First Posted: 1/27/2013

This month's Esquire magazine suggests an appropriate over-under betting line on number of Super Bowl commercials featuring animals exhibiting human characteristics is six.

That illustrates just how crazy Americans can get when it comes to all things Super Bowl.

There will be folks betting on how long the national anthem will take for crying out loud.

We, on the other hand, are only interested in the prognostication abilities of Dispatch readers.

As we do for every Super Sunday issue of the Dispatch, we are seeking predictions from local folks to be published next Sunday.

Our goal is to collect as many as we can and we once eclipsed the magic number of 1,000.

That was for the Giants and Patriots game in 2008. We usually get several hundred at least.

It might be a bit harder this year with none of the traditional local favorites in the game but we have faith that our readers will again come through.

And we ask those submitting a prediction to give us a reason for their choice.

We do reserve the right to add a reason for those who don't.

That can be fun.

Last time the Ravens were in the game one reader predicted they would win because in mythology Ravens have magical power.

That's the kind of stuff we are looking for.

Someone might say, for example, the 49ers will win because 4 and 9 add up to 13 and this is 2013. It's as good a reason as any.

So, get those predictions into us as early as you can. We'd like to have them all by the end of the business day on Thursday (that's 5 p.m.)

Email predictions to Jack Smiles at jsmiles@s24530.p831.sites.pressdns.com, drop them off at the Dispatch office at 109 New St., Pittston (where you can also pick up forms that you can bring to your workplace) or call Jack and leave a message at 570-602-0178.

To keep things simple, send them in like this: Your name, team that will win, score, reason.