Episode 86: Super Bowl LX – Hot Takes on Wings, Wins & Wild Stats

Good afternoon everybody and welcome to the Overruled podcast, brought to you by the Scott Vicknair Law Firm. This is your co-host David Vicknair, along with my law partner and co-host, Brad Scott. Good afternoon, Brad.

Happy frozen Monday to you, David.

I’ve been gone for ten days on vacation, it was pretty cool where I was, I was in Switzerland, so it’s a bit of a shock coming back.

Probably just as cold as it was here in New Orleans and South Louisiana, understanding it was cold here too, as it was where I was in Europe. So happy cold Monday to you. But are you excited, despite the frigid temps, Brad?

I am very excited, next Monday we’ll be talking about who won the Super Bowl, so why not dive into the Super Bowl today.

Let’s do it, I’m ready to get into it. We’re talking about Super Bowl LX, which Miles just told me is Super Bowl 60, because I don’t understand, I thought that was like a luxury SUV made by Lexus, I don’t even understand how to count the Roman numerals. So Super Bowl 60 in San Francisco, this week, we’re really excited about Super Bowl Sunday. In previewing the two teams, Brad, Seattle and, who is it?

Patriots.

Patriots, yeah, I had a brain fart there, Patriots and Seahawks. Before we get into the teams and their season and how they got here, I thought it’d be fun, Brad, we didn’t talk about this on the show, let’s talk about some weird and strange historical facts and data points about the Super Bowl that our listeners may not know but would like to find out about. Let’s start with weird food and consumption stats, what did you find?

The economics and consumerism of the Super Bowl is just insane, you’re going to have over 100-something million people watching one single event, that’s more than the Oscars, the World Series, and elections combined. One of the stats I came across is 1.4 billion, not gigawatts, 1.4 billion chicken wings are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday every single year, and it’s a lot of chicken, Mr. Vicknair.

I do love a chicken wing, I hope ten of them are me, but I’ll be flying back from some business meetings on Sunday, so I’m just going to be making it in game time to watch the game, I have it recorded.

And the math on that, that’s 350 million chicken wings in a single day, you’d think, do we even have that many chickens, but we do, US production is about 9 billion a year, works out to about 750 million a month, so about 3 to 4% of the month’s total chicken supply comes on one day, one Sunday.

That’s pretty wild, I was about to say, how do the Popeyes and Chick-fil-A’s of the world fight to keep their food production up?

What’s impressive is the supply chain we have, invisible behind the scenes, keeping the world running, that we take for granted. There’s no chicken chaos on Super Bowl Sunday because of all these people who go to work and harvest these chickens. We do have water and toilet paper chaos every time there’s a threat of a hurricane, people raid the grocery, but I’ve never heard of a chicken crisis on Super Bowl Sunday, so that’s a good thing.

Well, let me give you mine, one I found, roughly 8 million pounds of guacamole and 14,500 tons of chips are consumed on game day, holy guacamole.

And there’s actually a related statistic, more admissions to the hospital ER because of people cutting themselves cutting guacamole.

Well, and directly related, another weird food and consumption stat, Super Bowl Sunday is actually a day of plumbing crisis, plumbers report a high volume of calls immediately after the game due to bathroom usage, so you can digest that as you may.

It definitely stress-tests our systems, doesn’t it, in more ways than one. We’ve talked about guacamole, chicken wings, but you found something about pizza.

Pizza, 12 million pizzas are eaten on Super Bowl Sunday, if you stacked them side by side that’s enough to go from, I think they said, Boston to Las Vegas, that’s a shit ton of pizza.

It’s the plumbing problem we have, guacamole, pizza, and chicken wings, put it all together and I wonder why the toilets are all clogged up. But think about the logistics of that, 107 million people all showing up the same day to do exactly the same thing, if that’s not a cultural ritual I don’t know what it is. Even people who don’t like football show up for the game, and they watch the halftime show more than they watch the game, I think.

For the Super Bowl commercials.

Did you find any random odd trivia points? I’ll give you one, Brad, did you know there’s never been, in the history of the Super Bowl, a punt return for a touchdown?

That’s very interesting actually.

And apparently, didn’t know this, during the 1973 Super Bowl with the Miami Dolphins, I think that was the year the Dolphins were the only undefeated team, Miles is nodding, they beat the Redskins.

They beat the Redskins.

Yep, that’s right, I’m impressed you knew that, Miles, we didn’t talk about this ahead of time. During the 1973 Super Bowl, the Miami Dolphins employees checked the trees surrounding the practice field for Washington Redskins spies.

Imagine Washington putting out spies.

I have another random one, 72, this is how many footballs are used for the game, and the Roman numerals are used because the football season spans two calendar years.

That makes sense, I guess, I certainly understand the Roman numerals now.

