Super Bowl 2012: Time for a Blowout in the Super Bowl

The last three games between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants were decided by four points or less. So the beguiling logic is that when they hook up on Feb. 5 for the Super Bowl (could never figure out the Roman Numeral bit), we should get another close, riveting contest decided in the last 20 seconds or so, right?

The entire logic of Pats-Giants is for another classic that NFL films will chuck into the replays of past Super Bowls next year.

You spoiled brats. This is what happens when the recent run of games have been tight or at least competitive.

My gut—and if you take this to the bank there's something seriously wrong with you—is we're due for a blowout.

Just to define the thing, my definition of a blowout is a game where one team is up by 2 TDs or more. What I'm really thinking about are games where the score is 55-10 or 45-13. The whole thing is decided by halftime or early in the third quarter and now we're scrounging to find if we have enough chips to get past the boredom.

What I am thinking about are Super Bowls in the first 20 or so years of the game where one team absolutely killed the other and tight games were a rarity.

The odds are it will not happen in this game. The two teams have been in battles over the last four to five years, so this one should be no different.

But I have this hunch, feeling, whatever which I last felt while waiting for Game 7 between the Yankees and the Red Sox in 2004. The wise money then was that after such a riveting series, we were in for a classic winner-take-all match.

Never happened. When Johnny Damon hit a grand slam and a 2-run dinger, it was 8-1 by the fourth inning and the rest of that game was a countdown to the greatest comeback in professional sports history.

Will Tom Brady throw six TDs in this one? Will Eli Manning have the incandescent game that Phil Simms had in the Super Bowl (22-25 passing)?

MAYBE.

I'd want to see a tight game as much as the next schmo. But this game could be an old-fashioned Bowl and bore half of America by halftime.