Media Not About to Let Dead Seal Off Hook for Bad Super Bowl Picks

Orange, a 35-year-old harbor seal who called Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut her home, has died after a battle with cancer. The natural inclination when something this traditionally adorable dies is to whitewash its legacy. But the Associated Press and New York Post are not about to let people forget about Orange’s woeful track record in predicting Super Bowl winners.

Harbor seal that made mostly wrong Super Bowl picks dies is a savage headline. So too is highlighting the seal’s 2-5 lifetime record.

"For the past seven years she would predict a Super Bowl winner by swimming to the window of her tank and putting her nose on a picture of the helmet of one of the two competing teams. She was right only twice: the New England Patriots in 2017 and the Philadelphia Eagles in 2018."

Stop it, she’s already dead.

Orange was found as a pup in 1982 and lived in Baltimore before being transferred to Norwalk. She outlived all other seals in captivity at the facility. It was a rich and vibrant life in which she brought unspeakable joy to so many people who got to say, “oh, look, a seal!”

And this, this is how she’ll be remembered most. As the idiot who couldn’t pick a winning side in the big game. Cruel world out there.