Precariously Balancing on the Fence...

The word on the street is that this Sunday is the Conference Championship games in the NFL, which for all you avid readers of Achanceyougottatake Sports means a freakish, bonus column, I know, I know, it’s crazy who’d ever have thunk it? The two games, one in the rainy confines of Seattle and the other in the thin air of Denver, might lack sex appeal to the average fan (I know my lady became far less interested after Tom Brady’s Pats lost), but if you cannot get excited about Jerome Bettis and Ben Roethlisberger leading Pittsburgh and it’s swarming defense into Denver, with their power running game, well then you just aren’t paying any attention. That’s a football game which deserves our respect. On the other side of the ball there is a lot to intrigue the bleary eyed who are still mourning the Colts defeat. After years of moribund play, Mike Holmgren finally has Seattle in a Championship game, he has the MVP (Shaun Alexander, really? Him?) and an all pro quarterback. He actually has a defense and he’ll have those wet fickle Seattle fans. While they mysteriously vaporize into the misty hills when their teams are losing (were have you gone Mariner fans, where? We’ve only been losing for two years), they have historically shown rabid support of their winning teams. They are championship starved and as Seattle’s 9-0 home record shows, will provide that proverbial 13th man. Not that it matters, because John Fox will have the Panthers prepared to deal with the noise. Everybody will know that every other pass leaving Jake Delhome’s hand will be going straight for Steve Smith, but yet he’ll still complete 12 of them for something like 874 yards. Losing DeShaun Foster hurts, but only a little. This is a back whom the Panthers lose every other week. Carolina backers expect to lose Foster the same way Sacramento supporters used to expect an injury to Bobby Jackson.

What really makes the Conference championships exciting, is the way any of the four teams could parlay this game into a victory three weeks from now in Detroit (Detroit, really? There?). In a year in which the NFC was clearly the weaker conference, its two best teams (not record wise, but talent and coaching wise), have shown their class in the playoffs, while in the AFC the top two teams have been swept aside. If they played seven game series, each of these battles would go six or seven, but they play only one game and as last week showed, on any given Sunday… If I had to rank the remaining four teams, based upon who would win on a neutral field, I would put them in this order: Pittsburgh, Carolina, Denver, Seattle, but they aren’t playing on a neutral field, they’re playing in Denver’s thin air and Seattle’s rain. Therefore, I like Seattle to hold fort at home. Carolina has all the talent to pull an upset and has already won some big games on the road this season (they’re now 7-2 away), but the Seahawks have a very balanced attack, which can control the game with the run or through the air, their defense is the best its been under Holmgren and like a feather on a scale home field tilts my judgment ever so slightly in their direction.

I like Pittsburgh, I’m not sure why, I think that they are playing some very good football right now. I like Bettis to score a couple touchdowns because he doesn’t want any more heart attacks from stunned fans, and I like Hines Ward to come up with a singularly big play, because he’s been quiet thus far. But really this game hinges upon who run’s the ball better. Both teams have crazy blitz packages and defenses which batter the hell out of the opposing quarterback, so whoever can get the hogs on the ground going, protect the ball, force a turnover or two, and work the field better will win. In this case, on this day, I think it will be Pittsburgh. Of course, maybe that’s just because with Dungy gone, I’ve toss my thumb out and am hitching a ride on Bettis’ bandwagon. He’s been a warrior for Pittsburgh, carried that team even after we all assumed he was finished. He’s a certain hall of famer, who played with class, dignity, and worked to help others. In a season where the headlines were dominated by the obnoxious, team disrupting Terrell Owens, I’d like the year’s final headlines to be about a good man celebrating his final victory, which just happened to be played in his hometown at the X-tra Large Super Bowl.