So, our mod dragonfly came to me a while ago, and asked if I had anything planned for February. Not being a sports person, at first I thought they were referring to Valentine’s Day, but then I figured out they meant the Super Bowl! 🤦
I spent a bit of time thinking about how best to do this, as I wanted it to be something both NFL people or not could both enjoy. I still haven’t ironed out all the details, but I think I’ll try something similar to Owl of the Year, but also to try to get you all a little more involved.
Here’s where I’m at so far, all subject to change of course…
Name so far: superbowl², short for the Superb Owl Super Bowl. If you got a better name, feel free to share.
What is it?: Create 2 fictional teams of owls, such as Philadelphia Eag-owls vs Kansas City Screech or something based on whoever we find out is in the actual game today. Each team will have maybe 6-12 “players,” which I want to be made up of owls picked by you.
What you do: Reply to this post something like this
- Verreaux Eagle Owl (what species you want to see play)
- NFC (which team you request your owl to play for, completely optional if you don’t know or care about football)
- You don’t know anything about football, what the heck is this?! (any additional comment you have for me)
I’m going to try not to double up on species too much, but if both teams really want a whatever, I’ll try and accommodate, though I’m going to promote diversity to spread awareness of the most owls. With over 200 owls to pick from, I trust you guys to find at least 20 different ones! 😁
Gameplay: Like Owl of the Year, you vote for your faves. I’ll put one owl from team A vs one from team B, and you upvote one, both, or none. I’ll do it at random somehow.
I want to have it run for 24 hours, so everyone everywhere has an opportunity to play a good portion of the game. I’m thinking every 2 hours, I’ll start another match. How long I’ll let them run is undetermined yet. Whoever gets the most votes in a match “scores” points.
Scoring: This was a really tough thing, since there’s no skill or anything involved, so I need to contract potential vote rigging or any kind of intangible imbalance. I’m thinking if it’s a tough battle, with the votes coming down to the last moment, that’s worth more points, so close matches will be a “touchdown” good for 7 points.
If it’s a blowout, the winner still won, but it was easier. That sounds like a “field goal” for 3 points. I’m thinking a margin somewhere in the 10-15 percent range, but I’ll have to see what that looks like.
I think I’ll leave team nominations open until Feb 7 so I have a few days to get everything together, or wherever we get a decent amount of “players.”
In the meanwhile, upvote anyone’s player you support here, so if I have to cut some “players” I know who you want to see most.
If you got any other suggestions, I’m open to hearing them, but since I’m putting in the work, whatever I feel like doing wins! 😉
I’ll post any rules updates as edits to this post.
Kansas City Screech
- Blakiston’s Fish Owl
- Buff Fronted Owl
- Boreal / Tengmalm’s Owl
- Whiskered Screech Owl
- Northern Hawk Owl
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
San Franciscowl Bay Owls (not sure I like this name yet)
- Buffy Fish Owl
- Flammulated Owl
- Snowy Owl
- Ural Owl
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
- Pending
As someone who barely knows anything about American Football, I have spent way too much time researching this. It was worth it though, for I have finally found the truth about the greatest owl team in the world:
Once upon a time, American football was just American. However, the CIA wanted to increase the influence of America around the world, and therefore started pushing for an international football league. They wanted to call it the International Football League, but the name was owned by Donald Trump. Therefore they named it World League of American Football, or WLAF. However, the WLAF stopped after just two seasons.
One of the teams in the WLAF was the Birmingham Fire from Alabama. But when the team was about to disband, something unexpected happened. A coup.
A group of owls took control over the team and rebranded it to Birdmingham Fire Owlabama, or, in short, BFO. The owls in the team were all BFO’s: Blakiston’s Fish Owl, Buffy Fish Owl, Brown Fish Owl and Buff-Fronted Owl.
However, the owls realised that just 4 members would not be enough to compete in serious competition, which is why they haven’t played in all these past 30 years. But things are changing: real progress is being made to get to at least 6 BFO’s. The Bare Legged Owl, although no real BFO, has become part of the BFO’s under the name of Bare Footed Owl. When accused of betraying their name, the Bare Footed Owl replied: “what is a leg, other than an extended foot?”
A sixth member is still missing, although Blakiston’s Fish Owl argues that they count for two due to their size. Opponents of this say that the balance is restored if intelligence is taken into account.
In short, the idea is: team Birdmingham Fire, Owlabama. Members: Blakiston’s Fish, Buffy Fish, Brown Fish, Buff-Fronted, Bare Legged.
I don’t know about this idea myself, because there really aren’t any more BFO’s that I could find. Also, maybe we want NFL teams instead of long disbanded ones. If anyone has an idea for improvement, please let me know!
Someone’s been learning a lot of owls!
You don’t need to come up with a full team though, just one owl you want to see in it. I was going to put them into the teams so everyone gets to see an owl they like.
That team would have a nice variety of owls though!
Well, I just looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_owl_species?wprov=sfla1 trying to find BFO’s.
I kind of misunderstood the idea it seems, but your rules are probably more fair.
One question: are you allowed to do multiple suggestions (in separate comments), or only one suggestion per commenter? I would love to see Buff-Fronted in this, as I didn’t know about it and it seems to be a very interesting species. However, I don’t want to let the Blakiston’s Fish Owl down.
Anyway, thanks for organising yet another fun event for the Superbowl community. It’s always nice to wake up to a new post!
No worries, it’s the first time doing this.
Someone else has already nominated Blakiston’s Owl, so you can nominate Buff Fronted.
I just want to let people get some say, but I don’t want this to be quite as huge as undertaking as Owl of the Year, so I’m requesting one nominee per person for now. My goal is by next week to have 12-24 owls you guys want to see.
Buff Fronted it is then! Curious what owls the rest of the community comes up with!