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A Long Way From Lambeau
Parity & the Super Bowl
by Mark Lyne-Austen
29/1/2008
The New England Patriots are rightly favourite for this Sunday’s Super Bowl matchup with the New York Giants. Unstoppable during the regular season, having defeated in the Giants in Week 17, and with the greatest offense in the history of the game they stand apart from the rest of the NFL. The Patriots machine is far from popular with neutrals, the surly attitude of coach Bill Belichick and accusations of running up the score to humiliate opponents were widely derided this year. The Giants great performance in the season ender gives some hope that this might be a close game but it would be a brave gambler to wager on an upset.
The Giants have their own storylines to play out in Arizona, can star Defensive End Michael Strahan bow out on a career high, will Eli Manning be able to match his more illustrious older brother and keep the title in the family? Still, the Giants are very much the other team in the final. New England are favourites for Super Bowl XLII and rightly so. The Patriots have been good and this year they have been better than anyone in history but they are also the best case for parity the NFL can make. The Pats may have rolled over everyone in their path this year with only a couple of games even close but their current dynasty is built on a streak of some of the closest Super Bowl games ever seen.
We all know just how good the Patriots are, their record setting season sets them apart from any other team in the modern era. They are about to go for four Super Bowls in seven years, better than the four in nine that Joe Montana’s San Francisco 49ers achieved and just a step away from Terry Bradshaw’s Pittsburgh Steelers with their four in six. It doesn’t look like parity is having much of an impact if the Patriots of the 2000s can lift the trophy as regularly as some of the greatest sides in history. Other teams should be getting in the mix much more often with free agency and salary caps preventing a franchise from achieving the success that this Patriots team is achieving.
The Patriots are undeniably the best team of their generation but none of the other legendary dynasties of history have been played so close in Super Bowls. Since the start of the Super Bowl championship in 1967, a total of five titles have been decided by three points or less. The only three pointer in the first 24 years of Super Bowls was Super Bowl V, decided in the last few seconds of the game with a field goal from Baltimore Colts kicker Jim O’Brien. In total, there have been just five Super Bowls decided by a field goal or less and this New England Patriots dynasty has been responsible for three of them.
 For three of the five closest games in Super Bowl history to be down to the franchise that defines the current era of the NFL suggests parity matters. The Patriots have been to the big game frequently in recent years but each time they have reached the pinnacle it has not been easy. Super Bowl XXXVI against the St Louis Rams and the Greatest Show on Turf was never expected to be easy, Adam Vinatieri’s kick as time expired matched Jim O’Brien’s effort for the Colts 31 years earlier to win the game.
The Rams had been heavily favoured so there was no surprise in a Patriots win being a close one. The Patriots were not underdogs in 2004 or 2005 against the Carolina Panthers or Philadelphia Eagles but the results were equally close. Vinatieri’s game winning kick as time expired against the Panthers came on a day when he had missed two other attempts and while the winning field goal against the Eagles came much earlier, it was still just a three point game and ended with a Rodney Harrison interception on the Eagles last drive.
The whole purpose of parity is to make the NFL feature closer, more exciting games for viewers. Nowhere does this matter more than the championship game. The Super Bowl is the spectacular to draw in the mainstream, casual crowd. It lacks the tension that even regular season games often hold as most team’s fans will not have an overriding interest in the game. In all but two cases, fans are not watching their team or a game that impacts their team’s prospects and while we will typically choose a side, the allegiance is not the dedicated, passion arousing fanaticism reserved for the supporter’s team of choice.
Taking the neutral path, the drama must be generated by the game itself and the Patriots have been perfect on this front as well. The Perfect Season storyline culminates on Sunday, we will either witness the coronation of the greatest team of all time and see it happen during our era, or we will see them fail and a different ending to the chapter written.
 Recent history suggests that it is not just in the overarching story that will help provide the excitement. Patriots games in the Super Bowl have kept enthusiasm driving right to the last, the sport itself providing the much needed drama for the worldwide television audience. Sport is not so much about greatness and perfection as it is about tension and unpredictability. For all the Patriots magnificence and their recent dynasty, their Super Bowl games have had that key quality of keeping a game alive to the final snap.
Despite having three of the five Super Bowl victories of a field goal or less, the closest Bowl was won by their XLII opponents, the Giants. The seemingly unstoppable Buffalo Bills blew their own chance of glory at Super Bowl XXV with a missed goal as time expired, Scott Norwood forsaking his place in the kickers pantheon to leave the Giants in possession of a 20-19 victory, the closest margin in Super Bowl history.
The Super Bowl is a carnival, designed to draw in the neutrals and show NFL and US values to the world. What that carnival needs is for the sporting theatre to be captivating and the Patriots have been the best there has ever been at giving us the knuckle-biting pressure of real sport.
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