More confirmation - Bobby knows all !!!

[Hux]

Weir wins Super Sage; Osment catches Peck

By DAVID NIELSEN

February 2, 2004

What could Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and legendary golfer Arnold Palmer possibly have in common?

Stumped? Try this vexing question: what could unite Weir and Palmer with 15-year-old actor Haley Joel Osment and the late Gregory Peck?

Think football - and fortune telling.

Weir, Palmer, Osment and Peck excelled in the Scripps Howard Celebrity Super Bowl Poll.

Weir captured the 2004 Scripps Howard Super Sage award as his prediction of New England 33, Carolina 24, was the closest to the actual 32-29 Super Bowl score. One-hundred and forty-eight famous actors, athletes, authors, musicians, politicians and pop culture phenoms participated this year, including Palmer, who won the award last year.

In a phone interview Monday, Weir said the Super Bowl unfolded pretty much as he expected.

"It seemed to me that New England was going to come out pretty sure of themselves and do pretty well at first," said Weir, who watched the game with friends in Mill Valley, Calif. "And I also figured that Carolina would probably (take) a little while to find their footing."

When he's not touring with his band Ratdog or with Grateful Dead alumni, Weir avidly follows football.

"Once the 49ers are out of the hunt, football season is kind of over," said Weir, 56. "But if (the Super Bowl) looks like it's going to be a good game, I'll watch anyway because I love the game. Actually I still play football. I've got a flag football league that a bunch of friends of mine started about 15 years ago.

"We're the senior statesmen with the league. Every fall, we play 10 or 12 games, and then have some playoffs. We went to the championship game this year, but we got beat."

Nobody could beat Weir in the Celebrity Poll, despite some steep competition. For the first time in five years, a majority of the celebrities picked the winning team as 95 of the 148 participants predicted New England would beat Carolina.

Among the successful prognosticators was Osment, who picked New England to win, 27-17. For Osment, this ability to see into the future is nothing new. He has correctly foreseen the last five Super Bowl winners.

Osment, best known for his Academy Award-nominated role in "The Sixth Sense," joined the late actor Gregory Peck as the only celebrity to pick five straight Super Bowl winners. Peck did it from 1997-2001.

Still, as good as Weir and Osment were, there are limits to their clairvoyance. They were unable to duplicate the feat of tennis legend Martina Navratilova.

Navratilova remains the only celebrity to ever pick the winner and the score exactly right since Scripps Howard started the Celebrity Super Bowl Poll in 1990. Before Super Bowl XXXII in 1998, she correctly predicted that Denver would beat Green Bay, 31-24.