One team gets into the zone. The other team gets rattled and collapses. That's a recipe for a blowout in any sport. You usually don't see such an epic collapse at this level, but ....
Y'all might remember the Redskins' (can I say that here?) perfect quarter vs. Denver in Superbowl 22. Doug Williams, a solid journeyman quarterback, was surrounded by a good defense, the posse, and the Hogs, and had a great season. Against Denver, the 'Skins came up with a perfect second quarter and scored 35 points. They could do no wrong, Denver could do no right, and boom. That's what happened today for a twelve minute stretch in Germany vs. Brazil. It's beautiful, scary, and eerie to watch.
Of the sports with which I'm most familiar, basketball is the most prone to this sort of thing. You are plugging along on a pretty competitive game, the score one minute is 36-32, and the next time you look up, it's suddenly 58-34. The big difference in basketball is that the coach can call a time out to try to break the momentum. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
In the ten years I've watched my daughters play soccer (ok, not quite at the World Cup level ....), I've seem my older daughter's team, a reasonably competitive travel team, lose one game that looked as ugly. Fortunately, they've had perhaps three games that broke big the other way. That's over ten years. It happens.
It's probably rarer in soccer than most other sports because of the dearth of scoring, but there are exceptions. We saw one today. History ... and I only wonder how much Germany could have scored if they hadn't called off the dogs after the fourth goal.
oor last year’s super bowl when denver flubbed the first hike and never recovered.
Byline: Grantland Rice
"The weather was perfect. So were the Bears."
NFL championship. Final score: Bears 73, Redskins 0
Ahem, you were saying...?
I knew someone would bring up the broncos, but this is worse than anything the broncos have done. Denver never built a half dozen stadiums and then lost the súper bowl.