Every team has its own formula for winning the Super Bowl. Pick the right players, design the perfect scheme, execute at a high level and you will be the one partying at Arizona on the first week of February. It’s that simple. 48 previous versions of the game showed us the Super Bowl itself has its own set of rules. Here are five myths about the biggest show in sports:
1 is a winner
Every championship team has a great quarterback throwing the ball (well, almost every champion, ahem Trent Dilfer, ahem). Add the right player behind center and every other piece of the championship puzzle can fall into place. Miss on the opportunity to get Mr. Right and welcome to NFL’s no man’s land, location: Jacksonville and Cleveland. Who would you rather have, Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, Russell Wilson or Aaron Rodgers? Probably all of the above. All four have rings, but each came with a different path.
The questions remains: is it worth going after the quarterback early in the draft? Are the best always the first to go? Yes and no. Bart Star, who won the first two super bowls with Green Bay, was selected 200th overall, deep in the 17th round. Wilson, the winning quarterback from last year, was taken by Seattle in the third round. All the teams in the league passed on Brady. On the other hand, no one passed on Manning, and Rodgers was off the board in the first round.
Teams can survive without getting a first round quarterback. Joe Montana won four rings with San Francisco despite the Niners only taking him in the third round. Before him Terry Bradshaw was selected no. 1 overall and brought Pittsburgh four rings as well. All and all 27 out 48 super bowl winners are first rounders, which makes it half a myth and half math.
Get a taste from the best quarterbacks drafts in history on the great “30 for 30” ESPN’s Documentary
It’s all about the superstars
Teams might not always know where and when to find them, but when they do it’s worth their while. The list of super bowl MVP’s is filled with superstar quarterbacks and current and future hall of famers. Sprinkled in are less known players, who received the honor and a small window into pop culture relevance. Some might remember Dallas’ Larry Brown’s two interceptions to beat Pittsburgh and win him the MVP of super bowl XXX. Few can forget him striking while the iron is luke warm with a cameo on “Married… With Children” four months after the super bowl.
Still, the safe bet is on the biggest name. 26 times the winning quarterback got the individual award as well, and only once was a player from the losing team voted MVP (Chuck Howley from Dallas watched the Baltimore Colts win super bowl V). Football might be a team sport, but the super bowl is a star driven party. When it comes to shining under the bright lights, more often than not, celebrity equals quality. In this case fact and myth are the same: the stars get all the glory.
The best team always wins
The NFL season is a marathon, or is it a sprint? Is the best strategy being the top team all season long, or is it getting hot at the right time? 12 teams go into the playoffs with hopes of winning the title, some after dominating the league, others barely squeak bye. How much does the regular season matter in the postseason?
Since the beginning of the current 12 team playoff format in 1990 only eight teams that played in the wild card round went on to win a ring. But wait, it gets better. Six of those eight have won the Super Bowl in the past nine seasons. The marathoners are in decline: In the current format teams that finished with the best record in their conference won the title nine times, and only twice in the last nine years.
The road has shifted in the past decade. The path to the ring does not come with a first round bye, it doesn’t pass home. It comes by travel, it comes by play, it comes by peaking at the right time. Winning with a great record? That’s so nineties.
Home is not where the Lombardy trophy is
It’s a well-known fact that no host city of a super bowl got to see the home team play in the big game. But the game is not totally neutral. Each year one of the teams gets the perk of being assigned the home team. There’s a rotation: On even numbered games the AFC is the host and the odd numbers are NFC home games. This year the NFC will play the host and try to defy the odds: 28 of the previous super bowls were won by the “visiting” team (57%).
Home field advantage gives the team the right to choose its uniform color, not much else. The home crowd? Well, most of the fans stay at home. Even the voices of those who are lucky enough (and can afford) to come to the game and support their team drown in the stands. Last year at the Meadowlands was the exception to the rule: Seattle’s 12th Man got their cheers on and overwhelmed the Denver players, especially early on in the game. The Broncos couldn’t believe the amount of noise in a game that the crowd never shows up for.
Is there any semblance of home field at the Super bowl? Probably not. Home cooking will have to wait for the victory parade.
There’s always next year
Well, there isn’t. Not since the 03-04 Patriots have a team repeat as champions, and it happened only eight times in the previous 48 super bowls. Good luck with that, Seattle. In fact, only 18 times total did a conference champion from the previous season get back to the super bowl the following year. News flash: it’s hard to maintain success in the NFL.
The more you succeed the tougher it is to keep winning. Good players want their compensation and some find their money on other teams, the uneven schedule tends to get more difficult, and the everyday grind is well… grinding. There are injuries, bad luck and a botched play here and there. Come to think of it, it’s a miracle any team is able to get to the super bowl at all.
The last losing team to return to the Super Bowl was Buffalo in 1993. The Bills capped of an amazing streak of four super bowl losing seasons in a row. They were a dynasty like the Kardashian are pop culture royalty. Unluckily for them, the Bills never returned to the big game after that season, they actually no longer get to the playoff. Luckily for them, and for the other 30 teams that won’t win the super bowl this year, there’s one truism in football: there’s always a next season. Take a look at the calendar, 2015 is this close.
