Broncos vs. Seahawks

Well, I spent about seven hours planted in front of the TV yesterday watching both highly anticipated NFL Conference Championship Games.  As often happens with highly anticipated match-ups, the games, especially the AFC game, did not live up to the advance hype.

In Denver, Peyton Manning and his crew pretty much dispatched the Patriots with ease.  New England never seemed to be quite in that game at all, and when they did threaten to make it interesting in the fourth quarter, any hope for suspense disappeared when that two point conversion failed.  The Evil Coach and his Golden Boy Quarterback have been vanquished, and the "Can Peyton Get One More Super Bowl Win?" story line has been established.

In Seattle, a similar scenario seemed to be unfolding with the 49ers taking a first half lead against a Seattle team that didn't seem to be there at all.  I mean, the famous Seattle "12th Man" showed up, but where were the other eleven guys?  That changed completely in the second half with a lot of back and forth scoring, another terrific long TD run from scrimmage by Marshawn Lynch (does he do that in every game?), some interesting calls, or non-calls, by the officials, and three critical Colin Kaepernick turnovers that sealed the deal for the Seahawks.

(Random thought:  If the NFL has turned Mike Tomlin into Public Enemy #1 for standing in the white sideline stripe in Baltimore, what does that make Jim Harbaugh and his sideline antics? Seriously, that guy is completely berserk.)

And, of course, for anyone sitting on the fence as to whom to cheer in the Super Bowl, that decision was made very, very easy by the bush league antics if Seattle's Richard Sherman in the closing moments and post-game.  After making a terrific defensive play that ended the 49ers' hope to take the lead and win the game, he makes choking gestures and taunts SF receiver Michael Crabtree to the point of drawing an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, and if that wasn't bad enough, his post game interview with Erin Andrews was right out of Vince McMahon's WWE playbook.  Credit to Andrews who, in so many words, pretty much said "what is YOUR problem?"

It was interesting to see the Seattle fans on social media last night defending Sherman.  "He's a great guy"..."he has a masters degree from Stanford" (and I'm sure that Stanford University was just SO proud of him last night)...and the inevitable "but what about Greg Lloyd/Ernie Holmes/Ben Roethlisberger/name any other jerk athlete and how THEY act?"  Well, you know what, you may be right about those guys, but Sherman still came off as a bush league punk.

By the way, I went 1-1 in my predictions for the games raising my record to 7-3 for this post-season.  I think I know how I'm leaning on the Super Bowl, but I'll wait until closer to game day to make it formal.