Polling Place: Who wins, Buccaneers or Chiefs? Your Super Bowl pick is in

When the Super Bowl dust settles, we might agree the game didn’t boil down to Tom Brady vs. Patrick Mahomes after all. Maybe both will play wonderfully. Maybe one will just be OK but his team will win anyway. Big-game narratives, no matter how great, don’t always reach artful conclusions.

Still, each of us must by now have an idea in our head about how the game is going to go. And that idea probably comes with a vision of either Brady or Mahomes at the center of a championship celebration.

So, whom will it be: Brady or Mahomes? Buccaneers or Chiefs? In this week’s “Polling Place” — your home for Sun-Times sports polls on Twitter — we asked respondents to pick a winner. They went hard with the defending champs.

We also asked about betting on the game — in any form, as long as money is involved — and, a recurring theme, if fans are as excited about the Super Bowl as they would be in easier, non-pandemic times. On to the polls:

Poll No. 1: Who’s your pick to win Super Bowl 55?

Upshot: Has Brady ever been taken this lightly? Last we checked, he isn’t a second-year pro heading into his first Super Bowl as an underdog against Kurt Warner’s Rams anymore. Seriously, this vote is way more about how absolutely terrific Mahomes and the Chiefs are. Meanwhile, a tip of the helmet to @mike_barbacovi for covering all the bases: “I’m rooting for Kansas City,” he commented, “but I expect Tampa Bay to win.”

Poll No. 2: Will you have any money riding on the big game?

Upshot: Who are all these people who don’t at least have the basic decency to try to take $5 off their mothers on the result of the coin toss or the length of the national anthem? We’re sure watching the Super Bowl without any gambling interest whatsoever is fun in a strange, sick, twisted sort of way. Here’s to all you fine, upstanding folks.

Poll No. 3: Are you as excited for the Super Bowl as you typically are during non-pandemic times?

Upshot: “There’s a Super Bowl this year?” commented @Chicago_Todd. Frankly, we suspect he was being slightly less than forthright. “Gotta throw in COVID, don’t you? You have no shame,” offered @MartyGeller2, offended for reasons comprehensible only to him. Here’s something we can all agree on: Next year’s Super Bowl parties — people, food, drink, hugs, high-fives, more people — can’t get here soon enough.