“Germany 7, Brazil 1” likely will be the Brazil 2014 match that sticks in the mind. Ahead, even, of the final. Barring the bizarre, on Sunday.

It prompted me to think about “big-game blowouts I have known” … and that took me almost directly to the Super Bowl, and its former (deserved) reputation for producing awful games, and the cottage industry of pundits and shrinks trying to explain how one very good team could so regularly overwhelm another very good team.

Do a web search now for “why Super Bowl blowouts” and you get lists of blowouts. Not the dozens of stories (granted, most of them from the pre-internet era) in which Big Brains tried to explain 55-10 and 46-10 and the like.

So, I will reconstruct this from what I recall them saying … and my own opinions.

What seemed to come up often was this: Winning a Super Bowl championship is so important to everyone involved that when a team first suspects that it not going to happen, a sort of collective moral collapse comes over the team.

And then the collapse on the field becomes even more pronounced.

Every team comes into that game on a high, and sometimes within a few minutes they are down two or three scores, and the cold reality sets in, followed by psychological cratering. “We are doomed. It’s over.”

This topic was broached year after year in the first 30-plus years of the game, when blowouts were so common as to be expected. That was back when fans thought the commercials were better than the game. Every year.

Looking back at Super Bowl final scores, we can safely describe 18 of the 48 to be blowouts — games decided by 17 points or more. (Settling on 17 because that’s “more than two scores”.)

They were especially common early. Six of the first 12. Then a run of five straight beginning with SB XVII — L.A. Raiders 38, Washington 9; San Francisco 38, Miami 16; Chicago 46, New England 10; NY Giants 39, Denver 20; Washington 42, Denver 10.

Then four more between Nos 24 and 29 — San Francisco 55, Denver 10; Dallas 52, Buffalo 17; Dallas 30, Buffalo 13; San Francisco 49, San Diego 26.

Interestingly, only three of the past 19 games have been 17-points-or-more blowouts (including last year’s Seattle 43, Denver 8 debacle), which suggests more resilient teams of late — or fewer ruthlessly efficient ones.

(Actually, most of the best Super Bowls have been played since 1998; 10 of the the past 17 were decided by seven points or fewer. Only six of the first 31 were decided by a touchdown or less.)

I think what happened to Brazil was the soccer version of what happened to so many Super Bowl teams.

Enormous pressure internally and externally to win this huge game. Something bad happening early. Followed by several more “something bads” — followed by disillusioned players competing at a lower level, and the team in the ascendant doing pretty much whatever it wants.

Thinking more about it, these examples of teams falling behind but retaining the belief they can win are probably worthy of closer study. Particularly games such as the NY Giants 17-14 over the unbeaten Patriots on a late and miraculous scoring drive (the Helmet Catch), or the Patriots 32, Carolina 29, in which the Panthers three times came from behind to tie or lead.

Those sorts of games are the outliers.

It seems far more likely that the team that gets down, stays down.