Why did we have to mess around so long with all this extraneous stuff?
Of course, there had to be a Regular Season and Surprising Teams and Resurgent Teams and Disappointing Teams and Experts Calculating Which Team Has A Chance To Sneak In As A Wild-Card Playoff Longshot, and the myriad Pregame Shows and Postgame Wrap-ups and Hope Springing Eternal In Rust-Belt Cities Where Football Is So Much Like Life, and Franchises Looking To The Future and Where Will
Georgia Take Her Boys and Blah Blah Blah.
But it was all Nonsense. Had been all season. Only two Real Teams existed: the
Dallas Cowboys and the
San Francisco 49ers . All others were mobiles hanging in The Classroom Where Football Is Taught.
The
49ers and the
Cowboys played each other once this year, on Nov. 13 in
San Francisco , and it was a Big Game. None of this Maybe The Little Team From
Green Bay Or The Clever Team From
Chicago Can Pull Off An Upset. No, these were Men Duking It Out.
And now they are, and thank god the swill has finally run off into the gutters where it belongs. The
49ers and the
Cowboys are so far above all other
NFL teams that it's a pity we can't turn their
NFC championship matchup this Sunday into Super Bowl XXIX. Then that anticlimactic thing occurring in
Miami on Jan. 29 could be some kind of postseason weenie roast.