The other teams from the Super Bowl participant’s regions in action on the day of the game had similar results.
Actually the Carolina Hurricanes fared better, as they got one point despite a loss at Montreal vs the Canadiens.
Also it certainly was not the Super Bowl.
The Denver Nuggets won their game in New York vs the Knicks.
The Hurricanes still have the only Carolina region pro title. They achieved that by winning the Stanley Cup in 2006 vs the Edmonton Oilers, who for the record were decimated by the New York Islanders yesterday.
Dan Issel a Denver Nuggets’ star, pictured above, was a near great player in both the ABA and NBA.
Yesterday’s 50th Super Bowl game was the 20th telecast exclusively on the AFL/AFC network.
The success of AFL/AFC teams in those games continued as the win by AFC Super Bowl representative, Denver (Broncos) raised the AFL/AFC teams record in those games to (13-7).
The AFL/AFC teams started (7-0) in those games, fell to (7-6) and then Denver’s 1997 season Supe win closed the AFL/AFC record at (8-6) while NBC was their network.
The AFC team is now (5-1) with CBS as its network.
Counting 2 losses in which the AFC team covered the point spread, AFL/AFC teams are (15-5) vs the point spread in games telecast exclusively on their own network.
The 1966 season, first Super Bowl was telecast by both the NFL network (CBS) and AFL network (NBC).
Jim Nantz was the CBS lead announcer for a 4th Super Bowl in yesterday’s game.
The Denver Broncos now (3-5) in Super Bowls, seven of them lackluster at best, including yesterday’s, are the 2015 NFL Champions, having beaten the now (17-2) Carolina Panthers.
Credit the Denver defense, led by Super Bowl MVP, Von Miller helping coach Gary Kubiak win a title in his first year as Broncos’ head coach.
This was just the 10th post AFC/NFC configuration Supe win by an original AFL team, in the 46 such games.
A Miami Dolphin link or three, as the ” ‘Phins” regular season finale win vs the New England Patriots, gave the Broncos the chance to be the AFC one seed, which helped tremendously, as they rode to the title.
Legendary, but vastly over rated Dolphins’ coach Don Shula and now Carolina assistant coach, son Mike, have lost in the two San Francisco Bay Area Super Bowls.
Von Miller pictured above, led a Denver Broncos’ defense that allowed but 4 touchdowns, one a very short distance, in the 3 post-season victories that gave the Broncos a third title.
The nomadic basketball coach Larry Brown “has nothing” on my wandering, tangential mind.
Only I could put out these notes and maybe only I would care about them.
Larry Brown the coach is the main figure but I will cite at least four other Larry Browns in sports.
A big link between today’s competing markets (so much of it is marketing) of Carolina and Denver is coach Larry Brown.
Neither region has ever won an NBA crown and nary an ABA one, despite Brown coaching each region’s ABA team to the league’s best record.
Brown did so with the 1973 Carolina Cougars and the Denver Nuggets in both 1975 and 1976.
On all three occasions Brown and the Carolina or Denver team failed to win the title, despite having the best record in the league.
The best Larry Brown, was a truly great running back, until “Wash” Redskins’ coach George Allen ran him into the ground with far too many carries in Allen’s “ground” attack.
That Larry Brown and the Redskins lost in the great back’s lone Supe appearance.
Another Larry Brown, playing for the Dallas Cowboys was the Super Bowl MVP in the Cowboys’ “no cover” win vs the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1995 season game.
I recall an infielder named Larry Brown and a hockey defenseman with the same name. Alas what good to know that “Larry Brown,” was the answer to a name that played in all four major sports.
Coach Larry Brown, denied those three times with the league’s best record won titles in both the NBA (2004 Detroit Pistons) and college (1988 Kansas University), without achieving the best mark.
In fact Brown’s Kansas title team holds the record for the most losses by an NCAA basketball champion (11).
John Forbes Nash and his “Beautiful Mind” passed on in 2015.
I really do not have a strong opinion as to which team will win or cover the point spread in today’s Super Bowl.
With the plethora of proposition bets, I will offer some “advice.”
The national anthem as sung by Lady Gaga, will go over or longer, than the allotted, perceived time.
In the coin toss at the start of the game, tails will be the side that the coin lands on.
Obviously there will be no landing on its side as what happened to Dick York’s “Hector Poole” character in a famed Twilight Zone episode.
Even if it did and one could read minds as Poole’s character could do, he still could not forecast the future.
More guesses on my part.
There will be more than 45 points scored.
In the first overtime Super Bowl,:
Denver Broncos 26 Carolina Panthers 20
Rod Serling pictured above would have a ‘field day,” with the fact that this nation stands still for this overblown football game.
