RUSH: Here’s Nate in Erie, Pennsylvania. Welcome to the program, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, happy Groundhog Day. I’m sure that our ex-vice president is thrilled to know that Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow today and we are going to have an early spring. But on the other hand, I want to know your prediction, I want to know if you think that Dingy Dungy can take care of the Bears.
RUSH: You know, I was down in Miami last night. I went to a big Super Bowl party on Star Island, and the last thing being discussed at this party was the game. (Laughing.) It was all about all kinds of things, but I did find a couple people to talk with about the game, and I have to tell you what the conventional wisdom is down there. The conventional wisdom is that the Indianapolis defense is going to destroy Rex Grossman. They are expecting a rout. I had dinner on Monday night with Phil Simms and Jim Nantz, the CBS broadcast crew. They came up for a night of revelry here at my humble abode, and I’m not going to give away what they thought. They asked me my opinion, and I said I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bears pulled an upset. They were stunned. The Bears just don’t have anybody, and when you look at the game statistically, there’s no way the Bears win here if you look at it that way. But you can’t.
It’s going to be rainy all weekend long. The field will be covered. It’s going to be raining on Sunday and Sunday night. Who knows how that will affect the Indianapolis passing game? Weather elements are the same for both teams obviously. But I don’t know. I’m so tempted to always go against conventional wisdom, and believe me, the conventional wisdom here is Colts big, and I just don’t think the Bears are that insignificant an opponent. I know the NFC is much weaker, but I’m going to withhold my prediction on this game until the end of the program, because if I predict it now, there will be no reason for people interested in that before they place their bets to listen to the rest of the program. I appreciate the question, but there are other ways to look at this game. This game, folks, you know, people love firsts. The people like firsts. This Super Bowl has got a whole lot of first-evers in it. I’ll get into this a little bit later as the program unfolds. David in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, thank you for calling and welcome.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, an honor to talk to you again. Rush, you know with all the blowhards on the Drive-By Media pushing the African-American coaches and trying to make something out of nothing, you know, it doesn’t matter what the coaches are, I mean they’re human beings, but instead of the environmental wacko pick, I thought we could have a diversity pick, because they are trying to make such a big deal out of this.
RUSH: A diversity pick? How you going to do that? Where’s the diversity? There isn’t any diversity in this game.
CALLER: I know, that’s why I thought we could —
RUSH: There’s no diversity. (Laughing.) I don’t know. You know, that’s not a bad idea. I’ll tell you what, we’re going to call Joe Biden’s office and ask his input on that, in terms of how he would look at this, in terms of the diversity sweeping the NFL. I was watching the commissioner’s press conference today, the new commissioner Roger Goodell, before the program started, it started 11:30, and I’ve told you people that the sports media is made up of just as big a bunch of pansy liberals as the regular Drive-By Media is, and I, swear, if I had a chance to be down there and ask questions to the commissioner of the National Football League, they wouldn’t have been most of the questions this guy got. To his credit he answered every one of these questions as though the person asking the question was an Einstein with great respect and so forth. But the first question out of the box had to do with Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy being black and what this meant for the league, as though this hasn’t been discussed every which way from Sunday. I think it was David Goldberg asked, AP reporter.
Later on in the session, somebody stood up and said, ?Well, you know, this is all well and good, we’ve got the first two black head coaches. But where are the black offensive coordinators? And where are the African-American quarterback coaches? I mean, these two guys both came from defense. Dungy and Lovie Smith came from the defensive side of the ball. We’ve got more and more black quarterbacks in the league, but we don’t have any black offensive coordinators and black quarterbacks.? No matter what happens, it isn’t enough? This is nothing but a social sandbox to these guys, a little social playground. There was some decent questions asked, too, but I was just sitting here in amazement. So I guess if we wanted to do a diversity pick, we’d look at these coaching staffs saying, ?Are they evenly split? Do they have female trainers, assistant trainers?? I don’t have access to that kind of information on the coaching staffs of both teams. Diversity pick would be tough.
The environmental wacko method is going to be hard enough. You have two animals here. You have the Bears, and certain kinds of bears are stranded. They’re so stupid they’re stranded out there on a floating iceberg, heading off into the melting sun to the equator. The Colts, horses, I mean, look what they have allowed. Have you ever seen the way these horses are humiliated in the Budweiser commercials? It’s much easier to control and tame a horse than it is a bear. There are all kinds of ways we can go with the environmentalist pick on this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, I don’t know if this is true, folks. (Fall Creek Baptist Church) We had a caller that was going to ask me about this, and I got an e-mail from my buddy the Hutch out in Seattle asking me about it, but I don’t know that it’s true. I can’t imagine that the NFL has the authority — well, now, wait a minute. Maybe they do. Anyway, the questions came at me from both the Hutch and the caller. ?Rush, what about this business that the NFL says churches can only show the Super Bowl on 44-inch screens, or maybe it’s 55-inch screens.? I hadn’t heard that. No, vaguely I have, and I don’t remember where, but my first thought was, ?How can they police that?? But, it’s their product, and people that put these things on in sports bars do pay a royalty fee. It’s a complicated formula in most cases, but they do. But I got to thinking about it, why would they get upset about the size of the screen in the church?
Now, again, if this is true — I haven’t seen anything on it, and it could be bogus, and it could be a Turner Broadcasting Company hoax. But let’s assume for the sake of the hypothesis here that it’s true. I can explain it easily for you. You put a 44-inch screen in a church, and who the hell is going to be able to see it? They don’t want you watching the Super Bowl in church. They want you in a sports bar, they want you at home, they want you somewhere, and they certainly know that if you’re going to watch the Super Bowl in the church, you’re not going to be wagering on it. Now, the NFL does not officially sanction gambling. In fact, the new commissioner, Roger Goodell condemned it again today — something we’ve gotta be very careful about, we have to have a very hard line here between our game and gambling and so forth, but everybody knows what the injury reports are all about and the point spreads and so forth. So I don’t know, that would be my best guess as to why such an admonition from the NFL would be forth coming, if it did.
By the way, Mrs. Clinton, when it comes to her wanting to take Big Oil’s profits, didn’t she turn an investment of $10,000 in the cattle futures market into a hundred thousand dollars in less than a year? What if somebody wanted to come along and take her profit? You know, and put it back into something like methane flatulation or doing away with it or what have you. You know what would have happened to that person. Kathryn Jean Lopez, who is the webmaster and the editor at National Review Online sent me a little note this morning saying, ?Hey, Rush, we have a little symposium going today at National Review Online on the Super Bowl. Could you give us 200 words or less by noon on these questions: Does it irk you that non-football fans watch the Super Bowl? The second question was, ?What’s the most interesting thing you think people should notice about this Super Bowl?? So this is what I sent her. It was posted around 1:30 this afternoon. This is what I sent her.
?Football ignoramuses do not irk me unless they’re watching the game with me, which they don’t because I don’t invite them. If one sneaks in with another guest, I set them up with Oprah reruns in a far-off room so they can’t bother the rest of us. What does irk me is no-nothing human debris getting TV shows on PMSNBC. As to the game itself, I like to think about this Super Bowl as a first ever. People love talking about something that’s the first, and this, as a Super Bowl, is a first, and it will never happen again. You have the first black coach. We have the first with two black coaches. We have the first with both coaches being close friends. We have the first Super Bowl with both coaches being strong confessing Christians, both of whom are clean and articulate. And as I wrote this, clean and articulate, I guess I should now run for president, especially since this is also the first Super Bowl to occur when I have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.? We have time to squeeze one more in. This is Jewel in Easton, Pennsylvania. Welcome to the EIB Network.