Yeah, and everybody knows about these Super Bowl commercials, they’re almost $7 million apiece for 30-second spots, there’s going to be about 500 to 600 million dollars in advertising spent during one football game.

Just on the commercials.

Yeah, an insane amount of economic activity happens for this one event.

We’re spending a lot of money on commercials on Super Bowl day too, so I’m feeling the pain of it along with all those national advertisers. As for other random strange game and historical facts about the Super Bowl, Brad, here’s a few that jumped out at me. The first Super Bowl was in 1967, it wasn’t a sellout, there were 30,000 empty seats at that game. And people may or may not know this, but while the production value is immense for the halftime show, everybody looking forward to it every year, the halftime headliners are not paid a fee, they don’t get paid to perform.

Did not know that, that’s interesting.

I heard that last year and it blew my mind, but if you think about it, the promotional value, the exposure for them, the NFL’s able to lure them in because of the priceless promotional value from all the eyeballs on them at halftime. I believe the performer this year is Bad Bunny, is that right?

Yeah, I thought he was the main one.

Okay, and there’s somebody else, do you know who it is?

I don’t know who Bad Bunny is.

Who just won three Grammys?

Yeah, I was about to say he won a bunch last night, won a bunch of Grammys. Isn’t he a Hispanic performer, right?

Yes.

Yeah, it’s mostly in Spanish.

I think he’s the most listened-to person on Spotify, because everybody in Latin America listens to him, every single one.

Makes a lot of sense, I have some friends who like him a lot, I couldn’t really ever get into his music personally.

Interesting name. Well, while Miles looks that up, here’s another interesting one for you, since 2004 the team wearing white jerseys has won 14 of the 16 times, so white is pretty good, whoever you see wearing white this Sunday has roughly an 80 to 85% chance of winning the game. The Minnesota Vikings are the only team to play in four Super Bowls and never hold a lead, not once.

Which, I don’t really care for the Vikings, sorry for them, but nice fan fact.

Yeah, they screwed us in so many playoff games. I have a fun stat, do you want it?

Let’s go, you haven’t said it yet. Do you know who has the coldest Super Bowl on record?

No.

Tulane Stadium, New Orleans, my uncle was at that game, because now everybody’s in either domes or in California where it’s, kickoff I saw was going to be in the 60s, which is kind of cool for the Super Bowl, but Tulane Stadium, it was 34 degrees, very cold day, beautiful day though, my uncle was there, Super Bowl four.

Interesting, I think when we previewed the game last year, we had that stat, Brad, I still remember it, that New Orleans and Miami are tied for the most Super Bowls hosted of any city, and we’re hoping, Gayle Benson and the governor were just up at NFL headquarters a month or two ago lobbying to get the Super Bowl back to New Orleans, I believe they’re shooting to get it in 2031, since we obviously had it last year. But as Miles looks up the other performer, Brad, any other odd facts before we talk about the actual teams and the NFL season?

No extra stats, I was going to ask if you had any preference or picks for best Super Bowl commercials.

Well, I think Scott Vicknair’s commercials are going to be pretty darn good, so I’m going to vote for ours, we’re going to have at least one spot in the game, possibly two, and we’ll have spots running throughout the day, so I’m predicting ours is going to be really good. I always look forward to the Clausen commercial and the Doritos commercial.

I just think the Clausen commercial is always very nostalgic and well done, and the Doritos commercial, I don’t know what it is, the Doritos creative team the last two or three years has been really good.

I was going to say Doritos too. So what I found was, Green Day will open the Super Bowl.

Okay, love Green Day.

And they’ll honor six decades of NFL. Charlie Puth, Brandy, and Coco Jones will perform the national anthem. All I’m seeing is Bad Bunny is the only one at halftime.

Okay, so Bad Bunny’s the only performer at halftime, I don’t mind a Charlie Puth.

Yeah, why not.

I do like Green Day though. Brad, what was the question you just asked me about the Super Bowl?

Commercials.

So, what’s considered the greatest all-time commercial is the old Apple Macintosh computer ad from 1984, the one with the female athlete running with the sledgehammer, that dystopian future, and crushes the screen, that’s the only time it ever ran, they made it for that one Super Bowl and that was it, so that’s often considered one of the greatest Super Bowl commercials ever.

And one of my favorites was, around, I guess, the 2000s, the Budweiser “Whassup” commercial.

Great one, it was a cultural phenomenon after that, some real hits as far as commercials go.

I’m a big sucker for the nostalgic ones, that’s why I like the Clausen ones.

My mom loves the Clausen. I love the one a couple years ago, “So God Made a Farmer,” I loved that one, I’ll never forget it. And Doritos, like you said, they always do a pretty good one.