No matter which team wins today’s 50th Super Bowl, it will mark the 25th time a team that played a Sunday divisional round game, wins the title.
This is the 49th season in which the NFL has played divisional round/quarterfinal games and a Sunday winner in those games will lead a Saturday winner (25-22) in Super Bowl crowns.
A Monday divisional round winner (the 1977 Dallas Cowboys) has one title.
The other time in 1968, the eventual Super Bowl champion New York Jets, still playing in the AFL, did not have a quarterfinal/divisional round game.
The first year the NFL had the divisional/quarterfinal round was 1967 while the first Super Bowl concluded the 1966 season.
Two of the Saturday divisional round/quarterfinal winners, who went on to claim the Supe title, did so before the AFC/NFC configuration.
They were the Green Bay Packers in 1967 and Kansas City Chiefs in 1969, the latter, in the only one of the AFL’s 10 seasons in which the league had divisional/quarterfinal games.
The (9-4-1) Green Bay Packers hosted and defeated the (11-1-2) Los Angeles Rams in the first NFL divisional round/quarterfinal game played on Saturday December 23, 1967. Travis Williams, my only “tag” in this post had a touchdown run for the “Pack.”
Eight days later on Sunday December 31, 1967, the Pack “Ice Bowled” the formidable Dallas Cowboys before easily turning back the Oakland Raiders in the second Supe on January 14, 1968.
Perhaps it is appropriate that on the day the Carolina Panthers are facing the Denver Broncos for the league crown, the NHL Carolina Hurricanes are visiting Montreal to face the Canadiens.
Though Montreal won for just the sixth time in twenty seven games yesterday and have not won a title since 1993, Les Canadiens trail only the New York Yankees in total titles among major North American sports league teams.
Another NHL match up today involves two franchises rich in championship history.
The New York Islanders host the Edmonton Oilers at the Isles’ first year, Brooklyn home.
The two teams combined to win 8 of the 9 NHL titles from (1980-1988), each team winning four. It grows to 9 titles in 11 seasons as the Oilers sans Wayne Gretzky won a 5th title in 1990.
That tops the less, but fairly even distributed 8 titles in 9 seasons, won by the Los Angeles Lakers (5) and Boston Celtics (3), coincidentally also from (1980-1988).
Moses Malone pictured above and who sadly died in 2015, led the Philadelphia 76ers to the 1983 NBA crown. It was the only non Lakers or Celtics title from (1980-1988).
The Montreal Canadiens and Calgary Flames split a pair of NHL finals, (Montreal winning in 1986, Calgary in 1989), the only non Oilers or Islanders’ NHL crowns from (1980-1990).
On the eve of the Super Bowl some baseball trivia and remembrances.
I remember listening to the spring training game in Lakeland, Florida then and now the winter home of the Detroit Tigers when a line drive off the bat of Gates Brown broke promising Mets’ pitcher Carl Willey’s jaw.
That 1964 season, Dick Ellsworth a Chicago Cubs pitcher made the All Star team largely because of a tremendous 1963 season in which he not only won 22 games, but lowered his earned run average by almost 3 runs per game.
The Willey/Ellsworth “stretched link” continued when Willey died in Ellsworth Maine.
There are nice memories for me regarding both pitchers.
Doug Harvey is a consensus, even landslide winner, member of the all time NHL team, as a defenseman.
Of course the other all-time defenseman is Bobby Orr.
What I did not know, is that Doug Harvey coached for one season.
It was 1961-1962 and he guided the New York Rangers to what was in those days, a rare playoffs appearance in the great old six team NHL.
The eventual champion Toronto Maple Leafs eliminated the Rangers in six games in their semi-final series.
The key game was the Leafs’ (3-2) double overtime win at home in game five.
Red Kelly had the game winning goal while another NHL great as was Kelly, Frank Mahovlich assisted on the game winning goal after scoring a goal himself earlier in the contest.
Let’s face it and there is nothing wrong with it, WFAN Radio’s Mike Francesa is quite familiar with betting lines on football games.
He knows how important three points is yet had no clue regarding the less than 3 point Seattle/Denver line).
Next he made factual mistakes, one saying as he so often does with certainty, concerning point spreads of other Super Bowls involving Peyton Manning.
He was sure the line in the New Orleans Saints’ win vs Manning and the Indianapolis Colts was Indy favored by 3. It was four and a fraction.
Francesa said maybe Manning and the Colts were more than his original 3 or 3 and a half point status vs Chicago (Bears) in a Colts’ win and cover. The line was at least 6 points.
Now drum roll: Francesa saying he must, in this game, pick a team to win and not just cover the spread:
Denver Broncos 23 Carolina Panthers 19.
Andy B Sports 