Here is the advice and betting odds that nobody has asked for. Disclaimer: I have not been able to watch football on Sundays since April 2019 when I took over the weekend night shift at my caregiver job, making game watching impossible. I was invited to play Fantasy Football this season for the first time since 2012, which is what got me excited to pay attention to sports again. In a roundabout way, I ended up having divisional round and conference championship round of football off of work.

Prediction accuracy

When I make predictions, I’m no more accurate than a coin flip. I end up being 50/50 in the end. Divisional round I made the choice to drive to Lambeau on Shabbat to soak in the atmosphere in my traditional Superhero getup. Before I left, I remember promising myself, if the Titans and the Packers make the Super Bowl this year, I’m going to buy a ticket to LA for the game. Honestly it was a safe prediction given both teams were number 1 seeds.

When I got to the game, I made quick friends with some Packer fans who’d flown in from Colorado. I talked to them and asked them if there was anything special they’d like to see in the game. I then told them, I’d like to see a blocked kick or maybe a weird special teams play or even better, a game winning field goal. I then pompously declared: the Packers are definitely going to win though. After I said it, I wish I had been more specific about whom I wanted the bad things to happen to. Every team I picked to win that weekend, lost.

Game day Weather

For the Super Bowl, I’d like the game to be interesting. Since I am going on record with my predictions I’m being very careful with what I wish for. The first thing I’d like is for it to snow on the field in Inglewood, California before the game, just to give the Home team a taste of actual home (Bengals are listed as Home team) Realistically, the dome around the stadium would prevent any kind of snowfall from reaching the field, and if it snowed in Inglewood, the temperature would have to drop from the predicted 82 to 32 in a very short amount of time. That’s a 50 degree difference. It would certainly take an act of G-d for this prediction to come to reality, which is exactly why I’d like it. A compromise for this prediction would be for the temperature to drop at least halfway to the 32 degrees needed for snow, just to get those fair weather LA fans a reason to bundle up a bit. The rest of my predictions are much more reasonable.

Special teams

One thing I’d like to see, which is a very selfish thing to wish for, is for an NFL kicker to miss at least one inside of 30. The reason I say this a selfish desire is because I made a 30 yard field goal one time. Granted it wasn’t pretty, there was no defense on the field, nobody watching in the stands, and my boyfriend at the time had just taught me how to do it, but nonetheless I was able to send that Duke through the uprights from 30 yards away. Finding out all the active players who have missed from inside 30 will take some more research as it’s not readily available to me via google, but I am pretty sure I saw this very thing happen in Green Bay. This prediction is unlikely to come to fruition though, since both kickers on each team are solid.

At first I was wishing that there would be a kickoff return for a touchdown, specifically opening kickoff. However a quick good search revealed that an even less likely scenario would be a punt return for a touchdown, since this has not reportedly happened yet. I’m all about firsts so I’m going to hope for at least one of these two things to happen. Speaking of firsts…

MVP

I’d like Andrew Whitworth to receive a special distinction to compliment his Walter Payton Man of the Year Award from last night’s NFL honors. He does a lot of the things I strive to do by feeding the hungry helping people find shelter. Andrew Whitworth is number 77 for the Rams, he spent 11 years on the Bengals and as the oldest active player at 40 years old, he has only missed 4 starts as an NFL player. The last defensive player to win MVP in a Super Bowl was back in 2016, Super Bowl 50. He was drafted in the year I graduated high school. These are all exciting numbers to me, but more importantly, the dude is a class act. These last few predictions are much less specific.

Winning Team

I would like the Bengals to win. I know this doesn’t align with my other predictions, but like I said before, I’m usually half wrong when I predict things. The reasons I’d like the Bengals to win are loving reasons. First of all, they haven’t been to the Super Bowl since I was born. This would be a new experience for me and many of them to live through. Second of all, a year or so before I got my job as a caregiver, I would watch Bob Herzog and his coworker Jen eat tacos on their lunch break every Tuesday. Bob Herzog first blew up on the “interwebs” when he did a make up tutorial that ended up on BuzzFeed. I’ve followed him on Facebook ever since. He was always so optimistically disappointed whenever his Bengals would lose, and they’ve been historically bad for a long time now. But this year they are a good team, and Bob and Jen are good anchors and something Bob said in his backyard live chat in 2018 was “You Gotta Go Where the Good Is” which he wanted to put on a T-Shirt but I wanted to put in a song. If the Lombardi trophy could go home to Cincinnati where all this good is, I would be very happy for them.

I thought about driving to Cincinnati for the Super Bowl just to soak in the atmosphere since it’s only an 8 hour drive, but decided to watch the game from my own turf instead. Fun story, my only visit to Cincinnati was back when I was 11 years old and we took a trip with the Girl Scouts to visit Savanna, Georgia and our connecting flight got stranded overnight at the Cincinnati airport. Oddly enough this inspired us to write a different jingle back then. I still remember it to this day. Oh yes, my high school mascot is the Tiger and that’s home for me. Plus the Bengals are a “Home Money” team as Stephen A. Smith has been saying on First Take. (Not home salad like I thought for a minute)

Winning QB

One prediction I can make with almost 100% certainty is that the team with number 9 at QB will win the game. I say this because by saying so with such confidence I have now opened up the possibility that a 2nd string QB would take over during the game. I’m all for benchwarmers rising to the occasion though so if that happens even better!

For my non-sports fans fans, I hope you were able to find something interesting in this blog. Football is my favorite sport and I’ve been away from it for far too long. I feel better now that I’m back into it. It’s just another very large piece of me I’ve missed through the years that I’m happy to get back again. If I make updates to this blog it will only be to add media to improve my SEO score, whatever that is….

Final Score

Go Bengals! So as far as the final score, my heart is crying out for a blowout with the Bengals scoring into the 40s and the Rams scoring just 6 or 7 points. I realize how unlikely this is to happen, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting it… Just like most things in my life. A more likely scenario is that the Bengals’ score ends in 4 and the Rams’ score ends in 6 or 7. Even more likely yet is that hardly any of these crazy things come true at all because l have no idea what I’m doing most of the time.

If I ever figure out how to bet on a sports game I will try to increase whatever I wager up to $500 so that I can at least buy a new guitar. I originally asked my parents’ to co-sign a loan on a house so that I can move out of their house. They laughed at me. I guess that means I’ll be doing things the hard way. I have never spent more than $50 on a bet and I’ve never lost more than $106 on betting in a calendar year.