2012 NFL Season

[MalaCloudy Black]

Myles Wilkinson was the winner of the Fantasy Football contest, beating more than 4 million other entrants winning him a free trip to the Super Bowl by the sponsor. However, attempting to board his connecting flight in Toronto, he was denied entry into the United States because of a pot conviction for having 2 grams in 1981. Instead, he was offered admittance to a company party in his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.

"Hey, you won! YOU'RE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!"
"Whoops, you were convicted of possession of marijuana in 1981. Sorry! Your consolation prize is attending the company SuperBowl party."

[SeanDMan]

Would've loved to see Jim just sucker punch John when they met at midfield. Steal the Lombardi, run off and challenge them to come get it next year. THIS IS HOW YOU BUILD STARS, PEOPLE!

Nobody gets over.

[HailtotheYo]

Wasn't there something about Flacco never being good enough to do this and not being at this level and .... a bunch of other nonsense ?

Yeah, he's pretty damned good.

[gunnar hendershow]

Yeah a lot of people said that, both in Baltimore and out of it.

Edge has a couple words for them.

[HailtotheYo]

Oh, I know ... I had a few conversations with them in last year's thread about that very thing.

I've been saying he'd be great since he came out of Delaware .... and stood proudly in the minority.

[Noah]

Question from someone that only has partially followed the NFL for a long while(although I am getting back into it now, thanks to it now being on free-to-air down here).

Will this victory make the experts and the gamblers respect the abilites of the Ravens more, or will they continue to underrate them?

From what I've been hearing post-superbowl so far, it reminds me of the '12 AFL grand final down here, where my team was beaten by the Sydney Swans and when they released the betting markets(plus there's more than a few experts downplaying the Swans win) for the '13 season, despite the solid win, the Swans were still a decent value bet and my Hawks(despite being outplayed in the grand final) were shortish priced favouries for some reason. It was almost like people couldn't bring themselves to admit they'd perhaps been wrong about the Swans and thought that the season just past would prove to be an aberration and that things would go to plan the following year.

[Maxx]

You'll only see them favored a bit more. With Lewis retiring, and Reed possibly leaving, they'll say the defense won't be as good.

[PatDaMan]

Great game. Pissed the Ravens won, as I'm not a fan of Ray Lewis, at all. His religion schtick seems so phony when you know he ratted out his two buddies in a murder case and has kids from 4 different women.

Also, huge fan of Patrick Willis and Vernon Davis. I like Kaepernick's game, too. He'll be in another Super Bowl.

It's going to be an interesting offseason for Eagles fans. I can't wait to see the total revamp of the roster. If Vick comes back, God help us all.

The last four consecutive Super Bowl champions have now played in Philly for the Eagles home opener, as if Eagles fans didn't need yet another reason to feel ashamed of our team.

[naiwf]

So I missed all of last night's game because something I ate went to war with my stomach. It's almost as though the football gods knew that the thought of Joe Flacco Super Bowl MVP would nauseate me, so they went all out and made it so I didn't have to see it

[HC]

So I missed all of last night's game because something I ate went to war with my stomach. It's almost as though the football gods knew that the thought of Joe Flacco Super Bowl MVP would nauseate me, so they went all out and made it so I didn't have to see it

You spent the longest Super Bowl in history on the toilet?

[naiwf]

I was in bed. If I'd actually watched the game there probably would have been some vomiting

[Pizza]

Question from someone that only has partially followed the NFL for a long while(although I am getting back into it now, thanks to it now being on free-to-air down here).

Will this victory make the experts and the gamblers respect the abilites of the Ravens more, or will they continue to underrate them?

From what I've been hearing post-superbowl so far, it reminds me of the '12 AFL grand final down here, where my team was beaten by the Sydney Swans and when they released the betting markets(plus there's more than a few experts downplaying the Swans win) for the '13 season, despite the solid win, the Swans were still a decent value bet and my Hawks(despite being outplayed in the grand final) were shortish priced favouries for some reason. It was almost like people couldn't bring themselves to admit they'd perhaps been wrong about the Swans and thought that the season just past would prove to be an aberration and that things would go to plan the following year.

I hope they get more respect from oddsmakers, because I don't think they'll do that good. They've always played to the level of their opposition, throw in losing Lewis, and the fact that Flacco will have a 9 figure contract locked up, and I am very excited to bet against them when they're favoured over the Browns by 14 or whatever.

