No winners in Super Bowl XLVIII

Before launching into my Super Bowl XLVIII prediction, I have to make one thing clear:

I am an Oakland Raiders fan.

Perhaps that’s understating things by a factor of about 10,000.  I have been an Oakland Raiders fan since 1968.  Cut me and I bleed Silver & Black™.  Just Win, Baby™.  Commitment to Excellence™.

I mean, just take a look at a sampling from the ’68 Raiders:
  • Pete Banaszak (RB)
  • Fred Biletnikoff (WR)
  • George Blanda (QB)
  • Willie Brown (DB)
  • Billy Cannon[1]
  • Ben Davidson
  • The Mad Bomber, Daryle Lamonica[2]
  • Double Ought, Jim Otto
  • Art Shell (before he was a catatonic coach)
  • Gene Upshaw (before he sold out NFL players)
  • Warren Wells
  • George Atkinson
I started watching football the year before, in 1967.  I grew up in Northern California but was actually a fan of the Rams.  More specifically, I was a fan of Roman Gabriel[3], Jack Snow, Les Josephson, and the greatest defensive front four in history:  Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, Lamar Lundy, and Roger Brown[4].

But while the ’67 Rams (11-1-2) and the ‘68 Raiders (12-2) finished with comparable records, Oakland looked like they were playing a different game.

The Raiders games seemed faster, like the old NFL played on ice skates.  While the pace was quicker – the ’68 Raiders ran 59 more plays over the course of the season (4.2/game) than the ’67 Rams – it was the types of plays that made the game so exciting.

In 1967, the Rams ran the ball 56% of the time (490 passes to 390 runs).  In 1968, in addition to averaging more plays per game, the Raiders passed the ball almost as much as they ran (468 passes to 471 runs).  The ’68 Raiders threw 21% more passes than the ‘67 Rams and even back then, everyone knew that chicks dig the long ball.

Part of this was, of course, due to the style of the AFL but part was Raiders Owner/General Manager/Eventual Destroyer Al Davis’ philosophy.  Davis believed in speed and the “vertical passing game” from the time he joined the Raiders until his death.  Play faster, play deeper, play meaner.

They threw the ball to the running backs.  They were rough and tumble even before the Kenny “The Snake” Stabler and John Madden years[5].  The ’68 Raiders were new, sexy, and news.  The Heidi game was in 1968.  The Raiders finished 12-2 before falling to the eventual Super Bowl III champion Jets in the AFL Championship.



Additionally, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were killed in 1968.  The Vietnam War escalated in 1968 with the highest number of fatalities (16,899) recorded in a single year.  There were beatings at the Democratic National Convention and Richard Nixon was elected President by a margin of less than 1% of the vote in 1968.

In 1968, the winds of change were everywhere.  The new generation challenged the old.

And the NFL represented the old way.  The AFL represented the new generation.  The Raiders swaggered and gave exactly zero fucks.  They rebelled against the status quo.  They were anti-establishment in an era when the establishment was starting to look like the problem.

And that’s why I fell in love with the Oakland Raiders in 1968.

It was an exciting time to be a football fan.  The AFL brought a new type of football, exciting and different.  Old timers were with the NFL; the cool kids were loyal to the AFL.

So when I say I’m an Oakland Raiders fan, I don’t mean that casually.  I am able to assess the team’s chances objectively but am unable to watch them unemotionally.  They are my team and will be until the day I die.

As a result, there are teams that are either respect-hated or just plain hated by Raider fans.  In the former category are:
  • Pittsburgh Steelers:  Raider-Steeler battles in the early 1970’s were epic and it seemed the Steelers were always in our way of winning it all.  Oh…and Franco trapped it.
  • Miami Dolphins:  Ditto, except for the Franco thing.
  • Kansas City Chiefs:  From the time Al Davis joined the Raiders as an assistant in 1960 until the end of the 1969 season (ending with the AFL Championship game in January 1970), the Raiders and Chiefs split their twenty-two games, with eleven wins a piece.  The two teams represented the AFL in the first two Super Bowls and were true rivals for dominance in the final years of AFL history.
In the latter (pure hate) category are:
  • Dallas Cowboys:  Because Dallas Cowboys.
  • Everyone besides Kansas City who has ever been in the AFC West
The final category includes the San Diego Chargers and the two teams set to battle for the Lombardi Trophy in SB XLVIII, the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks.

The Seahawks joined the NFL in 1976, just before the Raiders won their first Super Bowl[6].  It would be twelve years before the ‘Hawks would win the AFC West and another eleven before they’d do it again.

