Well, it certainly was an interesting Superbowl, wasn't it!

Plenty of errors committed by both the Dallas Cowboys and the
Tennessee Titans, but of course all they needed to do was win,
not play well.  The assembled crowd of 61,430 knew from the
beginning that the race would be close. Most of them had heard
of the unusual "ping-pong" rule which required the winner to win
by at least 2, but only when the final outcome was 26-25 did the
importance of this rule become apparent.

In order to have a winner declared, the packed stadium -- you've
seen on TV what a stadium of sixty thousand looks like -- was 
polled to find out which team this audience considered to be the
winner. The result was remarkable: the Cowboys won with a margin
of just five votes!  Just think -- that Cub Scout den in row Q38
determined the winner of the Superbowl!

Naturally, the Titans are not content with this outcome.
There's still the hand-wringing over the 947 fans who held out
for the Jets, of course, and there's still some concern over the
175 supporters of the Vikings, some of whom, it is thought,
really meant to say "Titans" but simply mixed up their
mythological figures. There were even six people who championed
the Havana Reds! Considering the fact that more people were
crowded into one stadium than there are in most small cities,
it's not surprising that we could find a few handfuls of people 
who chose to march to different drummers.

Oh, the three dozen or so people who had late-admit passes
confused things a little, especially when about 13 of them were
barred entry by one of the team's security forces.

Too bad the teams didn't think to clarify the rules about the
fan-poll in advance. Who among those present gets to have their
choice counted? What about the security guards and beer
vendors in the stands? The fans whose mouths were full when they
were asked to speak? The ones who changed their minds? Altogether,
there were 1,801 people present who are not on record as having
expressed any opinion about the game. You know these people --
just barely enough of them are around for you to know it, but
usually their numbers are small enough to allow you to ignore them.
Not this time -- not when you compare eighteen hundred to five !

Actually, in detail, these amount to about 1,143 who seem to have
misunderstood the instructions about how to participate -- and some
of these have now asked for a do-over -- and about  658 who either
didn't have an opinion, or mumbled.  (A good guess is that about
240 of the people in the stadium really didn't want to be disturbed,
but it's not clear whether the other four hundred wanted to be
heard or not.) Oh, and it seems that a disproportionate
number of these eighteen hundred have season passes to the Titans' 
games; perhaps that would make a difference...

So now the Cowboys have the trophy, but can't take it home,
while the Titans are sure that, if they just had a chance to
check all the opinions carefully, they'd easily come from behind 
and win.

Meanwhile, those of us watching the whole game from a distance can only
be concerned: no matter how we handle the small groups of stadium
staff or call-in opinions or whatever, the fact of the matter is
that this enormous stadium is very nearly split right down the
middle. It seems these fans are just as divided as the teams themselves.
No matter who is declared the winner, there's going to be a lot of
grumbling.

Well, you know what they say after the big game: "Wait till next time!"

dave

[1 fan =  100 voters, of course.]