The TV ratings are in for Sunday's Super Bowl.  Interestingly, for a game the vast majority of people on this site said they had no interest in watching because Indy and/or New England was not in it, it scored the biggest ratings in 10 years -- nearly 91 million viewers, that's 5% more than last year's audience.  In fact, it's the second-most watched program of any kind in the last 10 years behind Super Bowl XXX, where the Cowboys beat the Steelers in front of a television audience of 94.1 million.  Seems the Steelers may in fact have a case for being America's team.

I have to admit that the NGS judges’ first assignment this week rubbed me the wrong way.  And I was surprised after reading the finalists’ submissions that no one else seemed to feel the same.  See, the notion of one team “deserving” to win a game in any sport, let alone the Super Bowl, strikes me as ridiculous.

The beauty of sports is that winner is decided on the field.  Two teams or competitors duke it out for an allotted period of time, and, in the end, one emerges victorious.  Each team is provided the same opportunity to prove itself – the same rules apply, hence the term, “level playing field.”

Sure some things might not be completely even – a key player may be injured, calls may get blown, etc. – but that’s the way life is.  We all have different levels of skill and ability and obstacles that we must overcome to succeed, and so do athletic teams. 

The team that “deserves” to win is the one that puts it together on the field in the course of competition.  Each game is a clean slate.  It doesn’t matter what you did last week, or the week before, or 10 games ago.  It doesn’t matter whose home town the game is played in or whose fans are rowdier.  What matters is how, at that precise moment, each team plays.  Worthiness is decided on the field. 

To paraphrase Kirsten Dunst in what is possibly my favorite guilty pleasure movie, you've got to bring it.  The person or team that does "deserves" to win, plain and simple.