Super Bowl Pick

Los Angeles Rams/Cincinnati Bengals: this is a rare treat, two teams who have never won the Super Bowl before rarely meet in the big game, depending on how far you go back, I love it when this happens, in the CFL you don't have to wait two weeks! You would in fact have to go back to January 30th, 2000, to find the last two teams who had never won the Super Bowl facing each other in the big game, the Tennessee Titans vs. the St. Louis Rams, the Rams barely emerging victorious. Now, it's true that the Rams organization has won the Super Bowl before but they've never won it in L.A, I therefore accept that the organization has won the Super Bowl, but that win was in St. Louis. I doubt many L.A Rams fans care much about the old school St. Louis win, and eagerly want to see their team emerge victorious while playing in the City of Angels. I certainly don't count it as a Super Bowl win for Los Angeles, I count it as a Rams Super Bowl win that means more for the owners and residents of St. Louis than it does for fans in California. Thus, for me, every time a team moves to a new city (or back to one where they previously played) they have to win the Super Bowl again (unless they won it in that city before like Oakland) before I'll officially count that city as having won the Super Bowl, thus the Las Vegas Raiders have never won the Super Bowl, and have their work cut out for them. But that's just (perhaps irritating) semantics and I don't want them to get in the way of the fun, Cincinnati versus the L.A Rams in the Super Bowl is amazing, I can't wait to watch the game. The Bengals are playing for their third week in a row on the road against a team they've never met in the postseason, who's playing at home and likely favoured to win: it's a familiar narrative for feisty Bengals fans. Cincinnati still has yet to unleash its full potential this postseason. I'm hoping it happens this Sunday.  I imagine the Rams will put up a fight. I've seen it happen in the NHL where a solid player switches teams late in his career, in search of Stanley Cup victory on another team who has more of a shot (thinking of Raymond Bourque). But an NFL quarterback who plays his entire career with one struggling team and then moves to another and makes it to the Super Bowl, I don't think I've ever seen that, I don't recall that ever happening since I started paying attention to football (I don't know who Chicago's quarterback was when they played Indianapolis in the Super Bowl). Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Kurt Warner moved to different teams and competed for Super Bowl victory, but they had spent their careers with winning teams and had all won the Super Bowl before moving on. Thus, I think on an individual player basis, it would be amazing if L.A won, to see Matthew Stafford playing in his first Super Bowl is a wonderful thing, and he's playing well, too good for San Francisco's defence. But from the perspective of a loyal small market city who's struggled for decades to achieve Super Bowl victory, while Pittsburgh has won so many times and had so much postseason success, I still think I'd rather see the Bengals win, and am once again picking Cincinnati. But really, this is a wonderful year and there's so much to cheer for on both sides of the ball. Hoping it's an incredible game. Watch out for the resilient Von Miller!