The Super Bowl: The Greatest Event in all of Professional Sports.

If you’re anything like my family, the NFL season is the greatest of any of the professional sports. In fact, the rest of the nation may tend to agree as a recent Harris Poll indicated that the NFL is the most popular sport in America for the 30^th year in a row! In the 2014 survey, the NFL garnered 35% of the vote while baseball was a distant second at 14%. I think it’s time we start calling the NFL America’s sport.   

When I look at the NFL, it is so much more exciting with a higher intensity/interest level than any other professional sport. In the NFL, EVERY GAME MATTERS. In MLB, NBA, and even NHL, with the season's being so long, teams can afford to lose games here or there and still have a shot at the playoffs. And while every game is important, it is not as important to the same degree as the NFL. The NFL has one game every week that is oh so important to the final destination: the playoffs.

I experienced this first hand when my Dolphins were on the brink of making the playoffs for the first time since 2008. All they had to do was win one of their last two games. I was pretty optimistic as they were playing the lowly Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets. Not only did the Phins lose both games, but they were embarrassed in the process. As if getting shutout by the Bills wasn't bad enough in Week 16, they were ousted by the Jets (and the ever so annoying Rex Ryan) in front of their home crowd in Week 17. Another season of hope and possibilities erased.

So although I haven’t seen my team in the playoffs since ’08 (a one-sided loss to the Ravens in the first round), and I have never witnessed them in the Super Bowl, I am cheerful that one day it will happen. With that said, my family still views the Super Bowl as the greatest sporting event in all of professional sports. The reasons are quite simple.

The Super Bowl is one game, one event, of 60 minutes. There is no mulligan for having a bad game (just ask the Broncos). On the contrary, MLB, the NBA, and NHL all have best of 7-game series to determine a champion. And if you want to throw NASCAR in the mix, they have something like 10 races to determine a champion. In essence, if a team is off one night (or even 3), they still have a chance to regroup and win a title by winning 4 games. It’s very hard for me to have a high interest level in a best of 7-game series (Especially if a team is over-matched) unless it goes the distance to a seventh game. These sports simply don’t have the hype or interest level that the Super Bowl has. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the other pro sports from time to time because I definitely do (especially watching the Pittsburgh Pirates), but to me, nothing compares to the NFL.

Aside from this past Sunday's rare Super Bowl rout, we haven't seen a blowout of similar magnitude since 2003 in Super Bowl XXXVII when Tampa Bay demolished Oakland by 27 points (48-21). In fact, if you consider the 10 Super Bowls from 2004-2013, the average winning margin was 6.3 points! Six of those games were decided by 4 points or less! So even though from time to time we may have to deal with a blowout, we are usually in for a classic come Super Sunday. 

A Tradition Like No Other (Opfer's Super Bowl MVP Caricatures)

That leads me to one of my family’s greatest traditions surrounding the Super Bowl. Aside from family predictions of the winner, score, and MVP every year, our family has carried on a more significant, lasting tradition. In what started in our basement at our old Marlboro Street home back in the day, my dad drew caricatures of the players who were honored as Super Bowl MVP. From the very first Super Bowl, when Bart Starr was named MVP, my dad had a knack for creativity in drawing these players with distinction in a fun cartoon type of way. Go ahead, take a look. 

Roger Staubach (DAL);  Jake Scott (MIA); Larry Csonka (MIA); Franco Harris (PIT)
Super Bowls VI; VII; VIII; IX

But then as we moved to our new house, these suddenly became an afterthought and for whatever reason the process was halted. That’s when we as kids urged for the restoration of the project to continue. It was too historic and too unique not to keep it going after all the years our dad had put into it. So with our help, our dad returned to the drawing gridiron, and has continued to draw these awesome caricatures every year after the big game! Something that started as a simple hobby has turned into one of our greatest family traditions. How awesome that we have been able to carry this on for over 30 years!

Deion Branch (NE); Hines Ward (PIT); Peyton Manning (IND); Eli Manning (NYG)
Super Bowls XXXIX; XL; XLI; XLII & XLVI

Drew Brees (NO); Aaron Rodgers (GB); Joe Flacco (BAL)
Do you see the symbolism/significance in the drawings of each player?

While other professional sports or other families may have some awesome traditions themselves, if you ask the Opfers, nothing will ever beat the simplicity of our SB MVP Caricatures.