by Eight Thirty Seven and J-Dub, with assistance from Jason from Indiana
Carolina Panthers (17-1) -6* at Denver Broncos (14-4) (45)
Super Bowl 50 is finally here, and this upcoming Sunday we will all indulge in the greatest American past-time that can take place from a couch and doesn’t involve FaceTime and naked Asian teenagers. It’s been a long year for the NFL which included a franchise relocation, a full-length movie about concussions starring Will Smith which was so awful you literally wanted to beat your own brains in, and as far as the action on the field was concerned, we were treated to a play-off bloodbath which has left us with the last two teams standing.
All thing considered, the bottom line is the league has changed; it sure as shit isn’t what it in the 1980’s and 90’s. One thing that hasn’t changed is that as one would expect, the “hype machine” surrounding the season’s final and biggest game is red-lining harder than the “Delete” button on Hilary Clinton’s email account.
One can make an argument this isn’t exactly the Super Sunday match-up the NFL had wanted. The NFL loves to showcase it’s known stars, which from the AFC side was a fait accompli no matter what happened. While many believed that there was no way Tom Brady could possibly lose again to his arch-playoff punching bag, in actuality the quite thinkable happened and a Patriots’ team which was more beat-up than Tina Turner after another of Ike’s freebasing binges fell short in their quest for a fifth ring.
Of course that means another shot at a Super Bowl title for “Fetushead” Manning, who somehow managed to still toss the prolate spheroid we call a “football” for over 2300 yards in between hustling shitty pizza, even shittier insurance, and shitting the bed in various Denver hospitals. Like we said, either way the NFL gets at least one beat-up old star quarterback on Super Bowl Sunday.
That “can’t miss” scenario in the AFC was certainly off-set by what happened in the NFC. Of the six quarterbacks who made the play-offs in that conference, there was only one (Aaron Rodgers) who had any name recognition with casual football fan. His odds of getting to the Super Bowl this year were right up there with Mr. T being elected the new leader of North Korea, but you also know Kommissar Goodell was losing sleep nights over the prospect of trying to get anybody interested in guys like Kirk Cousins or Teddy Bridgewater.
Worse yet, the NFL stood a real chance of having Carson Palmer playing in a Super Bowl. Again, “casual” football fans never heard of him, and the last thing the NFL needs right now is a Super Bowl featuring a guy who can spontaneously burst into flame-covered intercep-shit like ol’ Jelly-Knees Palmer. In his most recent podcast, J-Dub breaks down the importance for the NFL of appealing to the “casual” fan and how the Carolina Panthers being the “big game” is actually a good deal for the NFL, largely because the “casual” fans and the “Super Bowl commercial-watchers” are going to be introduced to the guy most-likely to be the new “face” of the NFL…Cam Newton.
The football world is Cam’s for the taking; he’s a star just waiting to happen. Now, he goes out on the national stage and throat-fucks himself with a Palmer-esque performance, all bets are off. Speaking of bets, that’s what we are really here to talk about; picking winners and laying some cash.
Lets’ be honest; when it comes to this game, we know by know you’ve been given a bigger dose of stale than a “week old” bakery outlet. That’s why we are here, to tell you stuff about this game that nobody else will.
1) The Site
A lot of this piece is going to have a dark theme to it, not because we are a collection of those whiny-ass “Emo” kids who couldn’t get laid in a women’s prison if they had a fistful of keys, but because negativity is a part of reality, and our raison d’etre is to keep shit real. The problem is there’s not a whole lot of negative things you can say about the site of Super Bowl 50. The game will be held in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California; which is the home of the San Francisco 49ers, who as recently as a few years ago could pass for a professional football team. It really doesn’t matter, because the Bay Area is one of the most beautiful regions America has to offer. Not to mention, northern California is awash in cash, and there’s a long list of Bay Area folks who have bank accounts sporting gargantuan numbers like the gross domestic product of Ecuador or Charlie Sheen’s life insurance premiums. This is evidenced by the on this fantastic facility, which is estimated to be somewhere in the $1.5 billion dollar range, or roughly the equivalent of eight months’ rent for a studio apartment in San Francisco.
