Sport American football

Super Bowl time!

Written by Ben Blaschke

It’s the event that stops a nation, and if the numbers are anything to go by this could well go down as one of the greatest season finale’s of all time.

Yep, it’s Super Bowl weekend – the most watched single day sporting event on the planet. A spectacle so huge that the game itself is often secondary consideration. For many, Super Bowl is about the ads. With an audience of well over 100 million viewers and a 30-second ad slot costing around US$4 million, advertisers spend all year trying to come up with something people will talk about for years.

For others, it is all about the half-time entertainment. Who could forget Janet Jackson’s famous “nipple slip” in 2004 or U2’s haunting show in 2002 just months after the September 11 tragedy in New York?

Yet this year we find ourselves salivating over the game itself, which not only pits the two number one seeds against one another for the first time since 2009 but also sees the NFL’s best offense playing the NFL’s best defence in Super Bowl for the first time since 1990.

Having surprisingly fallen short of the Super Bowl last year, the Denver Broncos are looking to make amends on the back of their veteran quarterback Peyton Manning. Manning has enjoyed an unbelievable season which began with him throwing seven touchdown passes against Baltimore and ultimately saw him set league records for passing yards with 5,447 and touchdown passes with 55.

They have been desperately hard to stop and don’t underestimate the value of having a man like Manning at the helm on an occasion like this with the 38-year-old having already won a Super Bowl ring with Indianapolis back in 2007.

By comparison, the Seahawks don’t have a single player with Super Bowl experience on their roster, so this experience will be all new to them. What they do have is the league’s best defence, with NFL-best records for points, yards and passing yards conceded. In fact, it was a supreme fourth quarter defensive effort against San Francisco two weeks ago, in which they forced four turnovers, that saw them earn their spot in Super Bowl XLVIII.

If there is one good reason to barrack for a Seattle win, it has to be the promise of another post-match interview with Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, who made headlines around the world following his stunning rant following the win over the 49ers.

But with no Super Bowl experience at all and one of the great quarterbacks lining up against them, it’s hard to see the Seahawks getting over the line in this one. Although the conditions could play their part – this will be the first outdoor Super Bowl played in a cold climate city – our money is on Denver to claim their third Championship, but whatever happens we can’t wait to sit back on Monday morning and enjoy one of the greatest spectacles on the annual sporting calendar.