[gunnar hendershow]

Question from someone that only has partially followed the NFL for a long while(although I am getting back into it now, thanks to it now being on free-to-air down here).

Will this victory make the experts and the gamblers respect the abilites of the Ravens more, or will they continue to underrate them?

From what I've been hearing post-superbowl so far, it reminds me of the '12 AFL grand final down here, where my team was beaten by the Sydney Swans and when they released the betting markets(plus there's more than a few experts downplaying the Swans win) for the '13 season, despite the solid win, the Swans were still a decent value bet and my Hawks(despite being outplayed in the grand final) were shortish priced favouries for some reason. It was almost like people couldn't bring themselves to admit they'd perhaps been wrong about the Swans and thought that the season just past would prove to be an aberration and that things would go to plan the following year.

I hope they get more respect from oddsmakers, because I don't think they'll do that good. They've always played to the level of their opposition, throw in losing Lewis, and the fact that Flacco will have a 9 figure contract locked up, and I am very excited to bet against them when they're favoured over the Browns by 14 or whatever.

Flacco's contract will be right up there with the other top deals, the last 4 games of his career were worth millions and millions. I'm expecting $17 million per year myself. He won't hit the annual mark set by Brees, but his total money will be more.

Also, the parade is tomorrow! Getting to the stadium bright an early, I'm hoping to be one of the lucky folks who gets in for the free ceremony to close out the whole parade.

[Trey]

Hopefully they can find a way to structure his deal so that the first few years he can have less of a cap hit and they can use that money to bring Ed Reed back. Or if nothing else, Flacco take 14 million a year instead of 17 million so that's 3 million extra they can spend on Reed.

[gunnar hendershow]

It'll be one of those deals where a lot of the money is at the back end, what's important is the amount of money he's guaranteed.

[Cactus Drags]

I was concerned at halftime that we were going to end up with the dog of a game we've probably been due, what with the last decade of games all being excellent. Fortunately the power cut woke the Niners up and we had a competitive second half. Not quite the defensive showdown I was hoping for, but still. Regarding the pass interference non-call at the end, I think that was bad enough to call. I'm also not a fan of Simms' point of view in that situation. You don't stop calling something because it's the Superbowl. Like Carlson and McGinest said, it's about consistency. There's already enough lengthy arguments and debates on catches and feet inbounds and whatnot, let's not introduce inconsistent (more inconsistent?) refereeing to it all.

Why the hell have they decided to make the super bowl logo super boring lately? It's been the Lombardi Trophy above silver numerals a lot in the past few years. Not a fan, bring back unique ones for each game!

They made the decision a few years ago to keep everything uniform, hence the shitty new space-age conference titles and logos. I much prefer the individual logos for each game.

It's times like this that the game doesn't help itself. The last two minutes of timed play have taken nearly 20 minutes.

I'm sure they'll take your opinion into account over the 100+ million people that watched the game in the States alone.

[Colly]

It's one of the rules thats always confused me to be honest as a 'casual' fan, how much can you grab a receiver? It just feels weird that in the middle of the park defensive and offensive lines just batter into each other, but with a receiver you can have holding and pass interference. Full contact or no contact are easy enough, whereas that no call was just confusing to me.

[Damian WayLNKe]

On my way home from the rally at M&T Bank Stadium now. The crowd was outstanding. I should be able to post photos when I get home.

Edit:

[TCO]

I like the uniformed logos, looks much classier than the old ones. It gives instant recognition to every logo while still being unique to every year and stadium. Plus it allows the host city to shill merchandise way in advance of the actual event.

[gunnar hendershow]

On my way home from the rally at M&T Bank Stadium now. The crowd was outstanding. I should be able to post photos when I get home.

Edit:

You were pretty close to me. I was in the lower bowl as well, section 138.

This basically raised the bar for Super Bowl celebrations. There were so many people lining the streets that they spilled over the barricades and started following the team down the parade route. Fire marshal forced them to stop letting people into the stadium, the estimate I hear was 83,000 people made it in (a sell-out is 71,000 seats but with the field open they could bring in more people). People were stuck in traffic on 95, 295, 395, and 83 trying to get downtown for the parade. Those people obviously missed it. Furthermore, my cousin told me that the wait for the Light Rail was at least an hour.

All in all the city wasn't prepared for this, but I don't quite know how one prepares for a day like this. Unbelievable celebration.