Right after the Super Bowl, every sports fan goes into hibernation until March Madness starts in about a month. For college students, it's much the same. We have one month of boredom before the thrill of spring break and the end of the year right after that.
That being said, AU sports are in full swing, professional hockey and basketball approach the Olympic and All-Star breaks and my favorite, the World Baseball Classic, looms in the near future. Of course, as with any sports action, we can prognosticate on what will happen.
Truth: The upcoming Turin Olympics will be the least-watched Games in the modern era. I'm sorry, the Olympics start this week? I had no idea! There has been such poor publicity and so little excitement about the Games that the biggest story is the best athlete admitting that he performs drunk sometimes.
Bode Miller, the only sure thing going into the Olympics, has come under fire recently because of a "60 Minutes" interview in which he admitted partying too much the night before races. Who cares? Certainly no one who's actually going to watch the Games, because no one's talking about it.
When the Olympics were in Albertville, Lillehammer and Nagano in the 1990's, they were the talk of the world. With the recent success of the movie "Munich," one would think that the Turin Games would be highly anticipated. This is not the case, and expect a huge disappointment in ratings.
Truth: AU will sweep this weekend's nationally televised basketball games. It would be easy for the basketball teams to look ahead to next weekend's Phil Bender event with rival Holy Cross coming to town, but I don't see it happening. With the excitement of playing on TV and the expected big crowds, Jeff Jones and Melissa McFerrin will get their teams ready for the Sunday showdowns against Colgate.
Neither Raiders team is much better than the Eagles, but they will be looking to atone for a disappointing sweep by AU in Hamilton, N.Y., in January. Either way, expect both AU teams, coming back home after road trips, to play physical and both come away with comfortable wins.
Lie: This week's Super Bowl between the Steelers and Seahawks was the worst Super Bowl ever. I'll admit I went around saying the same thing all week until I sat down and thought about the game. It really wasn't that bad. There were turnovers, big plays (Randle-El to Ward, Parker's 74-yard run and Kelly Herndon's goal-line interception come to mind), controversy (the refs), storylines (yes, I'm sick of the Jerome Bettis' homecoming too) and it was close until the last five minutes.
To me, that's a hell of a game. I understand the teams weren't sexy and that the interest coming in was tepid at best, but it certainly was not the worst game ever.
I won't make the jump and say the 'Hawks would've won if not for the refs because they certainly didn't make enough plays to win, but the zebras were downright terrible. It was laughable how bad they were. From the blown Darrell Jackson TD to the blown Big Ben TD to multiple bad holding calls, the refs came off as very biased and rooting for the Steelers.
Either way, the talk before and after may have been disappointing, but the actual game made Super Bowl XL a relative success for the NFL.
