| | | The next few days leading up to Super Bowl XXXV will be filled with the usual analysis and predictions, but unlike so many past Super Bowl matchups, there seems to be little consensus among the analysts on who will win the game. And how.
 Part of the difficulty is found in the law of extremes. The Ravens defense is just so good -- having allowed the fewest points in a 16-game season by any NFL team since the Frankford Yellow Jackets allowed only 84 points in 16 games back in 1928. (That's right: I know that you have heard that Baltimore allowed "the fewest points ever by a team playing a 16-game schedule," but
that's true only since the NFL adopted the current 16-game format in 1978. Fifty years before that, in a season in which NFL teams played varying amounts of games, the Yellow Jackets' swarming defense must have been a thing to behold!)
And the Giants are coming off such an impressive 41-0 victory over the favored Vikings, so aren't they riding an irresistable crest of momemtum?
|  | | Kerry Collins and the Giants roll into Tampa fresh off a 41-0 win in the NFC title game. |
Well, history provides evidence of an axiom of sports: No team is actually as good as it looks when it's winning, and no team is really as bad as it looks when it's losing. In the case of teams advancing to the Super Bowl, of course, re-read Clause One of the preceding sentence.
Since 1970, when the AFL-NFL merger became effective and the two leagues -- now renamed conferences -- started playing an integrated regular-season schedule, there have been 10 times when the team that allowed the fewest points in the NFL advanced to the Super Bowl. And the Super Bowl performances of those teams was, on the whole, quite good: eight of them won the Super Bowl (including the Giants against the Bills in Super Bowl XXV) and only two lost. But one of the losses was enough of a whopper to
give Ravens' fans pause.
In January 1990, the Broncos made their fourth trip to the Super Bowl -- their third in four years -- and it seemed as if their defense had finally caught up with their offense. That season, Denver allowed 14.1 points per game, the fewest in the league, beat Pittsburgh and Cleveland in the AFC playoffs, and met the 49ers in Super Bowl XXIV. Final score: San Francisco 55, Denver 10 -- the most points ever scored by one team in a Super Bowl. Or, from Denver's perspective, the most points allowed by one team in a Super Bowl.
As for the Giants' impressive win in the NFC title game carrying over, all they have to do is listen to Bill Parcells, Ottis Anderson, or other veterans of the Giants' last Super Bowl team to realize the meaninglessness of any carryover. Back in 1990, the Giants met a Buffalo team that had destroyed the Los Angeles Raiders 51-3 in the AFC Championship Game. That 48-point win still stands as the largest margin of victory in a conference championship game in the Super Bowl era. And to make the momentum factor even more tangible, that was one of those years where there was no week off prior to the Super Bowl. But momentum didn't help the Bills as they fell one point short and a few feet wide right of beating the Giants that evening in Tampa 10 years ago.
Oh, yes, Baltimore fans of a certain age can also tell you can shove your momentum. Back in 1968, the Baltimore Colts, possessors of a 13-1 regular-season record, crushed the Cleveland Browns 34-0 in what was then the (pre-merger) NFL Championship Game. Until the Giants' win over Minnesota, that had been the most decisive shutout victory by any team in a game that put it into the Super Bowl. But Joe Namath wasn't impressed; two weeks later, his Jets made history by beating those Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III.
Pre-Super Bowl momentum fades long before the final strains of the "Star Spangled Banner."
Steve Hirdt is the executive vice president of the Elias Sports Bureau.
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