Super Bowl report

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (left) presents the Super Bowl MVP trophy to Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco on Monday in New Orleans. Flacco also received a 2014 Corvette.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (left) presents the Super Bowl MVP trophy to Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco on Monday in New Orleans. Flacco also received a 2014 Corvette.

— Flacco reaping rewards

Working on 90 minutes of sleep, Joe Flacco wore a day-old beard and a weary smile that wouldn’t go away Monday.

Super Bowl tradition deems that the game’s MVP appear at a ceremony the following morning to shake hands with the commissioner of the NFL, accept his trophy, pose for pictures and receive the keys to a new car. After celebrating the Baltimore Ravens’ 34-31 victory over San Francisco into the early hours of Monday morning, Flacco dutifully fulfilled that obligation.

The quarterback’s immediate reward was a 2014 Corvette. In the months ahead, Flacco is almost assured of receiving a contract befitting his performance during Baltimore’s run to the NFL championship.

During the playoffs, Flacco had 11 touchdown passes and no interceptions, a feat NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called “extraordinary.”

Later, Flacco told David Letterman as a guest on CBS’ Late Show the time has come for him to start talking contract with the Ravens.

Flacco turned down an extension offer from the Ravens last year. He said Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti told him when the season was over he could come to his office and pound on his desk.

The pretenders

After beating San Francisco and getting into a scrap with fullback Bruce Miller, Ravens cornerback Cary Williams rubbed a little salt in the wounds of his NFC counterparts.

“To me, I feel like the 49ers are pretenders,” Williams said. “They’re fake tough guys. You got to play football. We do it physical and we do it between the whistles. They were diving on piles, shoving people from behind. They can try to pretend they’re physical, but we really are.”

Ratings run ends

An estimated 108.4 million people watched the Super Bowl, making it fall short of setting the fourth consecutive viewership record.

The Nielsen Company said Monday that the Baltimore Ravens’ 34-31 victory over the San Francisco 49ers was the third most-viewed program in television history. Both the 2010 and 2011 games hit the 111 million mark.

Football viewership in general declined this year.

But this year’s game did become the fourth Super Bowl to record more than 100 million viewers.

Record bet

Sports fans bet a record $98.9 million at Nevada casinos on the Super Bowl, the Nevada Gaming Control Board said Monday.

Unaudited tallies show 183 sports books made $7.2 million on the football action. The San Francisco 49ers started out as a five-point favorite but the Baltimore Ravens won 34-31.

Oddsmakers say California fans drove the unprecedented handle, flooding Las Vegas and the Lake Tahoe area with wagers on the hometown team, which hadn’t been in the Super Bowl since 1995.

“Northern Nevada gets swamped with 49er money,” LVH book director Jay Kornegay said.

Bookmakers speculated that the popularity of 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who played his college football at Nevada, drove some of the betting among locals.

The previous record was set in 2006, when gamblers wagered $94.5 million on the Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Bookmakers said they took a beating this year on proposition bets, including a long shot on whether there would be a safety. Ravens punter Sam Koch took a safety for the final score with four seconds left.

Overreaction

John Harbaugh says he overreacted, but his patience had reached its end.

The Baltimore coach was captured on cameras screaming at officials during the 35-minute power outage at the Superdome, anger prompted by his concerns that San Francisco coaching staff could have gained an advantage by going onto the field to talk to their players.

A day later, Harbaugh acknowledged that he took it too far after a smooth week for the Super Bowl winning coach.

“Yeah, I made too big of a deal out of that,” Harbaugh said.

“I had to deal with the phones and whether we were going to have communication or whether we were going to have to take communication away because there are certain rules involved with that. I was trying to make the case.

It ended up being a moot point, I guess. It was much ado about nothing.”

Sports, Pages 24 on 02/05/2013

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