Who fares better the season following a Super Bowl appearance: the team that wins the game, and has to spend an offseason dealing with the spoils of success, or the one that loses it? The answer is the team that wins the Super Bowl tends to be better. Barely.

We spend too much time on the winners in sports whether it’s explaining their on-field strategy or pin-pointing the specific psychological traits behind the success. The losers are always more interesting.

Howard Schultz apologized Thursday for selling the Sonics. Unfortunately, it was tacked on to a 7-minute monologue that ranged from misleading to outright lies about the issues that led to the sale of the Sonics in 2006.

If the Seahawks don't re-sign Sebastian Janikowski, they'll have their third kicker in three years in 2019. But allocating resources, whether in the draft or with payroll, doesn’t mean the problem will be fixed.

Danny O'Neil usually looks forward to seeing the best offenses getting upended in the playoffs by one of the best defenses. Except the NFL playoffs are now down to four teams whose defenses would never be described as great.

The first half of the Seahawks' playoff loss to Dallas provided ample evidence they weren’t running anywhere, and yet Seattle stuck with it. And so the team that vowed to live by the run died by it.

The Seahawks attempted the fewest passes of any team in the league this season yet Russell Wilson threw 35 scoring passes, tied for third-most in the league. That’s the edge that Seattle has in this game.

The Rose Bowl may be Urban Meyer's last game as Ohio State's coach, but it's UW Huskies coach Chris Petersen who will have more on the line than anybody on New Year's Day.

Russell Wilson was sacked six times, Seattle’s punt team was an abject disaster and the Seahawks' offense went five straight drives without gaining so much as a single first down in their final game before the playoffs.

A win over the Cardinals may not say much, but losing to a last-place team like this would say plenty about the expectations we should have for Seattle’s postseason run. Namely: There shouldn’t be any.