But they were the upstarts, the pesky team from up north[7] with guys like Steve Largent (or, as we called him, the poor man’s Fred Biletnikoff) and that wacky southpaw QB, Jim Zorn.  Later came Bo Jackson’s 91-yard run into the Seattle tunnel and Bo shutting Brian Bosworth up by trucking him in a 1987 Monday Night Football game.

So the Seahawks were rivals only in the sense that they were a pain in the ass.  But they were in the AFC West so it was a given that they were to be despised.  They were like a little brother.  We usually were fond of them but every once in a while they would puff up and show no respect.  So, yeah…screw them.

The Chargers and Broncos are hated at a deeper, more visceral level.  They have historically been impediments to the Raiders reaching and advancing in the playoffs.

But no team is hated like the Denver Donkeys.  The Mike Shanahan years were the worst.  After the acrimonious break-up of Shanahan and the Raiders in 1989, Shanahan joined the Broncos (offensive assistant), 49ers (offensive coordinator), and Broncos again (head coach).  In the first seven years as Denver’s head coach (from 1995-2001), the Broncos went 12-2 against the Raiders, with an overall 21-11 record over the Silver & Black under Shanahan from ’95-‘08.



I hate the Denver Broncos.  I hate them like they killed my puppy.  Or screwed my wife.  Or screwed my puppy.

You get the idea.

So I had to ask myself how I could provide an objective assessment of SB XLVIII and pick a winner.

I like Peyton Manning.  He’s been a class act, showing respect for the game and fellow players/teams since he came out of high school.  His return from four neck surgeries is indeed inspirational (or stupid, depending on your perspective).  And his faux United Way commercial and dance bit on Saturday Night Live remain the standards by which athlete hosts will forever be measured (apologies to Derek Jeter’s Taco Hole).

I like the way Seattle plays.  It’s team first (with the occasional exception of Richard “Look at Me!” Sherman), hard-nosed defense, and a freak of a running back who doesn’t want to talk about himself.

John Fox came back from a heart attack.  The Seahawks apparently are battling the first recorded case of mass Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in history.

The Broncos set offensive records and the Seahawks defense is nasty.

Seattle opened as 2 point favorites with the Broncos moving to -1 within 20 minutes before settling in at 2.5 point favorites by Monday (and where they remain).

Experts are split almost down the middle.  Half pick Denver, half Seattle.

So who will be the winner?



Denver will run the ball and Seattle will throw it more than most expect.  Someone unexpected will play a key role in the outcome of the game.  A quarterback will win the MVP.  There will be no (exposed) breasts during the halftime show.

But the bottom line is that neither team will be the winner.  They’re the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks.  Neither will ever be winners in my book.  I am an Oakland Raiders fan and cannot bring myself to choose either the pitiable Seattle Little Brothers or the Rocky Mountain Dipshits, with or without Peyton Manning.

So I pick neither.  Bet your money or not.  Pick one side or the other.  I don’t care because the Raiders are sitting at home.  Which is where I’ll be Sunday at 6:30 pm ET, feasting on food that’s horrible for me but that tastes good.

So I guess I’ll be rooting for buffalo chicken dip and sausage balls.

And Tums.



[1] I bet you forgot Billy Cannon was a Raider, didn’t you?  Ostensibly a “running” back with the Raiders, Cannon was the predecessor of the Marshall Faulk-type back.  In 1968, he had zero rushing attempts but 6 TDs.  He redefined in my mind how the “running” back could be used.  At 6’1” and 215 pounds, he reportedly ran a 4.12 40-yard dash in high school, a classic Al Davis-type.  Plus he was an outlaw, spending 2 ½ years in Federal Prison later in his life.  A legendary, if little remembered, Raider.

[2] Second in the AFL in in 1968 with 25 TDs, behind John Hadl’s 27.  Add George Blanda’s 6 and the Raiders led the league with 31 TD passes.  Fun football to watch.

[3]  In whose honor I wore #18 throughout my playing career.

[4] Yes, this group was better than the Rosey Grier version of the Fearsome Foursome.

[5] Stabler was drafted by the Raiders out of Alabama in 1968 but didn’t join the team until 1970.  1968 was Madden’s last year as linebackers coach before starting his legendary head coaching career in 1969.

[6] Super Bowl XI, defeating the Minnesota Vikings 32-14 behind Willie Brown’s iconic 75-yard interception return for TD.

[7] Full disclosure:  I was born in Tacoma, Washington, a scant 30 miles down the Puget Sound from Seattle.

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