We're through Championship Sunday and I have to say I think I'm starting to come down with a touch of Super Bowl Fever. More appropriately, I think I've come down with Arizona Cardinals Fever. I love it when an irrelevant franchise is in the hunt for a major sports title like the Colorado Rockies two years ago or the Florida Marlins in 1997 and 2003. Because, in my mind, if Arizona wins the Super Bowl, it basically negates this entire season. "2008? Oh yeah, that was a weird year, didn't Arizona win? Yeah, you can't take anything that happened that year seriously."

So, if the Steelers become the fourth consecutive playoff team to not realize that Larry Fitzgerald enjoys catching footballs, I get to wipe the following things out of my head:

Mike Singletary dropping his pants.
Vernon Davis on my fantasy football team.
The season being brought to me by the letters J, T and the surname O'Sullivan.
J.T. O'Sullivan on my fantasy football team.
This

Anyway, there were plenty of highlights in the early game today. In no particular order mine include:
1. Shelbi, despite having no vested interest either way getting legitimately angry at the Eagles for not double teaming Larry Fitzgerald on every play. "I know they should do this! I know!" She exclaims
2. The Subway ad in which people fall out of their chairs and there is a disclaimer saying "stunt professional" at the bottom. Interesting. Apparently at work last Tuesday I was a stunt professional as well.
3. Arizona's defensive coordinator is named Clancy Pendergart.
4. How the Cardinals seemed to be deliberately trying to inflate Fitzgerald's stats by throwing him a touchdown on first-and-goal at the 1-yard line. That's a Madden move right there.
5. Wondering how high Fitzgerald will be ranked in the preseason fantasy football boards next year and wondering how much of a difference there will be if it's Matt Leinart throwing him the ball instead of Kurt Warner
6. Andy Reid calling a time-out toward the end of the first half which directly led to an Arizona field goal as, on third and long, the Cardinals likely would have just run the clock and punted instead of then converting.
7. Andy Reid not going for 2 at a very obvious moment and then David Akers' foot spitefully missing the extra point anyway.

But my favorite moment of the afternoon was in the final 90 seconds of the afternoon game between the Ravens and Steelers. First, Limas Sweed (not a stage name) drops an automatic touchdown and proceeds to pull a Matt Sherman in 4th grade basketball. This occurs when, after a particularly embarassing play, a player fakes an injury as an excuse for the poor play. And as Sweed was pretending to limp off the field (while costing his team a time-out in the process) instead of the usual polite applause, the Steelers fans just booed him. And I couldn't have agreed more.




"The time has come," Andy Reid said, "to talk of many things: of botched time-outs and
challenges and why I have no rings, and why Fitzgerald was left wide open and how that
clipped our wings."