Sports, February 4th

SUPER BOWL 47

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – The Baltimore Ravens fended off a second-half comeback attempt by the 49ers and beat San Francisco 34-31 in Super Bowl 47. The game was held up for 34 minutes early in the third quarter by a power outage with the Ravens leading 28-6.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Baltimore’s Joe Flacco capped an impressive postseason showing by being named Super Bowl MVP following his team’s victory over San Francisco in the NFL championship game. The veteran quarterback threw three touchdown passes against the 49ers, giving him 11 during this year’s playoffs, with no interceptions.

NEW YORK (AP) – The Baltimore Ravens’ victory over the San Francisco 49ers has set a record for highest overnight ratings in Super Bowl history. The Nielsen company reported the game scored a 48.1 rating and 71 share in its select measurement of big cities. That’s 1 percent over a similar measurement in last year’s game.
For three years in a row, the Super Bowl has set a new record for most-watched event in U.S. television history. Nielsen is expected to have an estimate of how many people watched the game later on Monday. One ratings point represents 1,147,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.7 million TV homes. The share means that 71 percent of TVs that were on at the time were tuned to the Super Bowl.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says New Orleans was a “terrific” Super Bowl host and that the Superdome power outage that delayed the game for 34 minutes will have no effect on the city’s future bids to host the league’s championship. Goodell says, “The most important thing is to make sure people understand it was a fantastic week,” and that it “will be remembered as one of the great Super Bowl weeks.”
New Orleans has now hosted 10 Super Bowls. Officials have said they will bid to host an 11th in 2018 to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the city’s founding. Goodell says the outage is not of great concern going forward because it is “fixable,” and the league will look forward to evaluating New Orleans’ next Super Bowl bid.

Elsewhere in sports…

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) – Phil Mickelson finished off a wire-to-wire victory at the Phoenix Open with a 4-under-par 67 that dropped him to 28-under for the tournament. Brandt Snedeker (SNEH’-deh-kur) carded a 65 in Sunday’s final round and finished second by four strokes.

UNDATED (AP) – A path has been cleared for Indiana to return to the top spot in the AP college basketball poll that it held earlier this season. The third-ranked Hoosiers knocked off No. 1 Michigan 81-73 Saturday, the same day second-ranked Kansas got upset by Oklahoma State 85-80. New rankings will be released later today.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) – It went right down to the wire, but the U.S. defeated Brazil 3-2 to earn a berth in the Davis Cup quarterfinals. Sam Querrey (KWEER’-ee) won the decisive fifth match in four sets after the U.S. blew a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five first-round matchup. The U.S. will host Serbia in early April.

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