ETBLITZ POWER PICKS! | Wrapping up the 2024 season with our final pick: Super Bowl LIX (it’s 59, not “licks”)
The ETBlitz.com staff began trying to pick the outcomes of football games in the 2024 season all the way back in August.
We were off last weekend, with no football for the first time since then, and now we’re back, attempting to pick the winner of Super Bowl LIX – that’s 59, not “licks,” by the way, as FOX’s Charissa Thompson tells former New England tight end Rob Gronkowski in a commercial for the game.
Each member of our panel has had a few “gotcha” moments along the way, where we called upsets that the other panel members didn’t foresee. Grand total, which includes the high school regular season, college regular season and conference title games, and the NFL’s regular season and playoffs, we’ve tried to be right on 404 games.
Joe Hale, who covered Kilgore High School football for us throughout the season and has been a sportswriter in East Texas for over 40 years, kind of smoked us all this year. Prior to our Super Bowl picks today, Joe has a 300-104 record, and no one else is super close. So no matter how the Super Bowl comes out, Joe is the ETBlitz.com Power Picks! champion.
My youngest daughter, Ashtyn, a student at Kilgore College, a columnist for ETBlitz.com and we’ll call her my “social media terminology adviser,” is solidly in second place, a record of 284-120.
Kilgore ISD school board member Dereck Borders, who is often my tackle-spotter for games, among other things, is in third (279-125), and I’m in fourth (275-129), although I’ve certainly had better seasons at our picks thing, dating back about 30 years.
My son, Jacob, a student at the University of Alabama who kept all kinds of tabs on high school football in order to do this, is in fifth (273-131), and then it’s Dennis Jacobs, who’s been shooting sports for me for going on 17 years (267-137). Dennis is a multi-time champion here in this space, but he and I just couldn’t get our upset picks right this year.
Ronnie Sartors, a gentleman who has had a long, fantastic freelance photography career that includes shooting for ETBlitz, newspapers and for Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, was slotted next with 266 wins and 128 losses, although he did pick 10 games less than the rest of us – he came into our competition after the first week.
Rounding out the panel’s picks were our assistant editor Clayton Fletcher (258-146), photographer and KC student Alex Nabor (257-147), and our executive editor, my wife, Jenna (252-152).
OK, let’s get to it. Will the Kansas City Chiefs be the first team in NFL history to win three straight Super Bowls, or for lack of another term, will Philadelphia mess ’em up and win its second Super Bowl title? Here’s how the panel sees it. You may be surprised.
SUPER BOWL LIX
Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025
Caesar’s Superdome, New Orleans, La.
NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles (17-3) vs. AFC champion Kansas City (17-2)
5:30 p.m. Central time, FOX – Streaming on TUBI
So, there you have it: six members of our panel actually are taking Philadelphia to pull what I consider to be an upset; four panel members are taking Kansas City to accomplish the NFL’s first-ever “three-peat.”
