since they made money for me during the FFL season, I’ll cheer for the Packers’ Jennings, Jones, and Starks over Holmes and the Jets. (Actually, I cannot remember ever having a Steeler, Raven or Patriot on my team.)

· I like my teams to obey the law, so the Jets win this category since they have only had 8 arrests in the past 10 years, compared to the Bears’ 18 (blame Tank Johnson). (There is actually a website that tracks this.)

· Each victory over the Browns is a dagger to my heart, therefore I do not mind the four losses to the Bears compared to 62 to the Steelers.

· I would like a high scoring, close Super Bowl, so I would choose the Packers (388 points scored in the regular season) over the Bears (only 334) and the Jets (10.6 average game point difference) over the Steelers (12.4).

· Since all the attention will be on the quarterbacks, I should probably choose a favorite to help my decision. Even though Jay Cutler gets a tough rap while battling with diabetes, Rodgers dealt with Favre and throws TD’s to Jennings on my FFL team. While Mark Sanchez is a pretty boy who beat UVa on my birthday, no one outside of Pittsburgh will be pulling for Big Ben with his list of transgressions.

· None of these teams are “home” teams to DC, but Pittsburgh is barely closer than NYC, while Green Bay is 900 miles away.

· Being from the two most cursed cities for pro teams, I need to take the cities’ other teams into account. NY has the Yankees, while Pittsburgh has the Penguins, so they’re out, while Green Bay only has the Packers.

· New York has 8.3 million people as compared to Green Bay’s 101,000, so I’m rooting for the small town team.

· These two cheesy mascots won’t get my fanhood.

· I have to give the edge to Pittsburgh when it comes to fans though for the terrible towels, which look better than a bunch of cheeseheads. Fireman Ed and the J-E-T-S cheer is a little simple for my taste, but not as bad as the Bear’s Fight Song.

· All this writing is making me hungry, so which famous food from these cities would I take? While a NY bagel, Pittsburgh Primanti Brothers Sandwich, and Chicago deep dish pizza sound good, I’d take a bratwurst stuffed with Wisconsin cheddar anyday.

· Speaking of cheese, you have to like a team named after a cheese packing company that owned the team 90 years ago, but naming a team after the city’s main industry that embodies the character of both the team and its people is really cool. Especially since the Jets were named to be “modern”, and the Bears because football players are big. Lame.

· Lastly, while everyone is on the betting bandwagon for the Packers to win the Super Bowl (5 to 7), the Bears are the most popular team (11.5 Google results) and are the underdog to win it all (5 to 1).

After ranking all 20 categories, the Packers come out on top, followed by the Jets. Go Pack!

The “Been there, Done that” NFL Playoffs?

Now that the Colts are out of the playoffs, I have no real rooting interest in the teams leftover in the divisional round. Even worse, three of my most hated teams are still alive (Ravens, Patriots and Steelers). Unlike previous seasons with the Saints and Cardinals, there is no obvious underdog, feel-good story to rally around. In fact, all eight teams remaining have been to the Super Bowl before, winning 15 of them. Granted, the Falcons and Seahawks have never won one, but they both appeared in the big game once in the past 12 seasons. This got me thinking, is this year the most “boring, teams have been there, jaded” playoffs in recent memory?

The two main factors I looked at were years since each team’s last Super Bowl appearance and last victory. For expansion teams like Atlanta and Seattle, I used their inaugural year instead of last victory, while older teams without a ring I used the year before Super Bowl I. After averaging the eight teams “droughts” for each category I compared the numbers to the last ten playoffs.

Surprisingly, this season is not the most “boring,” but in fact ranks fourth in Super Bowl appearance average and fifth in Super Bowl victory average. While seven of the eight teams this year have made a Super Bowl since a non-gray-haired Favre led the Packers to consecutive appearances, the Jets skew the numbers. New York has not returned to the big game following Joe Namath’s huge upset, some 43 seasons ago. The most “jaded” playoffs were in 2008, during the Patriots attempted perfect season, when no one noticed that the Jags and Chargers had the longest Super Bowl droughts at only 13 years. The biggest “underdog” playoffs were actually last year, in which the Vikings, Saints, Chargers, Cardinals, and Jets were all trying to overcome 40+ seasons without a Super Bowl victory.

While this year may not be the most “boring” playoffs in the past ten seasons, other interesting stats come up. Not surprisingly the Patriots lead the NFL with seven appearances in the divisional round, followed by the Colts, Steelers, and Eagles with six. Meanwhile, the six teams with zero appearances are the usual sad suspects (Browns, Lions, Bengals), expansion Texans, and the once proud Bills and Dolphins. Some teams are overrated (Cowboys and Vikings with only 2), underrated (Eagles-6 and Ravens-5) or opportunistic (Giants and Cardinals only 2).The AFC is more consistent/predictable with four of the top five teams, while also having five of the six teams with no appearances. No wonder the Browns have struggled, since two teams in their division make it this far more than half the time.

I’m curious to see what the stats will look like for the championship game round next week. All I know is that I’ll be rooting for the Falcons (45 years) over the Jets (42) in the Super Bowl.

Cleveland Cavs hit rock bottom without LeBron

After last night’s 108-100 loss to the Suns, the Cavaliers have officially hit rock bottom. At 8-29, Cleveland now has the worst record in the NBA. They have lost 10 straight and 20 of 21 overall. That is only one win since November 28th! Now one of their best players, Anderson Varejao, tore a tendon and is out for the year. Even their team statistics are awful. Out of 30 teams, they are 26th in offense scoring, 23rd in defense, 29th in shooting percentage, 27th in defensive %, 24th in three point %, and 30th in defensive 3pt %. Meanwhile the attendance numbers are second highest in the league, reflecting all the disappointed fans who already bought tickets during the offseason. The team was going to predictably struggle after Lebron left, but no one imagined it would be this bad so soon. Owner Dan Gilbert might as well start trading away what’s left, since this season is done.

My second favorite team, Wizards, are not faring much better either. At 9-26, they are the second worst team in the Eastern Conference and are 0-18 on the road. Luckily Washington has their superstar already in John Wall, who unfortunately has missed 12 games due to injury contributing to their poor start.

Maybe the Cavs can draft Ohio State’s superstar freshman Jared Sullinger in next year’s draft, since taking the home town hero worked out so well last time.