In New England, that just may be a slogan for this year's Super Bowl.
But give the Patriots credit. As both Shalise Manza Young and Jeff Howe mentioned to me earlier this week — and countless others join them both — not many predicted the Patriots to find as much success as they did. Not with all the youth on defense. Not with the young players contributing on offense. Not with the trade of Randy Moss.
Clearly, Bill Belichick is deserving of the Coach of the Year honors given to him by The Associated Press. A 14-2 regular season for the 2010 Patriots was a success — even if the season as a whole didn't end as a success New England wanted — both for the team and the region.
But — back to Sunday. Are you taking the Steelers, who are playing in their third Super Bowl in six years? Or the finally-getting-his-due Aaron Rodgers' Green Bay Packers? Do you go with the experience, or do you go with the favorite?
Do you have a rooting interest at all?
I've heard a lot of people taking Pittsburgh. Former Patriot Max Lane told me Mike Tomlin's team is his pick, crediting the experience factor as a large part. He recollected his own Super Bowl and the effort not to pay too much attention to all pageantry around the game. In his mind, it didn't work.
Well, Tomlin's team is taking it all in. It seems Ben Roethlisberger has had that camera in his hand since getting off the plane. And, even if the NFL's biggest stage gets bigger every year, the Steelers have stood on it before. And recently.
As an indicator of the growing size and scope of that stage, I just have to note this. Did you see that the NFL sold 4,000 tickets at $200 a pop to watch the game on a big screen outside Cowboys Stadium? I discovered that fact in Peter King's recent in-depth Sports Illustrated feature on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. You can't write it better than King did: "That's the NFL today — people pay $200 to be near the Super Bowl."
Yep, that stage seems to be sky-high, but I'd like to see the Packers standing on it Sunday night. OK, they are favored, but, so often Aaron Rodgers has been the underdog — the quarterback Green Bay took a chance on when the team passed on keeping legendary passer Brett Favre. After everything that went down with Favre this season, don't you just want to see Rodgers win it all?
Then, someone passed along this article from Yahoo Finance.
The premise: Green Bay's population of 102,000 effectively owns the Packers. If the team is ever sold, the money goes to a foundation. So, if Rodgers is placing an order for his first ring Sunday night, the 112,000 stockholders with a stake in the team win, too. For a little town in Wisconsin, the team existing as it does is already a huge victory. Why not root for another one?
