Friday Five: Go Ravens Edition!

As you may or may not know the Ravens are in the playoffs again for the 5th time in as many years.  We here in MD are pretty excited about that fact.  Yes this game may be a little difficult going against everyone's favorite (except mine, of course) QB, Peyton Manning, but we're trying the whole positive thinking bit.  We actually do better when we're the underdogs.  If it's predicted we're going to win, we get a little cocky.  When we're the underdogs they seem to play a bit harder because they have something to prove.  We'll need all the help we can get so here's why you should love the Ravens too and root for them tomorrow.

1. Coach Harbaugh: You don't often hear about coaches being "nice guys" or "great friends" or having a "great sense of humor" or even being a player's "biggest support".  But these could all be used to describe John Harbaugh.  He's also an amazing coach whose father is an ex-coach and brother is the 49ers coach.  You can tell that his team and staff have the utmost respect for him, and in turn, we do too.  Here in Baltimore he's so adored, he's had an entire Bowl game named after him! (Not officially of course, but we did have the Harbaugh Bowl last year and it was awesome!)

2.  Purple Pride: How can you not love a team that doesn't have boring blue or red uniforms?  Those Ravens look awful snazzy in their Purple uniforms and even sharper when they wear their home black & purple uniforms.  Like Will Smith says in MIB, the difference  between our guys and your guys is, our guys make this look good.  Not to mention buying ladies attire to wear on purple Fridays is much easier; everything comes in purple!

3. Edgar Allen Poe: I know the names of most teams come from some sort of historical element of the city, but I happen to think ours is the cleverest (although, I'm slightly partial).  We could have gone with anything when naming our team, but we chose to commemorate Edgar Allen Poe, a former citizen of our fair city.  The name fits in with the bird theme we already had with the Orioles (which gave us the chance finally in 2012 when the O's were also doing well to whip out the slogan "The Bad Birds of B-more") and it's got sort of a dark and mysterious vibe going for it.  The only part I would argue is the ridiculous "Caw! Caw!" campaign they're pushing right now.  Hearing drunken idiots yelling Caw! to the top of their lungs, is not my idea of a good time.

4. Our players: Let's just rattle off a few of their names, shall we? Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Joe Flacco, Anquan Boldin, Ray Rice, Matt Birk, Jacoby Jones, Haloti Ngata (pronounced like "Nata" contrary to what every non-Baltimorean sportscaster says), Torrey Smith.  As you can see, our roster is what you might call impressive.

5.  They deserve the Super Bowl: It's been 12 years since our guys were able to say they were SuperBowl champs.  In sports streaks, that's minuscule but it's about time.  They've gotten so close so many times, that they just need to make it happen.  Our guys have heart!  I couldn't be more excited to see how it goes down, because I honestly think they're gonna roll right over Denver! 

Go Ravens!