Super Bowl XLVII Fun Facts
Super Bowl XLVII Fun Facts – Enjoy This before Super Bowl 47
This post has become an annual one. With just a few days remaining before the Super Bowl and all the pregame hype coming close to that annoying level, I like to look for the random stuff that you may or may not hear during the two weeks between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl itself. So, here’s the 2013 edition of Super Bowl Fun Facts. Hope you enjoy…
- The winner will be the only team that’s undefeated in more than one Super Bowl. (It’s also the first Super Bowl matchup between undefeated Super Bowl teams.) The Ravens beat the Giants in their only previous Super Bowl appearance, XXXV, while the 49ers are an incredible 5-0 all-time in the Super Bowl (XVI, XIX, XXIII, XXIV, XXIX). And the MVP of Super Bowl XXXV? Ray Lewis.
- Both the 49ers and Ravens lost their Conference Championship Game last season. The last time both Super Bowl participants lost the AFC and NFC title games the year before was Super Bowl XXX, when the Cowboys met the Steelers a year after losing to the 49ers and Chargers, respectively. Like that Cowboys team, the Ravens beat the same team that beat them the year before.
- This is, of course, Ray Lewis’s final game before retirement. Should the Ravens win, he’ll join Jerome Bettis and Michael Strahan as a future Hall of Famer riding off into the sunset as a Super Bowl champion. The crazy coincidence is that Bettis and Strahan are both finalists for the Hall of Fame this year, and the new Hall of Famers will be announced the day before the Super Bowl.
- Colin Kaepernick is the first quarterback who started the year as a backup to end up starting the Super Bowl since Jake Delhomme for the Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII. Should the 49ers win, he’ll be the first to go from backup to winning Super Bowl starter since the Giants’ Jeff Hostetler in Super Bowl XXV.
- Kaepernick and Joe Flacco will both be making their first career Super Bowl start on Sunday. The last time neither starting quarterback came into the game with previous Super Bowl experience was Super Bowl XLI, when it was the Colts’ Peyton Manning against the Bears’ Rex Grossman.
- Speaking of Kaepernick and Flacco, neither one attended a BCS school. Kaepernick played at Nevada and Flacco went to Delaware. The last time neither starting quarterback came from the non-BCS ranks was the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger (Miami, Ohio) and the Cardinals’ Kurt Warner (Northern Iowa) in Super Bowl XLIII.
- Keeping with the quarterback theme, 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh lost the 1996 AFC Championship Game as quarterback of the Colts. The last man who played in the NFL and later coached in the Super Bowl was Sean Payton, who was a replacement player on the 1987 Bears before leading the Sinners to a Super Bowl title three years ago. The head coach of the Colts team that lost to New Orleans in Super Bowl XLIV was Jim Caldwell, who’s now the Ravens’ offensive coordinator.
- Starting with that victory by New Orleans, the NFC has won three straight Super Bowls, its longest winning streak since the 13-year string started by the 1984 49ers.
- An NFC Super Bowl win has preceded a National League win in the MLB All-Star Game in each of the last three years, and each of those baseball seasons was capped by the NL champion winning the World Series. In 2009, the AFC (Steelers) won the Super Bowl, the AL won the All-Star Game, and the AL (Yankees) won the World Series. The Super Bowl-World Series trend goes all the way back to 2007 with the Colts and the Red Sox. So does the All-Star Game thing, with the exception of 2008, when the AL won the All-Star Game, but the Giants won the Super Bowl and the Phillies won the World Series.
- San Francisco just won a championship five months ago with the Giants’ World Series title. If the 49ers win, San Francisco will become the first city to win the World Series and Super Bowl back-to-back since 2004-05, when the Red Sox won the World Series and the Patriots won the Super Bowl. The last city to have two teams in the World Series and Super Bowl in the same season was also Boston. The Red Sox won the 2007 World Series, but the Patriots lost Super Bowl XLII to the Giants. The last time a city won consecutive titles in any two sports was Pittsburgh in 2009, when the Steelers won the Super Bowl, then the Penguins won the Stanley Cup a couple months later.