They show up every year with something creative, they’re doing a good one, you can tell they’re, I’m aging out. Yeah, they’re running national ads, so what people may not really understand about the TV world, that I wouldn’t understand if we weren’t so involved in running TV commercials for the law firm, is Doritos buys the Super Bowl spot but they buy it nationally, so they’re spending millions of dollars, but if you’re a regional company, like us, just advertising Southeast Louisiana, it’s just a different buy because you’re only buying for that market as opposed to nationally.

The national buy, if you work it out per second, is $230,000 per second, that’s insane.

It’s insane, hard to believe. I go back and forth with people who push back about the cost of Super Bowl advertising, I’m like, look, it’s the one day of the year where human beings are programmed to actually watch TV and the commercials, they’re watching the commercials, people want to watch the commercials, it’s when consumers are paying attention to TV more than any other day of the year. So let’s jump into the actual football, Brad, how are you feeling about the Seahawks and Patriots being in the final game of the season?

I’m not a fan of either one particularly, but the Patriots being back in it again is kind of interesting, especially with the whole Bill Belichick and Hall of Fame thing that just happened, him not getting in after all the years he had with the Pats and the success he had.

I’m pulling for the Seahawks.

I’m surprised neither of us, I’m so indifferent on these teams, I’d be okay with both of them winning, I never really disliked the Patriots and I never really disliked the Seahawks, except for Beastquake, and there was just this period, I was never a Russell Wilson fan, I just thought he was a fake football guy, which was clear by everybody leaving, there was a point where everybody didn’t like the Seahawks. But I like Sam Darnold a lot, I’m a big fan of his and what he’s overcome to get where he is right now, boy did the Vikings look like idiots for letting him go, and the Jets, but the Jets always look like idiots.

Exactly, the Jets are idiots. Sorry, Jets fans.

I’m a big fan of him and where he’s come back from. Obviously, Rashid Shaheed, I’m a big fan of his too, on that Seahawks roster, so I can’t really root against the Seahawks. I like the coach too, the guy they got from, he was a Raven, he was with the Ravens. He has a cool story, I’m going to have to look it up, but I believe he never played a snap of college football.

He played in high school, tore his ACL, and immediately started coaching, like the next week, said I’m not going to play in college but I know I want to do this, he’s like a savant, amazing coach. I love Mike Vrabel, and when the Titans let him go, I was hoping he’d be considered, I’m very happy we got Kellen Moore, think we have a bright future with him as coach, but I was really hoping Vrabel was on the short list, he’s a Patriots and football legend, I think he’s an amazing coach, I really respect him a lot.

And I like Drake Maye too, so it’s tough for me to really hate the Patriots, I’m kind of rooting for both teams, I don’t have a dog in the hunt, I guess is the best way to say it.

I just hope it’s a good game, every once in a while you get those blowout games that are boring, you want a good football game. We’ve had a really good playoff season, some really close games, really good football, so all things considered this should be a really good matchup, two really good teams that both deserve to be there.

Well, to that point, Brad, here are two interesting stats about both teams. First the Patriots, they enter the game with a 17-and-3 record including the postseason, they played 20 total games, and in each of their three losses, the margin was seven points or fewer. There’s been a lot of criticism of the Patriots’ schedule and strength of schedule, but relative to the parity of talent and competitiveness in the NFL, it goes back to that old, any given Sunday.

I love that movie, with, I forget who’s in it, a lot of Dennis Quaid, I forget who plays the old-school quarterback, Willie Beamen, Al Pacino plays the head coach, such a good movie, one of my favorite football movies. The premise is you can lose or win any given Sunday in the NFL, and that’s true, so for the Patriots, I don’t care who you are, to play 20 straight games and lose three, and of those three lose by seven or fewer points, that’s a hell of a strong season.

Played very consistent football the whole season, very consistent, I think that’s why they ended up on Super Bowl Sunday.

100%. Now the Seahawks, they’re 16 and 3 coming into the game including the postseason, even wilder stat, their three losses were by a combined nine points total, which is even more insane than the Patriots. Their worst margin of defeat was in week one, that was their worst loss, 17 to 13 against the 49ers. So to your point, we’re going to get a good game, anything’s possible, but the sample size across 39 combined games is that both teams are always in the game and always keep it close, so I think that bodes well for another good Super Bowl. Miles made a comment earlier, I generally agree with him, I really think both these teams deserve to be there, at least in the NFC the Seahawks were the most consistent team all year.

Yeah, they had ups and downs, this team was hot, they beat the Rams twice. Really, the question, at least in the national media, both teams should be there, but it’s more on the Patriots’ side, they know Seattle for what they are, a gauntlet. Patriots, you could argue, I mean Denver was snowing, 10-7, but they still win, you can’t put a price on that. I think both teams definitely deserve to be there, and Seattle, absolutely no question, the NFC was way harder than the AFC this year, that’s just a fact.

