New Orleans VooDoo 41 Houston Gamblers 22

World Bowl XXXV was played before a full house at Anaheim Stadium, the third time they've hosted. This game featured a pair of World Bowl veteran teams with Houston making their 10th appearance and New Orleans their 7th. Houston got the ball first and Dale Baber threw an interception, leading to a New Orleans FG. Houston would punt on their next two drives while Willie Graham threw a short TD pass to Wendell Lee to extend the New Orleans lead to 10-0.

Two plays later, Baber threw his 2nd INT, leading to the 2nd Willie Graham TD pass. Charles Grogan caught the 10 yard score and the XP made the score 17-0 in the 1st qtr. The VooDoo extended the lead to 20-0 with a FG early in the 2nd. Baber threw a 3rd INT but New Orleans didn't capitalize, then Houston finally got on the scoreboard on what goes in the books as a fumble return. The box score shows Brian Smith as having -1 yard on 1 carry, which is true. Smith fumbled 1 yard behind the line of scrimmage, recovered his own fumble, then broke free, running 72 yards for a score.

I can't find those 72 yards in the box score but Houston was just happy to cut the lead to 20-7 at the half.

Houston's defense failed to maintain momentum in the 3rd qtr, allowing a Willie Graham 50 yard TD pass to Wendell Lee and an 85 yard TD pass to Benjamin Jones following a three and out, pushing the lead up to 34-7 for the VooDoo. Later in the 3rd qtr, Edward Goggans returned a fumble 28 yards for the final New Orleans TD of the day as they now enjoyed a comfortable 41-7 lead.

Dale Baber did throw a long TD pass right after the fumble, but still trailed 41-14 entering the 4th qtr. Houston wouldn't score again until less than 5 minutes remained, when Baber threw a TD pass to Randall Guenther, and the 2 point pass gave us our final score of 41-22 New Orleans.

New Orleans wins their 2nd World Bowl in franchise history with both coming in the last 5 seasons. QB Willie Graham was the game's MVP, and he drives off in a purple 2009 Corvette for his efforts. Graham completed 42/62, 488 yards and 4 TDs. Graham was sacked 8 times but threw zero INTs. Benjamin Jones caught 9 for 164 and a TD while Wendell Lee caught 6 for 121 and 2 TDs. Dale Baber completed 39/63, 386 yards, 2 TDs and 4 INTs to go with 4 sacks. Randy Savage had 130 combined yards, 107 of that coming on 11 receptions.

Congratulations to New Orleans, not only for winning the World Bowl but for also being the first team to defeat Houston in the big game. Houston still leads everyone with 9 championships, followed by the 5 of Memphis. Portland and New Jersey have won 4 times each while New Orleans joins Oklahoma and Pittsburgh as 2 time winners.

Memphis (5-0) and San Jose (1-0) are the only teams undefeated in the World Bowl that have played in the game.

Posting in here to help keep spoilers to a minimum but congrats on the title Legend! If you had told me you never got a 3rd down conversion I would have thought you got burned gambling against the best. Nice win

And congrats CJ on the season! It's difficult as **** to make it to the big game in our conference

I hope I'm the first one to catch this massive error of facts because if I get something this wrong, I expect to get called out for it. I was preparing a little something when I remembered I typed this incomplete fact.

Apologies to Florida (World Bowl I), Oakland (World Bowl II) and Los Angeles (World Bowl V). All 3 teams have won their only World Bowl game.

My error was I based the original statement on one of my playoff posts when I typed the World Bowl records of the 14 current playoff teams. The 3 teams I missed did not make the playoffs in 2008, therefore were not on the list I was looking at.