Looking for some guidance on where to place your betting coin for the up and coming Super Bowl LVI? You have come to the wrong place!
In amongst all of the professional pundits and people whose lives are spent analysing results and statistics, we’ve taken an alternative approach which we think has every likelihood of being even more accurate; using the 16-bit Sega game John Madden 1992 and then backing this up with predictions from a popular astrology forum. For the purposes of anonymity and childish humour we will re-label the horoscope site as uranus_emerges.com. This, in the world of science, is known as ‘corroborating evidence’, a five syllable word which means that it is definitely true.
Madden '92 - What's in a name?
Before we dive into the prediction, a bit of background on the game. Now synonymous with NFL Video Games, legendary coach and pundit John Madden first gave his name and expertise to John Madden football, a game released on the Sega Mega Drive & Genesis in 1990. With it’s colourful, responsive sprites and fair approximation of the tactics of the real sport, the game was a massive hit for Sega’s machine and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Outside of the US, it introduces a whole generation to America’s game; with thousands of kids across the world wondering what the hell was going on and accidentally punting on first down, spiking the ball repeatedly, and then spamming fake field goals from 100 yards away, it was nevertheless tremendous fun.
NFL not being violent enough, the game included this fun scene of vehicular manslaughter if one of your players is injured.
But hasn’t the game changed a fair bit? Well as well as the rules evolving, and things like inflated pig’s bladders no longer being used as the ball or players riding chariots, boot up Madden ’92 and there might be a couple of team names that you don’t recognise as well as teams missing: The cat-expansion teams, including the Jaguars who come to London each year to lose, are missing for instance. As well as this names which were no longer fashionable, such as the Houston Oilers, or else were deemed ‘socially unacceptable’ or ‘culturally insensitive’ such as the Washington Redskins or Philadelphia Child Beaters, have since been dropped.
A few other teams may have changed location as franchises will occasionally move on to new cities for a new stadium or a shady backhander; this will be incomprehensible to fans of Football (soccer) as teams in that sport are inextricably linked to their home town in a tradition that sometimes go back hundreds of years, with a long history of drunken fans of Tottenham and Chelsea braining each other with mead tankards whilst dying of the plague. In this sense, nothing has changed.
NFL of yore. From Left to Right: Helmets have come on a bit since the 70s, these were based on technology used at Agincourt; Famed player, star of the Naked Gun films and non glove-wearer OJ Simpson; Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips, who I have included because of his name and hat.
But in the case of the teams of the upcoming Super Bowl we are in luck! The Rams had played in LA for many years before an extended dalliance with St Louis, with the team based there from the mid-90s. Then in 2016 they returned to Los Angeles, lured by the promise of a stadium that is visible from space and indifferent fans that have loads of other sports to watch and will leave in droves the moment the team fails to perform. As for the Bengals, they have remained in Cincinnati since Madden ’92 was released, on the grounds that no-one wants them.
Disclaimer:
It should be noted that the Bengals team in the 90s were not successful, leading to them being known somewhat cruelly as ‘the Bungles’. In 1992 they only won 5 games of a 16 game season. In fact, one of the only teams to do worse than them were the New England Patriots, who only won a paltry 2 games that year (L O L). However, although the Rams were a stronger team over that period, the 1992 season was a difficult one and they only won 6 games. This means that the rough balance between the two teams is probably more or less the same (why I am trying to make out that there is any credibility to this article whatsoever?).
Bengals owner Mike Brown, a man notoriously tight with the purse strings, and someone to whom much of the team’s lack of success has been attributed. Apparently (and this is not a joke) players were not supplied with their own jock-straps, instead a bunch of them were thrown in the middle of the room while saying “there you go!” :O (quote from TJ Houshmandzadeh, via theguardian.com)
What really happened back in 1992? SuperBowl XXVII was eventually won by the Dallas Cowboys under Quarterback Troy Aikman (who would go on to be awarded the game MVP) with the team crushing wildcard upstarts the Buffalo Bills by 52 points to 17. The Bills had lost their starting Quarterback Jim Kelly and turned the ball over a record 9 times, leading to one of the most decisive victories in the modern era. Troy would go on to become a popular commentator for Fox Sports, alongside the implausibly deep-voiced Joe Buck, and make lots of remarks along the lines of “that really wasn’t good enough” after Quarterbacks had thrown shit interceptions. I enjoy imagining Troy speaking to me and saying those exact words whenever I break an egg yoke while trying to fry an egg or miss the target while stood over the toilet bowl.
The Result !
