BOXING:  ALI TURNS “70”  // NFL: SUPER BOWL XLV1  //  NHL: AVALANCHE & THE WILD  

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            “SPORTS NOTEBOOK” HAS RETURNED TO POSTING ITS COLUMNS TUESDAY AND FRIDAY EVERY WEEK.  Editor/Publisher, Marvin Leibstone. Comments welcome---

BOXING:   Celebrating Muhammad Ali’s seventieth birthday this month points to a person’s ability to pursue and achieve excellence against difficult odds, which is what good athletes do. Not only has Ali been an Olympic gold medal recipient, he’s been world heavyweight boxing champion three times and the winner of battles against boxing greats George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston and Ken Norton, and if not a better fighter than Joe Louis pound-for-pound his record is certainly close to the Louis legacy bout-for-bout, round-for-round, prime condition vs. prime condition.

Outside the ring, Ali had the courage to change his religion when doing so was looked down upon. Too, though many Americans found it disagreeable, and unlawful, Ali had the courage to say no to the military draft during the Vietnam War, risking a jail sentence. Ali has also been a major philanthropist, giving millions of dollars to charity organizations, and he has fought Parkinson’s disease gallantly for more than a decade.

But this page is about sports, a realm wherein Ali has been of the best and brightest, equaling the prowess of leap-ahead/turning point athletes such as Jesse Owens, Jim Thorpe, Lawrence Taylor, Jim Brown, Joe Montana, Wayne Gretzky, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Pete Rose, Bill Russell, Michael Jordan. Ali resurrected boxing from a sluggish period and changed its direction, proving that it’s as much an art form as any other sport, that boxers could extend further the power and dexterity of human intellect joined tightly with enhanced strength and improved physical maneuverability. In his pro career, he attained 56 wins, 37 of them knockouts, and experienced only five losses, none by a knockout though one by TKO.     

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NFL:  Super Bowl history illuminates a nice fact about football in America, “that very few NFL teams can dominate end-of-season championships more than two years in a row,” suggesting, in turn, that the game’s playing field is mostly fair and just. Starting with Super Bowl I in 1967, more than half of today’s NFL franchises have been to the Super Bowl, while less than 10 have returned consecutively across two or more years.

Among teams that won the Super Bowl two years in a row are the Green Bay Packers, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers. Among teams appearing more than once but after a period of no-show years are the Steelers, the New York Giants, Minnesota Vikings, Buffalo Bills, Oakland Raiders, Chicago Bears.

Pittsburgh holds the record for most Super Bowl wins---six of seven appearances, and for most consecutive wins—twice in 1975-76, and twice again, 1979-80. Buffalo holds the record for most consecutive appearances that had became losses---four.

Also, no team at the Super Bowl since the first one held has left the field scoreless, the least number of points belonging to the Miami Dolphins, when it lost to the Cowboys, 24-3, during Super Bowl VI (1975). The most points in a game won belonged to the 49ers during Super Bowl XXIV (1990), beating the Broncos, 55-10. The Broncos have appeared at the Super Bowl five times, winning two in a row (1998-99), after losing two in a row (1987-88).

This year’s Super Bowl will pit the New England Patriots against the New York Giants, teams that met at Super Bowl XLII (2008), the Giants winning 17-14. Competing will be two of the NFL’s better quarterbacks, the Patriots Tom Brady and the Giants Eli Manning, which will make the Super Bowl one of the more interesting of the decade. Brady will have a qualitative advantage from two of the best receivers in the NFL, Ron Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, while Manning will have the quantitative edge, in effect, more go-to-guys that he may be able to depend on for a greater variety of pass tactics.

Defensively, the Giants are ranked slightly higher than the Patriots only when it comes to the standard tactics of defending against an aggressive offense, but the Giants defense can be thrown by unorthodox/unrecognizable tactics, which the Brady-led offense is capable of, while in the last half of the regular season and throughout the post-season the Patriots defense seemed to be reading the planned responses of opposing teams as if radar and GPS were attached to their helmets, enhancing an ability to block, tackle and interfere as quickly and as hard as any other team could. Unless the pass rush capacity of one team becomes much greater than that of the other, the point spread at endgame may not be very different from 2008 or different from the AFC and NFC championship games of last week, neither team winning by more than three points.

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NHL:    A Japanese author asked, “How does a single Samurai defeat 50,000 enemy?” Before any in his audience could respond, he answered, “One at a time,” which could describe a superb hockey team goalie as he keeps a swarm of attackers from slamming a puck into his half-cage. On Tuesday, against the Minnesota Wild, a Colorado Avalanche’s goalie executed numerous saves expertly but it was three enemy that did him in, the Avalanche losing to the Wild, 3-2, but to no despair: the 26-23 Avalanche are still in contention, almost in the top half of the NHL’s Western Conference and in third place of the WC’s Northwest Division as the NHL sidesteps briefly for its annual All-Star game. 

On the downside, the A’s gave away a double-digit total of points in five losses of its last 10 games, signaling some defense issues, including defenders and goalies experiencing too many disconnects. Find an NHL team that has kept opponents to zero or low points, you’ll find above-the-margin defender + goalie mutual supportiveness as a main force behind the team’s wins.

Anyway, Avalanche fans keeping the faith remains rational, for there’s been a lot more good than bad in the A’s recent outings, for instance, of the team’s last 20 games it’s won 13 and accumulated more than 50 points. Too, the Avalanche failed to score in only one of the 20 games, and in only three of the 20 the Avalanche scored but one goal, while in six of the 20 the Avalanche scored four points each. As for shootouts, the Colorado team got to 7-0 going into Tuesday’s vs. Wild game, its shootout record now 12-20 (60 percent). With regard to power-play goals, the Avalanche ranks seventh in the NHL. As for star power, there’s Ryan O’Reilly’s 36 points achieved during 50 games.

Moreover, 13 of the Avalanche’s 31 games left in the NHL season will be against teams now ranked lower than the A’s in most categories, a fair chance for the A’s to maintain post-season candidacy. It’s the Wild that forced the A’s from second to third position in the WC’s NW Division by winning Tuesday night’s game, the Wild now in second position at 24-18 (as of Thursday). The A’s could take that position away from them when they meet again at Minnesota, February 2.

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