We also have to point out that the Levi’s people deserve far more credit than they will ever get for making jeans with button flies. Any man or Caitlyn Jenner-type who has a penis longer than 2.25 inches (which eliminates most Cowboys’ fans) knows that blue jean zippers have ripped off so many foreskins that collectively they could be certified as a mohel.
Lately, the NFL seems as if it being run by a fully-automated, electrically-powered “Fuck Everything Up” machine, but we have to give credit where credit due. The NFL got this one right, and we can only assume that this will be the first of many Super Bowls to take place in this stadium. After all, it isn’t the NFL’s fault this is an El Niño year, a year in which California gets battered by rain harder than a tall cow pissing on a flat rock and waves Godzilla could surf.
Besides, how cool would it be to see a Super Bowl played entirely on Jet-Skis?
2) The Pregame
Meehan has the “dream” setup this year: He’s working up until an hour before the game starts. That means regardless of what’s going to take place, he’s not going to see a single second of it. The pre-game is way too fucking long, as evidenced by the fact that it actually started back on October 22nd in week 7 when Colin Kaepernick – who is slowly becoming one of America’s most hilarious stand-up comedians – delivered a killer 60 minutes of material in a 20-3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks. In the weeks that followed, Kaepernick was offered his own HBO special, a Thursday night sitcom, and a multi-picture deal with Dreamworks, only to find out that those were all prank calls from Niners owner Jed York trying desperately to get him to do anything else but play football.
On Thursday, sort-of-rock-band-but-not-really Train and British pop singer Ellie Goulding performed at the Justin Herman Plaza and provided plenty of auditory stimulation for the deaf. When you get out of church on Sunday, CBS has a seven hour stretch of football related programming sure to bore you to tears and convince you to lose interest in the sport completely before kickoff.
Doubt that? Here’s the laundry list of bullshit they have in store, all in Eastern Standard Time:
11:00 A.M. – Super Bowl 50: Before They Were Pros (produced by NFL Films)
As fans, there’s nothing more we enjoy than seeing the gridiron greats of today pounding each other into dust…But since we can’t do that for another six and a half hours…Who wants to see your favorite NFL Superstar in diapers eating sno-cones? “Awww…he’s so cute! Who knew he would grow up to cave in his girlfriend’s face with a shovel?”
12:00 P.M. Noon – Road to the Super Bowl (produced by NFL Films)
This is little more than one of those exceptionally painful “recap” pieces, and intended for the “Where’s Tebow?” crowd. Thankfully, that means you can safely skip this if:
- You watched more than five regular season games
- You watched at least three play-off games
- You looked at the standings on your smartphone
- You saw any episode of SportsCenter in the last month
- You are in a loud bar where some patron feels the need to tell you the details of why teams that win advance in the playoffs.
But we must never forget that Super Bowl parties fill up with those “fans” who ask which team Tim Tebow plays for, which is EXACTLY why shit like this exists..
1:00 PM – Phil Simms All-Iron Team: Super Bowl Edition
This is actually not a list similar to the All-Madden Team of days past, but instead an interactive home game fans can play on Twitter: If you can listen to Phil for an hour without puncturing your eardrums with an ice-pick, you win an autographed Chris Simms jersey. That’s a hell of a lot better deal than the Buccaneers got…(suck on that, SportsChump)
2:00 – 6:00 PM – The Super Bowl Today
The NFL Today is a very poorly assembled cast of clown jocks, as it always has been. Once a confusing den of polar opposites that saw Dan Marino patiently wait for Shannon Sharpe to finish his unintelligible sentences, the program has now given way to a cast that includes host James Brown, Bart Scott, Tony Gonzalez, and for some reason former Steelers coach Bill Cowher. The awkward breaks of silence that typically hang in the air and kill the vibe of such shows are welcome here, as there is really no chemistry between anybody at any point in time. This four hour pregame show is sure to cut to very oddly placed performances from artists that should probably be headlining strip mall shows, but are for some reason playing us out to Doritos commercials two hours before the biggest sporting event on the planet. Why Bart Scott has been given this opportunity I’ll never know, and Cowher talks too much like a coach which alienates casual viewers. I can’t think of anybody else you’d want less on a broadcast when it comes to the overall flow of the program. Oh look, there’s Boomer Esiason. Guess I was wrong…
6:00 – 6:30 PM – The Super Bowl on CBS Kickoff Show
This show will essentially be more of the same stuff you heard during The Super Bowl Today, only drowned out by the eager crowd that is likely to be yelling over it at a deafening volume. I’m assuming this will be the last chance for the analysts to say their piece before the players reach the field for introductions. There will be one guy at wherever you’re watching the game at who will say “Just get on with the damn game”…and unless it’s his pad, you have every right to tell that cocksucker to settle down. When this show signs off, the game is just around the corner.
