Super Bowl Deja Vu?

The buildup to this year’s Super Bowl surrounds two already Super Bowl winning quarterbacks and coaches. Both Eli Manning and Tom Brady have won at least one Super Bowl, while their current coaches have also won before. This got me thinking about how rare of a matchup this is. The chart at the bottom lists the starting QBs and coaches and there are some interesting results:

• This is the fifth time two SB winning QBs have faced off and also the fifth time two SB winning coaches have met.
• Surprisingly or not surprising at all, eight of those ten instances were the same games. The exceptions were when Warner (now on the Cardinals) faced Big Ben (now with Tomlin) and Don Shula was trying to win with Marino against Bill Walsh.
• Along similar correlating lines, there have been 27 QBs trying to win their second ring, and 29 coaches. Those QBs have won 17 or 63% of those attempts, while the coaches have gone 62%.
• It gets even weirder, three QBs have won their second ring with a different coach (Montana/Seifert, Aikman/Switzer, Big Ben/Tomlin) and three have lost trying with a new play caller (Warner/Martz, Warner/Whisenhunt, P Manning/Caldwell). Likewise, four coaches have won with a new QB (Gibbs/Williams, Parcells/Hostetler, Gibbs/Rypien, Seifert/Young) and four have lost with a new passer (Shula/Woodley, Shula/Marino, Parcells/Bledsoe, Holmgren/Hasselbeck).
• Since this is only the fourth matchup of two previously winning QBs and coaches in the same game, you would think it was the first rematch between the same two pairs in a Super Bowl. However, the Steelers of Bradshaw and Noll faced off against the Cowboys lead by Staubach and Landry twice after all four had already been champions.

What does this all mean for Super Bowl XLVI? Not a clue. However, I do have a new found respect for Joe Gibbs, Bill Parcells, Kurt Warner and Super Bowl XIII.

Boston Sports Adventure

This past weekend, I visited Boston for the first time with my girlfriend Erryn, and happened to visit several sports related sites. The first day, we toured the campus of Boston College including the 2010 and 2008 NCAA champion hockey team’s arena as it was being prepared for a game.

Next we were able to walk on the football field, where the Eagles had just lost the night before in a rout by Florida State. Hence, they were running punishment laps.

Later in the weekend, we toured the oldest baseball park in the country, Fenway Park. While the sunny skies, helicopter fly over, and green monster were cool,

the fact that a groundskeeper has to manually change the NL scores on the field between innings and seeing the green monster seats hang over the street were the highlights.

The main event of the weekend was the Giants-Patriots game on Sunday for which we had suite tickets. Once again, the moonlit night, free food, and militia gun-firing were great,

but seeing Brady walk off his own field a loser for the first time in years was extra special.

As a side note, while it seemed like there were statues on every block for colonial historical figures, there were plenty of sports ones as well.

Glad I got to see at least one Manning take the field this season!