Does it surprise you the Patriots made it here? I was expecting the Bills to make it.

I wanted the Bills too.

What were your thoughts on that, Brad?

It was tough to see them lose in the playoffs.

Let me give you one stat about Drake Maye to consider for this game. When he has time, he can be extremely dangerous, one of the keys to his MVP-caliber season is his willingness to make a high degree of high-difficulty throws, overall 17.3% of Maye’s attempts have been into tight windows, the fourth-highest rate among starting quarterbacks, which I find wild given it’s only his second full season as a starter, but he’s shown he’s capable of thriving in that environment. Looking at his splits against different defensive coverages, there’s really nothing that stops him, he ranks in the top five per play against man, zone, single-high safety, two-high safety coverages, the blitz, and four-man rushes, against every type of defense thrown at him this year, top five, which bodes really well for the Patriots in this game.

Who’s your pick, David?

It’s tough, because I just talked him up, but at the same time I think Darnold has proven to be very resilient, much more experienced than Drake Maye, he’s been through a lot. I tend to find the NFL is a quarterback-driven league, and if you don’t have a high-performing quarterback you can’t win. So when I look at it, I have a second-year starter at quarterback versus a vet playing at a really high level, I’m going to lean toward the vet, so my expectation would be to see the Seahawks win, but it’ll be a real close game, I’ll predict the score, 31 to 28.

I’m picking the Seahawks too, 24 to 21.

Not far off. Miles, who do you got?

It’s hard, because I’m with Brad, I’m cheering for the Seahawks, my aunt lives there, I went there recently, but it’s just not fair, I think the Patriots win, I think it’s a dogfight, both defenses are so good, I think it’s like 17-14, they kick a field goal at the end and it sucks, but Drake Maye, you have him for another 15 years. I’ll be cheering for the Seahawks, but I think the Patriots will win.

I think the interesting thing about this game will be who can effectively run the ball. I think both teams, especially the Seahawks, are going to be looking at how do we confuse and shut down Drake Maye, a younger quarterback, and on the flip side the Patriots are going to be trying to figure out how to stop Darnold, the Rams thought they shredded them twice this season, nobody’s been able to stop Darnold or figure out how to. So the differentiator in this game could be who can run the ball effectively and consistently, because if you have a young quarterback you want to support him by getting the running game going, three, four, five yards on first down, putting him in high-percentage throws on second-and-five and third-and-three instead of long-yardage situations. And even though Darnold’s a vet, the Seahawks are going to want to establish the run too, because they’re probably going to try to stop him, and that may open things up for their running game.

I think the run is more important for the Patriots, because they have a younger quarterback, and being on that big a stage it’ll take a little while for him to get his feet underneath him at the Super Bowl, I feel, so early on, moving the ball, not going three-and-out, that’ll be really important for the Pats to run the ball early.

All right, any closing thoughts, guys? What’s the one thing you want to eat for the Super Bowl, and what are you doing for the game?

Chicken wings, I’m getting my share.

Where are you going to watch it?

I think we’re going to a Super Bowl party at one of my friend’s houses on Sunday, so I think that’s where we’ll pick up, shop, and sit down.

Miles?

I’m a huge wing guy too, I’ll definitely be partaking, probably at my parents’ house, my mom’s a big Saints fan, we’re big football fans, but yeah, probably chicken wings.

Chicken wings all around, that’s all I care about, having chicken wings Sunday, and I’ll be landing from some business meetings on Sunday right around when the game starts, so I should be watching it at home, then I’ve got to figure out where to pick up some chicken wings, because everybody’s eating chicken this Sunday. Thank you all, it’s been an interesting discussion, looking forward to the Super Bowl this Sunday, Brad, looking forward to us having some wings separately, and I hope it’s a great game for everybody, everybody stay safe and have a great time at home with friends and family, really celebrating the end of a good NFL season.

Which is just the foreshadowing of the Saints’ future Super Bowl runs, because now we’ve got a franchise quarterback in Tyler.

That’s correct, and we’re going to the playoffs next year, we’re going to win the NFC South, and who knows, once you get in the playoffs you just see what happens next.

The season hasn’t even finished yet, David.

Oh, I’m so optimistic, I’m getting ready to talk about what my projections are for the Saints next year, so I’ll wait to see what we do in the offseason, I think we’ll re-sign Cam and Demario, and maybe Alontae Taylor, and see what we do in the draft, but there’s no question we’re going to win at least ten games next year and probably make the playoffs.

No question.

Anyhow, happy NFL Sunday to all of you, and thank you, it’s been another interesting and fun discussion on the Overruled podcast, brought to you by the Scott Vicknair Law Firm. Thank you all for listening and following along, this is your co-host David Vicknair, along with my co-host and law partner Brad Scott, signing out, we’ll see you all next time, take care.

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