The 49ers traded Alan Hess to the Jets for saying:
 AH> season interconference play for many years.  Do you feel the Super Bowl
 AH> would be more interesting if there was no interconference play during
 AH> the season, ensuring an air of mystery for the title game?
Not at all. Since they started playing interconference games, the Super Bowl 
combatants have played 9 times during the regular season and the team that 
won in the Super Bowl went 5-4 during the regular season. If you divide the 
last 26 Super Bowls down the middle (Super Bowls since IC play), you'll see 
that in the first 13 years, the teams met 3 times and the average margin of 
victory in the Super Bowl was 13.0 while the average margin of victory when 
they didn't play was 10.6. In the last 13 years, the average margin of 
victory when they played (6 times) was 22.5 and when they didn't, it was 
23.0. In those 6 years that they played, the AFC went 157-155-0 during the 
regular season and when they didn't, they went 171-194-1. In the last 13 
years, the AFC has won the series 4 times, the NFC has won it 5 times and 
they've tied 4 times and yet, the NFC has won 12 of 13. The AFC won the 
season series this year, do you think Las Vegas put any weight into that when 
they put out the odds for this game?
--- TrekEd 1.00
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