Anyone who knows anything about football knows that the most exciting day of the NFL season is Conference Championship Sunday, not Super Bowl Sunday.
And, true to form, yesterday’s NFC Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears (which the Packers won 21-14) and AFC Championship game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Jets (which the Steelers won 24-19) did not disappoint.
Unfortunately, my enjoyment of this day of football revelry was undermined by the lingering sour taste of watching the Packers eliminate my team, the Philadelphia Eagles, from the playoffs two weeks ago. Naturally, this was reason enough for me to root for the Bears to rout the Packers.
But not only did the Packers win, they even rubbed the Bears’ own folklore in their faces. Specifically, Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji intercepted a pass and rumbled like a “freezer” for a critical second-half touchdown, emulating Bears folk hero William “The Refrigerator” Perry, a defensive lineman who rushed for a touchdown to help the Bears win Super Bowl XX.
In a similar vein, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has done such a stellar job of filling the shoes the legendary Brett Favre left behind in Green Bay that fans there can be forgiven for forgetting he ever even existed.
To be sure, Favre did little to engender fond memories with his poor play on the field this season (for the Minnesota Vikings). But it was the revelations about his crude and sexually compromising play off the field, which made Tiger Woods look like choir boy, that sealed his fall from grace.
On the other hand, I wanted the Steelers to win the AFC game. Not least because I’m already sick of the media hyping Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez as the next Joe “Broadway” Namath. And they were only encouraged in making this presumptuous comparison by the sophomore Sanchez boldly predicting a win yesterday.
We can do it. You can’t play not to lose. We’ve got to play to win the game, and that’s what we’ll do.
(NFL Post, January 23, 2011)
Okay, so it wasn’t all that brash a prediction, but the Jets were talking smack all week. And no one was more disrespectful in this respect than their toe-sucking coach, Rex Ryan. (And if you haven’t seen the porno clips of him and his wife acting out their toe fetish, well, lucky you.) Frankly, they should’ve have entered this game with a little more respect for their opponents, considering that the Steelers have won seven AFC championships and the Jets have won … none!
Therefore, it was tremendously gratifying that by half time, the Steelers had pretty much won the championship, leading the Jets 23-3.
Oh, did I mention the friendly wager I made with my old college roommate? We’re both Eagles fans, but he chose the if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em route and began rooting for the Packers. I chose the Steelers to go all the way….
Mind you, I was a bit nervous when the Jets came out for the second half and scored 18 unanswered points to come within a touchdown of tying the game. This, notwithstanding what I felt certain was a death knell when the Steelers raised their steel curtain to mount a goal-line defense against the surging Jets – who ran 17 plays over eight minutes during this period only to come up empty.
So here’s to the Steelers adding to their claim on the most Super Bowl victories in history by defeating the Packers in Super Bowl XLV in Dallas on February 6; and to me having yet another reason to gloat over my old college roommate….
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NFL Conference Championship Sunday 2010
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