Superlatives

I have been in a lot of living rooms in which a Super Bowl featuring my favorite team was playing. Eight of them, to be precise. Three of those were happy experiences that kept a crowd gathered around the television to watch the aftermath: trophy presentation, interviews, advertisements for championship swag available exclusively from Sports Illustrated. The other five, not so much.
It was back in 2014 when I last got to savor the agony of defeat with the Denver Broncos. This was billed as the shootout between the high-powered offense of Peyton Manning and the Legion of Boom defense. I had a house full of fans and hangers-on, all of whom swore their allegiance to the Broncos upon entering, and while I was busy making sure we had enough guacamole, the snap from the first offensive play went sailing past Peyton, and though it was covered in the endzone by a Bronco, resulting in a safety and thereby setting a record for the quickest points scored in a Super Bowl: twelve seconds.
From there, the rout was on, and by the time I had found a seat in the arm of a couch, despair had set in. The Seattle Seahawks were ahead twenty-two to nothing by halftime, and even the frenetic halftime show presented by Bruno Mars couldn't bring hope to the orange and blue clad well-wishers who began to remember there are other things to do on Sunday afternoons in February. I knew that I would be facing my co-worker and Seahawks fan the next morning and the final score, 8 to 43 could hardly be described as a "contest."
Unless it was to define levels of incompetence on sports' biggest stage. The Denver Broncos have all kinds of Super Bowl records. Almost all of them have the Broncos on the ignominious end. They gave up fifty-five points to the super-powered San Francisco Forty-Niners while scoring only ten themselves. Forty-five point differential, if you're still stuck on the math. Denver does not have the second place on the list, but the thirty-five point loss to Seattle puts them at third. And fifth. And that loss to the Washington Redskins featured one of the best performances by a quarterback in Super Bowl history. It was not John Elway. It was Doug Williams, the Redskins' backup who threw four touchdown passes in the second quarter. Against the New York Giants, the Broncos scored their traditional ten points in the first quarter, then gave up thirty-two points in the next three, providing Phil Simms with an historic quarterback performance.
Go team.
Which is why I am just as happy to sit and watch the Chiefs and the Forty-Niners go after one another this year. I will probably be able to enjoy the food and the commercials and if there happens to be a game in there somewhere, that will be fine too.
Sigh.