3) The Broadcast Itself
As you know by now, Super Bowl 50 will be aired by CBS, America’s most watched network for people with hearing aids and/or over the age of 65. It will be called by the group of characters below, and the Columbia Broadcasting System will be flooded all night with complaints from people whose undergarments smell like a diarrhea fountain about why they can’t see the TV better and how NFL players have too many tattoos.
Jim Nantz
Can somebody patiently explain to us how in the world we have the same guy calling the Masters and the Super Bowl? We get the versatility aspect of his skill level, but in one of those sports he’s required to whisper and in the other he’s got to try and convince us he doesn’t call the Masters. Although we welcome change and don’t lean on the past for a majority of my personal decisions, we just might have to switch gears here and engage in a tradition unlike any other: The Mute Button.
Phil Simms
Although Eight Thirty Seven grew up a Giants fan and his earliest sports memory is Phil Simms winning Super Bowl XXI against the Colorado Horsies, it’s pretty safe to say ninety-five percent of the time he has no clue what the hell he is talking about in the booth. Even Eight Thirty Seven’s father –who introduced him to the NFL in the aforementioned memory – thinks Phil talks too damn much, and with ever passing year he’s beginning to look more and more like Bucky Beaver from the Ipana toothpaste commercials in the 1950’s.
Don’t bother pointing out the irony of our picking on the age of the average CBS viewer and following it up with a reference to Jurassic television. That’s what happens when you chase Ambien with Aqua Velva. But it also makes sens when talking about Phil Simms, because all he does is tell stories his playing days, which are not only completely irrelevant to the game today, but are getting dangerously close to “grumpy old man” territory. Then again, this might just be to appease the average octogenarian CBS viewer. If you aren’t one of those, after about five Simms-isms, you’ll want to do something more interesting, like working on your tax return.
Tracy Wolfson
Here’s what we really know about Tracy Wolfson: (insert cricket noise here) That lack of anything to say means we totally need to improvise here. First of all, sideline reporters are that mystery white packet in the bag of beef jerky that is the world of sports. Nobody really knows why they exist, and if you eat one, you’ll barf harder than a bulimic at Golden Corral. Tracy Wolfson could be considered attractive if you’re a guy married to a woman who has a butt like a bag of wet clothes or you get your glasses at Wal-Mart Optical, but when you put her next to Nantz and Simms, she looks AND sounds like a fucking Nobel Prize winner.
4) The Teams
Every year, we do a piece called “Why You Shouldn’t Cheer For,” which is a satirical piece trash-talking the Super Bowl contestants. You can click the links to each team below to see this year’s installment…then you can read the real reason why these teams suck.
Plagued by an aging body and declining numbers, the Elway-Manning Denver Broncos had to get here the old fashioned way: Defense. The Broncos shut down a majority of the teams they faced by getting off the line at a lightning quick pace, and outside linebacker Von Miller became the third-fastest player in NFL history to reach fifty career sacks, doing so in just 58 games. They’re ironically led by head coach Gary Kubiak, who spent his entire career holding the jock strap of the guy who’s now his boss.
If there’s anything that will alleviate the pressure of such a task, it’s the fact that Kubiak made the Super Bowl in his first season with the team. That little nugget of information probably makes Rex Ryan want to choke on his wife’s toenails, but for Broncos fans it’s been all gravy.
But like all gravy, there is that unidentifiable lump nobody wants, and with the Broncos, that lump is the offense. Denver’s offense struggles more than a teenage boy with his first fumbles at bra removal, but a lot of that went away when offensive coordinator Rick Dennison finally quit trying to meld the Kubiak offense with Peyton Manning slavish need to run everything from the shotgun. That team still has an offensive line made of pimento loaf, and Captain Hook has better hands than some of their receivers, if the defense can give them a couple of turnovers/short fields, and they don’t return the favor, anything is possible.
