Blame Joe Namath. He's the guy who started this whole thing.

Namath famously guaranteed his upstart New York Jets would upset the massively favored Baltimore Colts in the third Super Bowl. You remember what happened.

(Mr. Flip figures Namath must have made another guarantee somewhere along the way that didn't pan out. How else did Namath wind up selling pantyhose on television?)

But Namath wasn't the end of it. Other guarantees followed. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. And now we've reached this point: Last week, we got a guarantee of victory over the New England Patriots by a relatively obscure member of the Pittsburgh Steelers, defensive back Anthony Smith.

Mr. Flip doesn't care whether the guarantee worked or not or what bulletin board it ended up on. The point is how meaningless these guarantees are.

What exactly are the repercussions if your guarantee doesn't pan out? What was Smith risking? Is he going to forfeit a game check? Does he have to wax Tom Brady's car?

No, he just slides back into obscurity.

As far as Mr. Flip is concerned, the only guarantee he will give any credence to is the one from the guy who owns the men's clothing store and says you're going to like the way you look.

He guarantees it.