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ANALYSIS, GO TO "MILE HIGH SPORTS RADIO," AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver
NFL--- EIGHT NFL-2014 teams will
become four this weekend after completion of games that will decide which two of
each NFL conference will compete for a championship crown and a shot at Super
Bowl XL1X. Of this, the American Football Conference matchups will include the
AFC West’s 12-4 Denver Broncos against the AFC South’s 12-5 Indianapolis Colts,
plus the AFC North’s 11-6 Baltimore Ravens versus the AFC East’s 12-4 N.E.
Patriots, and the National Football Conference divisional rounds will comprise
the NFC East’s 13-4 Dallas Cowboys against the NFC South’s 12-4 Green Bay
Packers, also the NFC South’s 8-8-1 Carolina Panthers vs. the NFC West’s 12-4
Seattle Seahawks.
There’s data from the NFL-2014 regular season suggesting that the
Patriots will defeat the Ravens on Saturday, and that the Broncos will crush the
Colts on Sunday, also that the Seahawks will unseat the Panthers on Saturday,
and the Packers will send the Cowboys packing on Sunday; yet the NFL playoffs
aren’t always the outcomes that statistics can lead us
to.
Other data says that during the regular
season, each of the eight teams that are competing this weekend had either a win
or loss that was most unexpected. In other words, each of the eight have
experienced that which only a few analysts of the NFL game could have thought
possible, for example, the Broncos losing to the St. Louis Rams, 22-7, during
Week 11, and the Colts defeating the Cincinnati Bengals, 27-0, during Week 7,
then losing as badly as they did to the Cowboys, 42-7, during Week 16.
Also, during Week 15 the Ravens were dropped
by the Houston Texans unexpectedly, 25-13, and during Week 17 the Patriots lost
surpringly to the Buffalo Bills, 17-9. And, the Cowboys lost a game in OT to the
Washington Redskins, 28-17, during 2014’s Week 8, after the Cowboys had defeated
the Seahawks during Week 6, 30-23, the latter having beaten the Packers, 36-16,
during Week 1.
Moreover, the under .500 and 8-8-1 Panthers
lost games to three of the eight teams
that are still in the playoffs---Ravens, Packers and the Seahawks, during Weeks
4, 7 and 8, but the Panthers have won their last five games, eliminating the NFC
West’s 12-4 Arizona Cardinals last
week.
So, the NFL playoffs are often that which
happens in spite of what’s been expected to happen, the lesson, “Don’t bet the
farm.”
Tennis
(Australian Open)---- EVERY high ranking professional tennis player wants to do well at the
Australian Open (January 19), wants to dominate, to take it if they can, to be
up and over at down-under. This is so because
the Australian Open, held at Melbourne, Aus., is not just the first of
the four tennis-Grand Slams, it’s the start of the two annual pro-tennis
tours---Weomen’s Tennis Association, and the Associaiton of Tennis
Professionals, which in 2015 will finish for the year after 57 WTA competitions
and 63 ATP events---at the Davis Cup-Final, November 23.
Surely the women rated 2014’s first, second
and third best will be seeking this year’s Australia Open title---Serena
Williams, Maria Sharapova and Simona Halep, with threats to them being former
Aussie winners, Ana Ivanovic and Caroline Wozniacki.
Among men, the world’s ranked number two,
Roger Federer, hasn’t won at the Australian Open since 2010. The big and
“popular” challenges for Federer, and others, will be 2014’s number one ranked
male tennis player, Novak Djokovic, and, of course, Rafael Nadal, ranked third,
and Andy Murray, sixth.
END. . .
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