Super Bowl LVII Appears To Be Very Evenly Matched

                 

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Let me just start off by making this much clear: this post is not going to be about any Super Bowl predictions by me. That will come soon enough. But this particular post has nothing to do with my own predictions about what will happen on Super Bowl Sunday.

This weekend's AFC and NFC Championship Games felt like they were very evenly matched games, and each of the four teams seemed legitimately capable of winning the whole thing. And now, not surprisingly, it feels like this Super Bowl features two teams that also are quite evenly matched. So much is this the case, that even the official betting line as to who are the favorites, and who are the underdogs, seems to be prone to somewhat wild fluctuations.

How wild?

Take a look at this:

"When the first line came out across the market it had the Chiefs being favored to win by two and a half points," said Butch Buchanico, Director of Sportsbook Operations at Hard Rock Atlantic City. "The unprecedented part about it is, within a half an hour, it went the other way."

I don't believe that I ever heard of such a thing for the big game before. Some Super Bowl lines of the past have been close. And indeed, some Super Bowls feel like they are tough to pick. But this one feels very, very evenly matched and hard to predict.

That is not the case with every Super Bowl. That was particularly true of most Super Bowls from my childhood. Back in the eighties and even stretching into the nineties, it felt like we had one mismatch after another. There were some games where, barring some very unforeseen circumstances, you just knew who was going to win. Like the Bears over the Patriots in Super Bowl XX. Or the Giants over the Broncos in Super Bowl XXI. Or the 49ers over the Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV. Or the Cowboys over the Bills in both Super Bowls XXVII and XXVIII. Or the 49ers again over the Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX. Or the Cowboys again over the Steelers in Super Bowl XXX. Or the Packers over the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI. And so on and so forth. 

Recent Super Bowls have not felt quite as certain, however. The Rams were favorites last season, but they were not prohibitive favorites. In fact, we have not seen any team looking dominant enough over the other to be regarded as very strong favorites in some time now.

But this one is closer even than most. I mean, seeing one team open up as the slight favorites, only to see the other team rise to become the favorites in less than an hour? 

Strange. 

Super Bowl 57 betting underway in Atlantic City, New Jersey by Trish Hartman, January 31, 202

At Hard Rock Atlantic City, the Eagles' playoff appearances have driven up sports book bets by about 30%. 

https://6abc.com/super-bowl-2023-57-betting-eagles-bets-chiefs/12755139/

Super Bowl Spread History: Vegas Odds for Every Game by Jack Jones, February 8, 2022:

https://www.betfirm.com/point-spreads-for-every-super-bowl/