Championship Game Thoughts

Back in 1921 the NFL (or American Professional Football League, as it was known then) decided its champion at league meetings instead of on the field. Those meetings were only slightly less boring than yesterday's awful championship games.
My buddy Jaffe texted me midway through the Seahawks game and succinctly summed up the day: "Two crummy games," he wrote. I can't remember the last time I, or anyone else I know, used the word crummy in any other fashion except to describe Saltines. But yesterday it was oddly fitting. The games weren't totally boring, per se. They weren't terrible. And they weren't necessarily unwatchable either. They were just crummy.
Sadly, there's a strong likelihood the Super Bowl will turn out the same way. Playing away from their cozy, acoustically-enhanced home stadium against the best defense they've seen all year, Seattle should struggle offensively against Pittsburgh and will be unable to stop Ben Roethlisberger on the other side of the ball.
Seahawks fans and ESPN analysts desperate to say something will talk-up the team's easy win over Carolina and make the incorrect assertion that this was the sign of a great time peaking at the right time. In reality, though, yesterday's game was simply the final confirmation that Carolina has been a maddeningly inconsistent squad in 2005/2006 who also happened to play their worst game of the season in their biggest game of the season.
Remember, this is a Carolina team that lost to three non-playoff clubs during the year and struggled with the likes of Green Bay, Arizona, Detroit and Buffalo (combined winning margin in those four games: 12). They also lost their third-string running back early in the game and had their star defensive lineman, Julius Peppers, rendered essentially useless by a shoulder injury.
At no point during yesterday's contest could you look at Seattle's team and think, "wow, they're really good." Beyond the no-brainer decision to lock double-coverage on Steve Smith (you hear that, Ron Rivera?), Carolina's wounds were all self-inflicted. Each of Jake Delhomme's three interceptions were of the "what the f---?!" variety and John Fox's seeming refusal to change-up his defensive schemes crippled the Panthers. (Despite 19 of Alexander's runs going left - compared to nine up the middle and just six to the right - Fox (and defensive coordinator Mike Trgovac) kept overloading the defensive left. He also continually matched-up linebackers on Jerramy Stevens, who burned Carolina for three crucial first downs and the opening touchdown of the game.) In fairness, Carolina, like Washington before them, went into Seattle beat-up and exhausted from over a month of playoff-pressure football.
Earlier in the day, Pittsburgh simply manhandled the Denver Broncos. The Steelers' pass rush forced Jake Plummer into making mistakes and Ben Roethlisberger was flawless against the vaunted Broncos secondary. Like most recent AFC Championship games, this one was decidedly unmemorable (there hasn't been a "good" AFC title game since 1996, when Pittsburgh last made it to the Super Bowl after a Hail Mary from the Colts' Jim Harbaugh's fell incomplete at Three Rivers). Only the ridiculous commentary of Phil Simms stands out (just when I think I can't hate Phil Simms any more, he opens his mouth and says something even dumber than before. At least Bill Walton knows he's a joke and embraces it. Simms thinks he's the NFL's colorman laureate.)
I'd be remiss if I didn't delve into the real reason behind Denver's loss yesterday. The efficiency of Roethlisberger, Denver's inability to get their ground attack going and Jerome Bettis' apparent deal with Touchdown Jesus all appeared to benefit Pittsburgh yesterday, but it was clear why Pittsburgh is advancing to Detroit while the Broncos are left to wonder what might have been: Mustaches, or lack thereof.
The football gods appeared to make lip-ticklers a prerequisite for Super Bowl invitees; both coaches in the big game, Bill Cowher and Mike Holmgren, adorn their face with Selleckian masterpieces. It should come as no surprise that in this, the year of face-hair in the NFL, two mustachioed men will coach on the sport's grandest stage.
If Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer had not foolishly decided back in September to fill in his beard, rendering his mustache impotent, he would likely have replaced the square-jawed Cowher as the AFC's lip-hair representative. Plummer seemed to know this before the game and seemed powerless to stop his mustache-less fate: CBS apparently took new pictures for the photos that accompany a player's statistics and personal information before the AFC Championship game. As it was Plummer's original, mustache-laden, photo (see above, top right) that started the whole "Plummer porn-stache" craze in the first place, this was deeply troubling. What was worse was that in the new photo, Plummer's beard was on full display. And instead of looking like a "porn star on angel dust", as his old photo was once described, Plummer looked pensive, almost as if he was looking off into the distance longing for the a simpler time when his mustache brought him those Samonsonin powers which enabled the Broncos season to get off to a roaring start.
Now, more than ever, it is important for Jake Plummer to bring back his mustache. After all, a bearded Jake Plummer has lost one AFC Championship game. A mustachioed Jake Plummer is undefeated.

- I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thinking about a certain Ed Hochuli question every time the massively-gunned referee made a penalty call yesterday. But since I'd rather be a liar than cop to wondering whether that was just a kick-up of the pleats or something else entirely bulging from Hochuli's mid-section, I'll say I certainly wasn't thinking about a certain Ed Hochuli question every time the massively-gunned referee made a penalty call yesterday.

- Eighty-one points?! EIGHTY-ONE POINTS?! That's just freakin' ridiculous. That's the only way to describe it. It's unbelievable.
You realize Kobe's going to score 100 this season, right? Am I the only one who thinks this is going to happen? I can't be. Consider: The Lakers have played exactly half their schedule and Kobe has already gone for 81 (EIGHTY-ONE?!) and 62 (in three quarters). In January he is averaging 45.5 points per-game and a whopping 35.9 for the season (since Wilt retired in 1966, only Jordan has more in a season - 37.1 in 1987.) In his last 15 games, Kobe has scored in the 20's twice (the same amount of times he's gone over 60) and has gone over 40 seven times. He's gone over 50 four times during the 15 games. In contrast, there have only been four 50-point performances by the rest of the league all season.
In an up-tempo game that's close (and maybe goes to overtime), why can't Kobe drop 100? Sure, it's not likely, but up until a month ago I would have said 81 was too.
One more thing; I don't care if both Championship games were amazing yesterday; Kobe's 81 has to be the top-story on all the sports Web sites today. Teams go to the Super Bowl every year, NBA players score more than 80 points once every half-century. (Note: As of 1:00 p.m., Kobe's 81 is the top story on ESPN.com.)