Friday I Ching Blogging - Who Will Win The Super Bowl

    I had to do it.  After my Sun Tzu analysis of what the New York Giants need to do to win the Super Bowl, I just had to ask the I Ching who will actually win.  I am, obviously, a  Giants fan.  So, as I read the oracle's response, I wanted to interpret it as pointing toward a certain New York win.  I really did.  But that is not the way the I Ching works.  It came back with a very apt reading (I love this book!) but did not state unequivocally who would win.  Instead, it suggested how a win might be secured.  That I will thus interpret as a playbook for a Giants victory. 

    More below the jump....

    The first hexagram was 43, Kuai, "Break-through":







      A moving line in the third position tends in the direction of hexagram 58, Tui, "The Joyous, Lake:"

 

      

 

     Kuai seems a perfect description of a sports competition.  It suggests the moment before a cloud burst, when natural conditions are mounting and a struggle between opposing forces are leading toward a resolute conclusion, a break-through.  Much is made of individual leaders - we could imagine coaches and quarterbacks and captains - doing the right thing.  This is especially true for the commentary on the moving line in the third place, which reads in part:

...The superior man is firmly resolved.
He walks alone and is caught in the rain.
He is bespattered,
And people murmur against him.
No blame.

       Sounds like a football player.

      There is also talk of inferior men and the need to overcome them in this moment of tension and transformation.  How we read the hexagram, therefore, depends upon who we understand to occupy the superior and inferior positions.  Since this is a matter of character, not of outward accomplishment, we should not automatically assume that the Patriots are the "superior" because they are undefeated.  Indeed, the person who has suffered the most pressure as "people murmur against him" is Eli Manning, the Giants quarterback.  And the perseverance of the New York team could suggest that they are the ones with the superior character here....but that is what I want to believe.

     So, let's look at where the hexagram is tending: toward "The Joyous, Lake."

    Clearly this suggests victory for one or another of the teams:

The Joyous.  Success.
Perseverance is favorable.

        And the Image section of the reading describes what both teams are doing right now:

Thus the superior man joins with his friends
For discussion and practice.

     Just so.  But who will win?

      The best hint comes from this line of commentary from hexagram 58:

True joy, therefore, rests on firmness and strength within, manifesting itself outwardly as yielding and gentle.

     In football terms this suggests that whoever controls the line of scrimmage and, especially establishes an inside running game, will have the advantage.  Also it implies that, by "yielding" on the front line, whichever team succeeds in its screen passes - when defensive linemen are allowed to come through, only to be caught out with a pass to the running back - will be victorious.  Those are things that are clearly within reach of the Giants - and I hope they attend to the oracle!

    There is, in the end, one further hint that the I Ching foresees a Giants victory.   An alternate interpretation of the title of hexagram 48 is "usurpation."   And it that applies to anyone it is the underdog Giants versus the mighty Patriots.

     In the end: if the Giants can control the ball, and the clock, with a good interior ground game and effective screen passes, they will win.

     Go Giants!

Comments

[Jeremiah]

Now I'm the first to admit that my Yijing knowledge is limited, but a couple of points.

To win by yielding, could that not also be a reference to the free-flowing, spread the field, finesse style of the Patriots' offense, as opposed to the bruising, downhill running, grind-down-the-clock style of the Giants? Or perhaps it is a sign that when the Giants have the ball, the Patriots' complex schemes in their yield but never fold ("bend don't break") defense will come out on top?

Second, this passage:

"The superior man is firmly resolved.
He walks alone and is caught in the rain.
He is bespattered,
And people murmur against him.
No blame."

Is that not the perfect description of Bill Belichick? "And the people murmur against him, No blame." All the authors needed was a "gray hoodie" reference.

Finally, the alternate interpretation of hexagram 48 is "usurpation" couldn't this also be a positive omen for the team named after...well...historical usurpers?

It is so on.

[Justsomeguy]

And the giants did win.

[zbigpigula]

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