First, allow me to state the obvious: Football and baseball are vastly different sports, requiring dramatically different skills from those who participate in them.
Now let me declare one similarity: It is that teams with great offensive weaponry can be defeated by teams with great defensive skill.
One baseball axiom holds true, which is that “Good pitching usually beats good hitting any day.” I’ve seen it over many years watching baseball games. The 1963 World Series is my favorite example, when the powerhouse New York Yankees were shut down by the Los Angeles Dodgers; the Yanks had Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris swinging big bats, while the Dodgers had Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale throwing heat from the mound. LA won in four straight.
Now, about today’s Big Game, the Super Bowl. The Denver Broncos possess the NFL’s top offense. The Seattle Seahawks own the league’s best defense. One is irresistible, the other is immovable.
I am now venturing into something about which I know nothing, but the laws of physics seem to suggest — to me at least — that the immovable object is harder to move than it is to shut down the irresistible force.
It pains to me say this, given that I’m a long-time American Football Conference fan — going back to the days of the old American Football League, of which Denver was a founding franchise — but I’m thinking the Seahawks have the edge here.
My friends might say, “Oh, sure, but you’re from the Pacific Northwest. You’re going to root from the team from that part of the country.” Hold on. I grew up in Portland and there existed then — and perhaps it remains — a huge civic rivalry between the cities. Portlanders think little of Seattleites. We see the Queen City as snobby and full of itself. Seattle residents look down their noses at Portland, even though the Rose City has become every bit as cosmopolitan and trendy as Seattle.
But I’m thinking now, just a few hours before kickoff, that the immovable object is going to dig itself in and hold the irresistible force to perhaps just a couple of touchdowns.
Final score? Please, don’t hold me to this. Let’s try 20-17, Seattle.
