(Ed. note: There are other fans in the cheap seats, and like all of us, they have an opinion to share and know the right words to share it. With that said, this post was written by my good friend Brian S. AKA LeBomb James. Enjoy.)
It feels like the Twilight Zone.
Or at the very least, the part in one of those bad M. Night Shyamalan where he just makes up a ridiculous plot twist that leaves the audience with an awful taste in their mouth.
(Alright, I know. "Bad M. Night Shyamalan movie" is redundant.)
But I'm not talking about "The Happening 2: Now Birds or Some Shit are After Us." I'm talking about the NFL playoffs, specifically what happened on Wild-Card Weekend, and what it means for the rest of my January and first week of February. I'm going to have to do what I swore I never would.
I'm going to have to root for the NFC. Even if it means rooting for (gulp)...Da Bears.
Let me say this. It's not my betting side that wants to jump over to the enemy. At this point, almost any NFC team is Super Bowl underdog to almost any AFC team. Who do ya got?
The Seachickens, who STILL aren't at .500 and (get this) with a win over the Bears and a Packers win over the Falcons, which is a very plausible scenario, will host a second playoff game?
The Falcons, who looked like the best team in NFC until playing paper tiger against the Saints two weeks ago?
The Packers, who, as a 6-seed, are playing the best football in the conference right now after beating an Eagles team I thought was the most dangerous team in the league?
(Side-note on the Eagles: In mid-November, right after they beat my Colts, I thought the Vick-led Eagles were going to be the team no one wanted to face in the play-offs. Then they lost a critical game to Chicago, beat the New York Football Giants with a collective kick to the crotch that will probably be felt by Eli Manning's offspring, and then somehow choked away a game to the Favre-less Vikings that could have put them in the #2 spot. I had a feeling that they might have peaked 3 or 4 weeks too early and was right.)
That leaves us with the Bears, a team with an improved defense and Matt Forte, who apparently only kills his fantasy owners every other season. They put up a lot of points the last month of the season, which has been just enough to make every Bears fan forget that their quarterback can turn into Jeff George 2.0 at any time. Do I trust them? Not really. But do I really trust anyone in the NFC right now? Hard to say.
I can say one thing definitively: I don't wanna root for anyone in the AFC.
Not the Patriots, who I'm required to hate, regardless of what they do. They could donate their entire 2010 team's salary to charity, adopt every stray pet in Boston, win the House of Representatives back for the Democrats, go back in time and stop Spider Man 3 from happening (the 2010 San Francisco 49er's of movies: tons of hype, good director in charge, more than enough talent on set, and still somehow unspeakably terrible) and I would still hate the Patriots. But they have an almost certain bye into the AFC championship by virtue of playing the Jets (The Sanchise is still too young/inconsistent, and the Patriots won't somehow think it's 2008 and let LT run all over them like the Colts did).
The other two possibilities? The Steelers, whom I've resented since they beat the Colts in the 1995 AFC championship game. The same Steelers the Colts choked against when they beat us as a 6-seed in 2005 (still the most talented Colts team I've ever seen). Besides, I can't shake the thought that if Ben Roethlisberger wins his third title (which is entirely possible; he's got more talent around him now than he did in 2008) we'd be just 10 weeks away from him showing up on "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew" in the ultimate ESPN/TMZ convergence.
Then there's other team left in the AFC. The one whom I won't even refer to by name, because their fans are so petty they refuse to call Indy the "Colts" because they're bitter to this day. (Although they don't seem to have a problem with, ya know, stealing Cleveland's team.) Well, while I think they have the best defense in the playoffs, with Ray Lewis continuing to play despite the fact that he's 48 years old, I don't see "The Professional Football Franchise from Baltimore" being able to match points with New England, and that's if they can get past a tough game with Pittsburgh.
If I were a betting man (ya know, if gambling was legal and all), I'd have to say my top-three Super Bowl favorites are from the AFC. And the distance between #3 and #4 is pretty big. So why cheer for the NFC? Why do I, as a football fan with my horse out of the race, want to see an NFC team win it, even if it has to be the Bears?
'Cause it'll mean more to their fans.
Look, we all know losing sucks. And losing the Super Bowl is downright painful. I still can't watch replays of last year's game (though Visa and seemingly every other NFL sponsor is trying their best to make sure I don't forget) because it hurts thinking about all the emotion, everything I had invested in that season crashing down. But, I gotta admit, after winning in 2006, it hurt a little less than it would have if I had never seen us win it. Those old stories you hear Cubs fans tell and used to hear Sox fans tell about being worried their older family members, or sometimes even themselves, would pass away and never see their team win a championship, they didn't apply to us last year.
Of the three AFC contenders (I'm admittedly not giving the Jets a shot, unless they somehow get the luxury of continuing to play teams that have 20% of their squad on injured reserve) all have one championship and two of them have multiple titles in recent years. Of the four remaining NFC teams, only has even been to the Super Bowl since the various AFC "dynasties" took hold, and the Green Bay days are far enough removed that this is a completely different team and a new generation of Packer fans (a good majority, I'd be willing to bet, would say "Desmond who?") who have seen their team win it.
They've never known what it's like to have that full season of fan-devotion, countless hours watching games and crunching playoff scenarios finally pay off with a ring. Their team's seasons are never described as 'magical' or 'destined.' There's just a painfully long segment waiting for them on ESPN so Trent Dilfer can praise the other team's quarterback and tell you why your wideouts never had a shot.
But I hope that this year, for one of those dogged NFC teams, everything changes. Even if it is the Bears, their fans deserve to know what that feels like. Don't get me wrong, whichever team loses this February, their fans are gonna feel a strong punch to the gut, regardless of who it is.
But for fans of those AFC teams, it'll hurt just a little bit less.
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