By the way, don’t be surprised if the Broncos get every single fucking call in this game.
When it comes to Cam Newton, there hasn’t been a bigger metamorphosis since Kafka; Cam’s being in reverse. Gregor Samsa went from a traveling salesman to a giant cockroach (insert your own jokes here) and Newton started as the NFL version of a tree slug and may very well end up as the league’s MVP. Just a few short years ago, this guy was a case of Johnny Walker away from being a Manziel-ian mess. His decision making skills on the field were questionable at best, and they were usually followed up by some less than favorable interactions with the press after losses.
But times have changed. Newton is now a poised leader, and has a team that can follow him just about anywhere. Let’s not forget that all of this took place after the team waived running back DeAngelo Williams and lost top wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin to a preseason injury. This is because the key component to this offense s the offensive line. The Panthers front five dominate the line of scrimmage, excel in pass protection, and (get ready for the squawks from the Gronk-o-philes) Greg Olsen is the best all-around weapon at tight end in this league.
Then there’s the defense. The Panthers are loaded with athletes and play-makers who revel in plundering opposing like they should be wearing furs and horns and pillaging a fishing village. In their last appearance, they so utterly confused Carson Palmer he shit the bed so badly that he had to burn his own house down to get rid of the smell.
5) The Halftime Entertainment: Coldplay, featuring Beyoncé and Bruno Mars
Speaking of the smell of feces…
When the NFL first announced that the headliner of the Super Bowl halftime show was Coldplay, we were more confused than someone with Alzheimer’s disease trying to start a car by shoving a spatula into their top dresser drawer. Why in the fuck would the league do this? One the one hand, we understand they want to draw an audience not typically associated with fans of the game, but Coldplay was the best they could do? When I think of a bunch of young people rushing the grandstand to get pumped about the halftime entertainment, the last thing I think of is a bunch of Brits who probably spend their Friday nights listening to The Lawrence Welk Show on their gramophones.
To be fair, some of Coldplay’s stuff is good, but nobody marries the ugly girl just because she occasionally comes up with a good blowjob…(well, unless that’s all they can get) It’s almost like the NFL realizes this, because this is really just a recycle-job from Super Bowls 47 and 48 rehashing Beyoncé and Bruno Mars. It makes us wonder if the NFL is getting turned down by a lot of people to do this gig…
As far as this one is concerned, J-Dub and I are both musicians and find Bruno Mars to be moderately entertaining. In fact, J-Dub is such a major fan of The Police he’s got a Fender Precision Bass that was hand signed and given to him personally by Sting himself. The first time he heard “Locked Out of Heaven” and didn’t have the foggiest notion who Bruno Mars was, he almost crashed his car because he thought the The Police released a new album an nobody told him.
The “Sting” Bass. Don’t stand so close to it…
The problem here is that noise-twat Beyoncé. The best case scenario here is the producers have the sense to let the performers do their thing individually, because there will be hell to pay otherwise. If J-Dub comes back from taking a piss to see the boys from Coldplay gyrating their hips to “All the Single Ladies” while Bruno Mars stands stage right dressed like one of the fucking California Raisins, he’s liable to go full-on “Pete Townshend” and put that bass right through his flat screen. That would be just a goddamn shame.
6) The Commercials
You’ll be able to tell the precise moment the Super Bowl “jumps the shark” when more time gets spent afterward talking about the commercials rather than the fucking game itself. The price of a 30-second spot during the biggest sporting event in the United States has ballooned to a cool five million dollars, and there’s about as much diversity in products lines as you would see in a Democratic primary. So, if you love old white people and things middle-class white people buy, this is all for you.
Salty snacks, soft drinks, beer, pizza, a computer company you never heard of sandwiched around completely buzz-killing public service announcements about diversity, bullying, or whatever other horseshit buzzword becomes America’s next big hashtag.
