Super Bowl Stuff 1: Looking at Records

First, I'll make things easier on myself and link to the official NFL Super Bowl Standings.

Admittedly it's a bit unbalanced, since it ranks the teams by winning percentages.

So I'll parse through the basic statistics to bring out some subtleties.

First, a list of the teams you WON'T see on the list after the superbowl:

Houston Texans
Jacksonville Jaguars
Cleveland Browns
New Orleans Saints
Detroit Lions
Arizona Cardinals

(The Indianapolis Colts won it once (and lost it once) as the Baltimore Colts, and The Houston Oilers became the Tennessee Titans, who made an appearance. The Seattle Seahawks won't belong on the above list by July 6, so I'm not including them on the above list now.)

The Houston Texans are too new to belong on the list, and the Jacksonville Jaguars are still new enough to have an excuse. The present incarnation of the Cleveland Browns is also pretty new, although when the Baltimore Ravens were known as the Cleveland Browns they had been unable to make it to the Super Bowl.

The New Orleans Saints have suffered from an extreme sense of frustration, as this is the team that saw the invention of the paper bagged fan and the diminuition of their nickname to "The 'Aint's". This year has been especially rough on them, with their home turf flooded and the team being locked in to where they're definitely not wanted nor needed. I can think of four places where franchise would fit in better -- Los Angeles, San Antonio and Sacramento could fit in smoothly with no muss, and Oklahoma City has proven its salt with the NBA.

Then there is the Detroit Lions; also known on this board as the Football Puddy-tats. Trust me, any team that has has trouble over nearly fifty years winning a postseason game (try a single win, with few tries to boot) is a case of a team embracing mediocrity. The fact that they moved into a SMALLER stadium (and didn't have the excuse of space that the Bears had) should point to you what they expect from their team.

So why aren't the Lie-downs the bottom of the list? Simple: they've been known as the Detroit Puddy-tats all this time -- unlike the Cardinals, who've moved from Chicago to Saint Louis to Arizona and still haven't found a way to get a championship. Curse Art Model as much as you want, but at least he got the Super Bowl Championship he always wanted.

Next Posting: Teams with a tradition of making the Super Bowl