Oh The Lord Love's A Hangin' (Super Bowl Stijl)

Last week, I reviewed the toilet scum that was the 2008 sporting season for me. In reviewing the season and thus attempting to find any motivation to continue paying attention, I highlighted Eagles Quarterback Donovan McNabb as the only bright spot that I had left to cling to. Well folks, now Donovan is done. The Super Bowl is going to be the Cardinals versus the Steelers.

The Cardinals. Versus the Steelers. Someone slap me right now.

Now, to get deeper in depth, let us observe that I have been 1 for 10 in my desirable playoff outcomes thus far this year (I told you this year sucked). To review, let us examine the list of games that ended contrary to my personal preference.

• Arizona over Atlanta (I was excited for Matt Ryan – plus, the Cards are NFC West foes)
  
• Philadelphia over Minnesota (True, I didn’t fully hold for Philly. My personal motivation was to see both Adrian Peterson AND Gus Frerotte finally be on a team that won a playoff game. Gus Frerotte is like the Rodney Dangerfield of the NFL – no respect to the end).
  
• Baltimore over Miami (Chad Pennington is my favorite non-Seahawk in the NFL. Always has been. I puked a lot during this game with disgust).
  
• San Diego over Indianapolis (Because Phillip Rivers just looks like the “wound up douche” guy you’d see at a party that would freak out over stupid crap and thus leave everyone thinking “what a douche” behind his back until he confronted everyone about it and acted like he wanted to fight until someone actually showed they were willing to fight him in which case he would back the heck down and take off and thus leave everyone in the room to think “man he is a douche”). 
  
• Arizona over Carolina (Jake Delhomme is my second favorite non-Seahawk, and the Panthers are my second favorite team. Plus, they were playing the team that just beat a team I was rooting for. Double motivation equals double the let down).
  
• Baltimore over Tennessee (Kerry Collins winning a Super Bowl would have been the best feel-good story ever. Jim Plunkett would be begging for mercy).
  
• Pittsburgh over San Diego (Because Pittsburgh is Satan – worse than even Phillip Rivers. They’re the team that, if at a party, would be the one that had the hottest girlfriend, yet still screwed around with other girls – yet that girl would still stick with him because “deep down I know he’s a nice guy”).
  
• Arizona over Philadelphia (Refer to last weeks post on Donovan).
  
• Pittsburgh over Baltimore (Because as much as I hated Baltimore for showing Chad Pennington the door in the first round, I hated Pittsburgh even worse for something that happened three years ago).

This, in light of the fact that only one game produced an outcome I wanted:

• Philadelphia over New York (No one wants to see a team repeat unless they’re their home team. Plus, Donovan).

As you can see, my luck was lousy this postseason. This leaves me with only one more prediction to make before the 2008 season finally waves its rancid hand for the last time. To be sure, I want the Cardinals to win. But based on a few things I’ll explain shortly, my prediction for the game is:

Pittsburgh 35, Arizona 3.

Now hold your horses for a minute. Yes, I did say that I hate Pittsburgh with incredible intensity. The last thing I want to see happen is them win the Super Bowl. But, based on my lack of luck this season and the seemingly inevitable opposite outcome that usually occurred when I made my predictions, I’m performing a miniature experiment to see just how effective my bad luck has been. I’m going to renew my mind and convince myself that I like the Steelers, that they deserved to win Super Bowl 40, and that they need to win another Super Bowl. Based simply on the descriptive statistics I’ve accrued, this should leave us with a Cardinal victory. Let’s pray this works – I don’t want to pull a Daniel Stern and Dan Aykroyd ala “Celtic Pride” on this one.