But the psychological torture associated with such brash displays of commercialism doesn’t stop there, as this year’s Super Bowl takes place in a year when we decide who is going to steer this boat known as America away from the active volcano to which it’s currently headed for the next four years. Yep, it’s election season all right, and just because the Iowa caucuses have taken place doesn’t mean that the candidates for president won’t be ruining the breaks in the action by telling you what they are going to fix without telling you how they plan to fix it.
Hopefully, you’ll be too busy stuffing your face and watching football to notice, and/or too drunk too care, but the theme here is all too common…old white people. That’s who watches CBS, they are the ones who will be interested in the “reverse mortgage” commercial, and that’s who the politicians are after. Fuck, with precious few exceptions, that’s who the politicians are.
Just fucking look at them. The two most talked about male candidates in the race – Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump – will both be over the age of seventy on election day, and neither one of them knows how to use a fucking comb. Trump always looks like he’s trying to sniff his own lips, and Sanders sounds like your drunk uncle doing his shitty Jackie Mason impression. Then there’s Hillary Clinton, who looks like “The Joker” in a pants-suit you know has those pee-leak pads in it, which won’t stop her from running ads suggesting she has a bigger dick than anybody else in the race.
The two guys left in this race that matter are the two who don’t fit the theme. Not only are Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio of Hispanic descent, they still pay full price for dinner at Denny’s. We really hope at least one of these two hangs around long enough so the Democrats can say something really racist about them and not get called on it…because that’s what democrats do.
After a while, you’ll start thinking Roger Goodell would make a better choice for president…at least he is predictably stupid.
Bonus – Lock of the Year for Worst Commercial: – Zoolander 2
In the business, we call this a “tease.” Eight Thirty Seven plans to address turd-pile of a movie in a later Deep Six piece. By now you’ve seen the ads for the upcoming Hollywood box-office bomb Zoolander 2 starring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell. Because this piece of shit is set for release the Friday after the game, you’re going to get eye-raped by ads for it.
As comedy aficionados and writers, here’s why we hate this. This horrible piece of garbage will pass for entertainment because we now live in a world where “R” rated movies are now directed at twelve-year old boys and made by producers who think getting laughs out of pre-pubescent boys with shots of somebody taking it in the nuts means you have a solid script. Well, it fucking doesn’t, and the fact that this shit-bag got green-lit in the first place is why big-screen comedy is in serious trouble in this country.
7) Our Actual Picks
Before the clock expired in the NFC Championship Game, Vegas sports books had already posted odds having Carolina laying 3.5. We knew that number was going to move, and it did. Within 20 minutes it was up to four. It kept climbing until Thursday, because there weren’t a lot who believed in Denver, but then the tipping point happened. J-Dub bought at 6, and JFI pushed his chips in at 5.5.
Here’s the narrative: The books flooded with Carolina money, which pushed the line. That means this is becoming a test between the bettors who think the Broncos are going to get blown out versus those who think Denver’s defense can keep this game close, or that Carolina could choke on the big stage.
Either way, this is setting up to be as big of a disaster as Super Bowl XIII, where the line fluctuated just like this, then a river of late money shifted the line just before game time. This is the worst case scenario for books because it makes it almost impossible to balance the action. As of this writing, J-Dub has seen some “unofficial” books going as low as the opener with Carolina (-3.5). However, we haven’t seen any “official” books lower than Carolina -5. That line is likely going to keep moving right up until game time, so plan accordingly.
Eight Thirty Seven: Panthers 29, Broncos 20
J-Dub: With the line being as fluid as it is, I bought at 6. With Carolina giving six points, I think the bet is $200 on Denver. I’d also be tempted to go to one of those “unofficial” books that have that line down to 3.5 and brace myself with some side action on Carolina to cover. Either way, I’m not touching the over/under, and never forget “prop” bets are for suckers.
Jason from Indiana: Immediately after the AFC Championship game, JFI was so pissed at the Patriots loss he sent Eight Three Seven a text that read “Unless the spread is more than 20 I’m going with Carolina.” Well, that tune has changed, because JFI bought Denver at +5.5.
Super Bowl Sunday is the leading day in America for pizza deliveries and domestic assaults. This year, switch things up…beat up your pizza guy.
Once again thanks for visiting First Order Historians and enjoying more of the internet’s finest in user generated content.
Eight Thirty Seven and J-Dub
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