I’ve made just two firm predictions this year, both involving dominant teams and their quests in attaining the ultimate goal in their sports. My first was that Kentucky, who was 19-0 at the time, wouldn’t finish 40-0 and win the NCAA basketball championship. My second was that Serena Williams, who was 14-0 after the French Open, then 21-0 after Wimbledon, wouldn’t go seven-for-seven at the U.S. Open to win the Grand Slam. Both came true, not because I’m any good at prognostication, but because anyone who pays attention to a little bit of history can see the potholes that come when people start assuming too much too early about an athlete or team.

It’s with that confidence that I make the following prediction, my third and last for the year: The Carolina Panthers aren’t making the Super Bowl.

(AP)

This is a tougher one than the previous two: Some team is coming out of the NFC to make the Super Bowl and, if we’re assuming the Panthers get the bye (which we are), then there’s a 25-percent chance it’ll be them. That’s forgetting the talent level of the other three teams in the divisional playoffs or accounting for home field, it’s just the straight probability: One of those four teams will make the Super Bowl.

So why won’t it be the Panthers? They are a very good, but not great, football team that has played unbelievable football since the middle of October. That stretch includes wins over Green Bay and Seattle, plus blowout victories against Washington and Dallas, mixed in with wins over a stretch of bad-to-mediocre team. But you know what a hot streak around Halloween and Thanksgiving will get you: Maybe a flexed Sunday night game in December and quotes that reek of overconfidence, all while your quarterback dances through four-touchdown wins, as is his wont.

(AP)

Oftentimes November heat equals January hotness. Other times it doesn’t. Exactly half of teams that entered the playoffs with home-field advantage since 2000 have made the Super Bowl, but only six of the last 15 champs had home field. The biggest misnomer in sports is that the playoffs determine the best team. They merely determine whoever is hottest during that sport’s final tournament — a 68-team one in NCAA basketball, a 16-team one in hockey, a 10-team one in baseball and in football a 12-team tournament in which a team has to win three or four games to get the title. (The NBA is probably the lone exception — the best team tends to win in pro basketball.)

The suggestion that Carolina will win the NFC because they are currently the conference’s best team ignores precedent. The idea that Carolina is going to win the Super Bowl because they’re 11-0 is fine but as meaningless as saying New England will do the same. Heck, the notion that Carolina is even the best team in the NFC is debatable enough. (Give me Green Bay and Arizona. You take Carolina. The odds are in my favor.)

Kentucky was the best basketball team is the country by a country mile. Serena Williams is the most dominant athlete in the world and is so much better than her tennis peers that she has almost double the rankings points of the second-best player on tour, Maria Sharapova. Neither of them won what they set out to win. Kentucky had a bad night against another fine team. Serena choked in the highest-pressure match imaginable. The odds of Carolina doing the same — catching the wrong team on the wrong night or having to execute a comeback after leading for most of the year — are far better than the 1-in-8 chance they’ll have of winning the Super Bowl.

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