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.
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.
· 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!
Who has is the best defense in the NFL? The team with the least yards allowed? The team with the least points allowed? What about the team with the most turnovers? Sacks? In any article mentioning defensive rankings, the default is yardage, followed by points. Even in 2000, when the Ravens set a record for least points allowed and regarded as one of the best defenses of all time, the Titans were the “#1 defense” that season. Allowing the least amount of points seems like the most logical choice to help your team win. So why the disparity? I couldn’t find the grand conspiracy, so I made my own rankings.
The Steelers and the Chargers are tops in points and yards allowed, but what about the other factors? I ranked the top defenses in points allowed, yards allowed, 3rd down conversion %, penalty yardage, sacks, and turnovers. I even threw in subtracted a point for each TD scored by the defense, the most direct contribution to team victories. Here is the chart showing the combined rankings (click on the picture to actually be able to read it):
San Diego tops the list due in part to being the top 11 in each of the categories. #2 Pittsburgh also is in all top 11, including top’s in turnovers as well, coming in second overall. The #3 Cowboys were #1 in both 3rd down conversion and penalty yardage, but only caused three turnovers in their three games, contributing to their 1-2 start. #3 Titans lead the sacks with two other teams and are in the top 14 in four other categories. Some of the outliers are that #16 Baltimore is #2 in yards and #5 in points, but gave up the most penalty yardage in the league and only have two turnovers. Meanwhile Buffalo has committed the least amount of penalties, but is dead last on this list since they are 27th or worse in the other five categories. If you look at the conditional formatting colors, you can see the correlation between the categories, and the standings on the left. This is only based off a quarter of the season, curious to see what it looks like at the end.
ri·val·ry (rī'vəl-rē)noun : one of two or more striving to reach or obtain something that only one can possess
Never underestimate the power of a rivalry.
"It means everything," Browns do-it-all wide receiver Josh Cribbs said. "There are a lot of Steelers fans around the city so I hope people go to work and kick those Steelers fans."
As witnessed in the Steelers/Browns game, rivalry games mean more than records and can change the outcome of seasons.Pittsburgh was defending Super Bowl champs and coming off a four-game losing streak, went into Cleveland to face the lowly 1-11 Browns.However, with nothing on the line except pride against its rival, the Browns pulled off the upset, beating the Steelers for the first time in 12 tries, sending Pittsburgh’s record to 6-7, and most likely out of the playoff race.
Some rivalries become dormant or one-sided, due one team’s dominance, like the Steelers.It has happened in other rivalries too, since USC has owned Notre Dame recently, as has Ohio State over Michigan. However, this should not end the rivalry, but merely lessen its greatness for the time being. So, what factors help maintain a great rivalry?
Here are some of the top rivalries I can think of in the major American sports to explain the criteria:
Here are the criteria to consider (in no particular order):
Standings – The rivalry should mean something on a championship level for the sport.While Army/Navy is a historic rivalry, neither team has won a title since 1945. Many other college football rivalries are heated within the state, but are not noticed outside the state since it usually does not influence national titles (Oregon/OSU, Alabama/Auburn, VT/UVA, Cal/Stanford, USC/UCLA, Texas/T A&M). Meanwhile Ohio State/UMich has affected the Big Ten Title/Rose Bowl berth 47 times and the two teams have combined for 18 national titles. The USC/ND game contributed to 22 titles and the Red River Shootout hosts combined 11 titles between Texas/Oklahoma.In NCAA Basketball, the UNC/Duke rivalry has two of the winningest programs, but since they rarely, if ever, meet in the NCAA tourney, the national title implications are limited when they play. In the professional rivalries, most teams are in the same division so they meet often in the regular season, but their rare nationally significant meetings are in the conference championship games (Yanks/Sox, Colts/Pats), with the exception of Celtics/Lakers in the Finals.
History-A good rivalry has lasted for generations and can date back to the origins of the game. The college rivalries mentioned all started from 1890-1926. Yankees/Sox started in 1901, Packers/Bears in 1922, while Canadians/Maple Leafs were part of the “original six”.
Geography- Rivalries are fueled by constant interaction and proximity.The campuses of Duke and UNC are only separated by 8 miles.OSU/UMich and Oklahoma/UT share state borders. This is an important argument for the lesser college rivalries mentioned earlier since these in-state rivals could grow up together, recruited together, see each other in the workplace/streets every day. Most professional rivalries share similar geographies, for the exception of the Cowboys and Celtics/Lakers.In fact, if you drew a map, by conference in the NFL, each division’s team’s city locations would not overlap. USC/ND does not fit in this category.
Current – Great rivalries need to pass the test of time as well, similar to standings earlier.If the newest generation doesn’t know or see the rivalry then it can fade away.This is also true of the “top ten rivalries of the 2000’s” types. The Colts/Pats are a great rivalry and can top this category (4 Super Bowls, 4 MVPS, met in AFC playoffs 3 times in 4 years), but it didn’t really exist before Brady and Manning. The OSU/UMich game in 06 with the teams meeting as #1 and #2 and the two classic Sox/Yanks series in 03 and 04 help their causes as well.But in the “what have you done for me lately” culture in sports you can say the OSU/UMich rivalry as lost its luster recently since the Buckeyes have won 6 straight. The current one sided nature of some of the other rivalries also contributes, since Notre Dame, Redskins, and Browns have not held up their end of their important rivalries in the past 10-15 years. The rest of the NFC East and AFC North teams have combined to win 4 Super Bowls in the 2000’s, so most of those rivalries have stayed relevant. The Lakers and Celtics met two years ago in the Finals renewing their old rivalry and maintain the best records this year.
Memorable Games- Similar to current play and standings, rivalries will attract more national attention and gain in greatness due to “instant classic” type games. Obviously each rivalry has plenty to choose from: Aaron “bleeping” Boone, The Red Sox 3-0 ALCS comeback, Bucky Dent, OSU/UMich 06 shootout, Howard Heisman, Bush Push, Baby Hook, No K, on and on.If you look at the Colts/Pats, in their 10 meetings since 2003, only 2 were decided by more than 10 points. Meanwhile some of these rivalries have produced clunkers over the years.
Frequency-Going hand and hand with memorable games is the frequency these rivalries occur. The Red Sox and Yanks played each other 18 times in the 2009 regular season, making each one more memorable.The college football rivalries mentioned have played 18 times since 1991. UNC/Duke and the NFL rivalries play at least two but no more than a possible three-four times a year. Therefore, one individual game has drastically different significance depending on the rivalry. 44% of the time UMich and OSU play it is for the Big Ten title. Meanwhile, only 26 out of 2,064 times the Yankees/Red Sox have played has it been for the American League title (3 ALCSs, a play in game, and 2 regular-season ending series).
Background Stories-The last factor going into a great rivalry is the background stories that sports writers love.The most famous in this group could be the Curse of the Bambino, fueling the Sox/Yanks for so many decades. These also include individual rivalries like Magic/Bird, Brady/Manning, Woody/Bo, past betrayals, like Ravens/Browns, or controversial plays that come up every year like the Bush Push.
If you can think of more criteria or rivalries, let me know.
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