By DAVE RICHTER
Sports Columnist
 

Despite the fact that I know how dumb a tradition this is, I will be the first to sit down and take part. It is one of your duties as an American citizen to watch. For those of you who need drama, think of it as a movie you have seen fifteen times before. You know how it will end but you still seem to think that maybe this time it will end differently. Just keep pretending that, and you might find the Super Bowl exciting, at least for the first half. As far as most people are concerned, there have only been two Super Bowls in the last fifteen years where it was not obvious who would win at the start of the second half. These would be the Giants-Bills Super Bowl in 1990 and the 49ers-Bengals in 1988. For all of you Pats fans who thought you had a chance last year, let me assure you that all neutral fans knew exactly who was winning that game, well before the fourth quarter.

For those of you deep in the inner-core of the Bates bubble, this year's game features the aging John Elway's Denver Broncos against Brett Favre's Green Bay Packers. One is the returning Super Bowl champion, from the conference which has won the last thirteen Super Bowls, the other is a wild card team that basically lacks the talent to compete at this level. They have Elway and a couple of solid players scattered around elsewhere, but to put it bluntly, they are going to be beaten so bad on Sunday that even the halftime show will prove to be more entertaining. Of course, that will not stop me from rooting for the Broncos, or more specifically for Elway, but frankly I know that he's got zero chance. His specialty is the last minute comeback, but the problem is that you just can't come back in the last minute when you are down by eighty.

Not only are the Broncos in the AFC, which has proven itself inferior every year for a decade and a half, but they are a wild card team. A wild card has only won the Super Bowl once in the thirty-one that have been played. Any team with a legitimate chance of winning the league championship should at least be able to win their division. When it comes down to it, the Broncos just weren't that great of a team this year. Everyone will be pulling for Elway as this will most likely be his last shot at a Super Bowl. Still, I think we all know that the game will have its usual lopsided score where at the end you wonder,"What makes this so special?"

You will not hear much of this coming from the national media this week, as they want people to actually watch. The one thing they forget is that we will watch, no matter what. It could be the Bates football team on one side for all that anyone cares, and still hundreds of millions of people will watch world wide. Why? Because it's the Super Bowl. It's tradition.