This weekend, millions of people across America will sit down to watch one of the most exciting-on-paper Super Bowl matchups in history. Why? Because nobody saw it coming. On one side is the Cincinnati Bengals — who entered the 2022 season boasting similar Super Bowl odds to the likes of the Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Jets — and on the other, the Los Angeles Rams, who bet a boatload of draft picks on a flashy quarterback who had never won a playoff game.
While a few savvy bettors believed in Los Angeles' chance to succeed due to the big names the team was amassing in veterans, such as Odell Beckham Jr. and Von Miller, other NFC teams like the Green Bay Packers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers were far safer picks. Meanwhile, Cincinnati has transformed into a bonafide Cinderella story thanks to the heroics of superstar second-year quarterback Joe Burrow.
Who will win? I instead ask a more important question: Who cares? This NFL season has put an exclamation point on the reason we all love it more than any of the other big American sports leagues — true parity. Any given Sunday, a lowly bottom feeder can knock off a Super Bowl favorite and look like the better team for all 60 minutes while doing so. It’s what makes the Sunday slates of games so wildly entertaining.
Basketball had the Golden State Warriors, the San Antonio Spurs before them, the Miami Heat before them and the Chicago Bulls before them. Superstars banding together along with a couple of generationally great coaches and players largely decide the fabric of the NBA’s power balance. Baseball is a mess of bloated and minuscule payrolls clashing together, with the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers outspending small markets by more than double their own salary caps. Don’t get me wrong, both sports are perfectly entertaining to watch, but true parity and unknown outcomes only come along every once in a while.
In fact, until recently, football was plagued by this feeling as well, but we are entering a new era of exciting possibilities in the wake of a true changing of the guard. The crumbling of the New England Patriots' dynasty ended the most dominant single franchise’s run in sports history. In the past three years, we’ve seen decades-long stalwarts in Philip Rivers, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger and Tom Brady all call it a day, opening the door for a wildly fun and entertaining new crop of quarterbacks who have yet to truly establish a hierarchy amidst one another. Even football’s new GOAT heir-apparent, Patrick Mahomes, fell to a slice of new hotness in the Super Bowl-appearing Burrow.
Parity to such an extreme and unpredictable level is what elevates football in my mind. It gives me hope for my favorite teams, year in and year out, and lends an intense but addictive legitimacy to all the villains of the league. It allows me to sit down for any game and immediately get invested, whether it’s the first week of the season or the Super Bowl. Most of all, it gives me hope that we can crown one of the most unexpected champions in recent memory with Cincinnati, a team whose swagger, fanbase and likability are all the best thing the NFL could ask for.
