Even before the Denver game, I said the Chargers could make the Super Bowl. Now I am even more of a believer (I write this before the Pittsburgh game), although I confess I don't know a damned thing about football. But when (not if) the Chargers play in that sainted game, most investors will be rooting for their opponents because of the so-called "Super Bowl Indicator." It posits that if the Super Bowl is won by a team in the original NFL, the market (usually as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average) will go up. If it's won by an original AFL team, the market will go down. Thus, the shorts root for the AFL and the longs for the NFL. The Chargers are an original AFL team. Last year, this indicator took a bad tumble. The game was won by the New York Giants, one of the earliest NFL teams. Twice before when they had won (1986 and 1990), stocks had risen as expected. But they won last year and stocks took their biggest beating since the Great Depression, shedding almost $7 trillion in market value, as the Dow plunged 34 percent and the average share on the New York Stock Exchange plummeted 45 percent. The indicator has been accurate a bit under 80 percent of the time. However, that's not as wonderful as it sounds: stocks normally rise 4 out of 5 years. Incidentally, if the Chargers lose today, then the indicator will point upward no matter what. Both the Ravens and Steelers, who would play for the AFL title, and one of which would go to the big game, were originally in the NFL (the Ravens as the former Cleveland Browns).