Has everything been said about the Super Bowl yet?
As a veteran of the last Super Bowl to be played in New Orleans, I’ll start this with a couple of thoughts.
This Super Bowl seems a bit like Super Bowl XXXVI in a number of ways.
For starters, the AFC team won both times.
In Super Bowl XXXVI, the St. Louis Rams rallied late to tie the game before New England won late.
While San Francisco never caught up, they did make a strong run in the second half.
St. Louis outgained New England by a considerable margin (427-267, 160 yards), a bit more than Baltimore outgained San Francisco (468-367, 101 yards).
In each of the Super Bowls, the MVP was an unknown or underrated quarterback from the winning team. Tom Brady had taken the starting position after Drew Bledsoe suffered a season-ending injury early in the season.
Has Joe Flacco ever been considered a top NFL quarterback? At least he has a Super Bowl ring, something most of the big-time pass slingers never have come close to getting.
It’s nice to see the Super Bowl back in New Orleans. That’s a town that was made for hosting something like the Super Bowl. It’s not taking place during hurricane season (although there always are plenty of places on Bourbon Street to find hurricanes). And Super Bowl celebrations always lead into Mardi Gras.
Of course, there will have to be things to be handled. The blackout situation wasn’t great. You can’t blame that one on President George W. Bush! (nor can you blame that one on Borgia, Marty Tiefenbrunn!) but those are things which can be fixed and improved before the Super Bowl makes its next return to the Big Easy.
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On a more local front, we’ve got district wrestling coming up with the first three rounds of each district taking place Friday.
We’ve got a lot of candidates to do well not only at the district meets, but also in Columbia next week. This could be the year we have another team actually challenge for a trophy.
Washington, Pacific and Union are solid, but they’re all in the same district along with some other very solid programs, so it’s going to be a challenge just to make it past Farmington.
I think we’ve got some solid contenders to potentially be wrestling on Saturday night in the state title bouts as long as they keep working. There are a lot of good, solid, technically sound wrestlers out there, so the wrestlers need to remember that they’re only as good as their last move.
And while it might not have anyone heading to state and only has a few wrestlers remaining this season, any rumors of Borgia ending its wrestling experiment are just that.
My sources at the regional high school have told me that the school intends to continue trying to build the team in the future..
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As far as our other winter sport goes, basketball, we’re through all of the in-season tournaments now and headed toward the completion of conference play and the homestretch to the district tournaments.
Remember that Classes 1-3 will be heading to the playoffs first this season, a reversal of recent years. I don’t know if MSHSAA did the best job of getting that word out because a lot of larger schools already had schedules completed by the time the changes were announced, so that last week will be pretty barren for some.
There seem to be some pretty good district showdowns setting up.
In Class 3 District 9, the top three boys seeds have a combined record of 58-4.
Fatima (19-1) is the top seed. Fatima’s loss was to Hickman, 78-48.
The St. James boys are 20-1 and are second. St. James lost to Cuba (19-2, the third seed), 68-66.
It’s shaping up so that any of the top three seeds could win this one.
The Class 4 District 9 girls basketball tournament might even be deeper than that. Any of the six seeds have a good shot at winning the tournament and five have impressive recent victories. Of course, most “experts” have already awarded the state trophy to Incarnate Word Academy, but the district tournament certainly will be entertaining stuff.
Yes, it should be an exciting postseason!
