This morning the debate was whether or not this Super Bowl will be close (of course there's no debate on who will win - that's been over for 3 months now). Mr. Callahan was of the view that it would be a not close, not competitive game, and he brought out the big guns in support of his position: he cited the point differential for the whole season for each team, where the Pats outscored opponents by like 7,000 points and the Giants by only 22 or something.
Now, that certainly is relevant in measuring who is the better team - which of course no one is really debating here - but using that to figure out how close of a game it will be seems a little fishy. The Ravens point differential this season was over -100, and they lost by 3 points to the Pats in a game which they won on the field, but a self-imposed do-over cost them the 'W.' And yes the Giants were pretty terrible early on getting demolished by Dallas and Green Bay, but they seem to have come a little ways since then as evidenced by their, ya know, whole getting into the Super Bowl thing. Moreover, football is a game played with an oblong ball and it has a lot to do with matchups, turnovers, funny bounces, luck and hot streaks. Looking at information that heavily weighs events from 4 months ago is not that helpful to a game taking place in 6 days.
To be fair, it's tough to blame Mr. Callahan for relying on this stat; I mean, it's not like these teams played head-to-head very recently and we could look to that game as a prognosis of how this game will turn out. What a shame.
But really, Mr. Callahan was at his super-selective finest when he went to the quarterbacks numbers. Specifically, he pointed out how Eli had a 23-20 TD/INT ratio and the last quarerback to do that was.... Rex Grossman. You remember Rex, he played in last year's big game, in which his team was leading for most of it even though they were outplayed, and it ended up being somewhat close (at least numerically). Well, clearly since his numbers were identical to Eli's in those that Mr. C just cherry-picked, this game is going to be a, um, not close? Cuz, you know 23-20 is a pretty important ratio. If Eli threw 21 or 22 interceptions all frickin' bets would be off, because then we'd have to compare him to guys who sucked so bad they couldn't even get their teams to the Super Bowl and what value does that have when trying to make stupid predictions?
I suppose we could look at the last time a team was a 14 point underdog in the Super Bowl (the Pats) and point out how that team won that game, but I wouldn't do that because I know spreads are contrived creations instituted solely to encourage bets, not to predict actual outcomes, and also because I harbor no delusions that the Giants will win this game.
But they will keep it close! How do I know? Simple they won all their games this season by a combined 22 points or something - this team loves close games!
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