The part of the article you all came here to read, and by the golden spirals of Dan Marino boy did we take our time getting to it! So how did we make this work? Well first of all we booted up the game, which just took a few blows on the cartridge (and some work on the SCART plug as John Madden had turned green on the opening screen). Then we set it up with the LA Rams and Cincinnati Bengals; fortunately the Super Bowl is being played in LA this year, so they got selected as the ‘home’ team. The game was then set to 5 minute quarters, as there is no way my limited attention span would survive watching a longer 16-bit demo of the computer playing itself. Then we pressed play, and waited for the results to play out!
Madden's prediction: The ticks denote a strength in each area. Think it's pretty much spot on, with both the commentary on Stafford, and the Wide Receiver tick each for Beckham Jr and Cooper Kupp!
Right from first kick-off the whole premise became highly questionable after the entire first quarter was played without a single passing attempt being made. This may be unlikely to happen in real life.
But the fear that I had written over 1000 words for no purpose was short lived as early into the 2nd quarter the Rams QB pulled off an impressive deep ball to the Rams TE #87 (Jacob Harris – who did perform well in the last game!) – a pass reminiscent of ‘gunslinger’ Matthew Stafford – which was then run in for the TD.
The Rams then followed this up with a an interception deep within the Cincinnati half. Although they weren't able to convert this into a touchdown, they did manage a field goal in the dying seconds.
It's straight and through the uprights! The Rams lead 10-0 at the half.
Realising that this might be their last chance at a Super Bowl until 2053 and energised by the Snoop Dogg and Eminem rap duet at half time, the Bengals started off the second half strongly with a drive down the field.
But once again an errant pass was intercepted, a tipped ball falling straight into the hands of a Rams safety.
Despite the strong defensive showing by the Rams on the next few drives neither team was able to string together a drive and both teams took turns punting the ball at each other. That was until the Rams' special teams muffed a punt return, with a fumble that game the ball to the Bengals with great field position! The visiting team was then able to convert and reduce the Rams lead to 10-7. We had a game on!
With time ticking down the Rams only had to hold onto the ball and produce a strong drive to take the title. They made it all the way to the Bengals goal line, but oh no! Fumble! Again!
The LA fans start booing and get ready to leave the stadium as the team get stopped on the goal line.
The Bengals then put their earlier turnovers behind them and drove the ball down the entire length of the field, with a goal-line rush to make it 14-10!
With only 2 minutes left in the game it needed a powerful drive by Stafford and the gang to take the Rams back into the game. Something that the Quarterback has done on several occasions and perhaps one of the main reasons for his signing.
But, unfortunately back in '92 the game didn’t feature a no-huddle offence and they ran out of time.
Victory to the Bengals!
What do the stars say?
That's enough of the video game, what do those who chart the passage of heavenly bodies across the sky think about the game?
Infamous royal astrologer Russell Brand, who has nothing at all to do with this article.
Taking insight from Uranus_retreats.com, most of the posts were a combination of people honestly discussing the movements of the planets and their impact on results, with the exception of one guy posting betting odds and asking for tips in desperation in amongst the other discussions (which is both a little sad and funny, I guess he had given up looking to sports almanacs and ESPN for advising him where to put his money).
Here is a comment from one user (who we will call Mystic Frank), who along with almost everyone else was taken by surprise by the Cincinnati upset of Kansas City: “upon reflection, I hadn’t realised that Saturn was on a quotidian angle, of course Cincinnati were going to win”. So, nothing at all to do with the work of defensive co-ordinator Lou Anarumo reacting to the Chiefs’ first-half play and cutting down Maholmes’ passing options, then.
Another user, who we will call Nostradamus Pete, added the benefit of hindsight to his prediction, helpfully commenting after the game had finished: “Yes I knew that was going to happen because of the conjunction of Venus, it doesn’t surprise me at all. Anyone studying the transition of Mars could have seen the obvious sign *shrug*”
Well, there we go.
17th-century Venetian astrologers discuss the potential results of Sunday's game. The guy leaning against the pillar is a Giants fan.
As for this game? Take it away again Pete..
“For the large set of hundreds of negative events where Mars and Saturn dominated the angles (and Jupiter and Venus mostly avoided angles) the Vertex contacts were mostly Venus and Jupiter, the opposite of what we expect, so much so that I almost started interpreting the vertex as a successive rather than an enhancing factor.”
I have had to cut the comment down here as I lost the will to live, had a growing headache and could hear the pounding of blood in my ear. I also don't want to repeat too much and for this to be searchable from a copied comment, as Pete is almost certainly the kind of person that would travel thousands of miles to find me and kill me for taking the piss.
But eventually it ends: “If it’s valid, then it reinforces an LA win, but if it’s not valid then it means nothing”.
Well there we go! Although a bit noncommittal, with Pete ending his 2000 word prediction with “it means nothing”, it does sound like a possible LA win is on the cards for those studying the movement of the planets and quotidian angles. On the other hand, a 30-year old video game is saying a Cincinnati victory. One of them must surely be correct!
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