Any final matchup will work
Please don’t bother me this afternoon.
Don’t phone, fax, text, blog, Twitter, e-mail, voicemail, snail-mail or try to knock on my front door.
I’ll be watching the games. The NFL’s Championship Sunday always is the best day of the year for football fans and, as an added bonus, today’s games deliver a South Florida Super Bowl that can’t lose.
There’s no booby prize in this Final Four. No mystery meat. Every potential Super Bowl matchup works.
On the NFC side, do you want a feel-good, post-Katrina New Orleans franchise that’s never been to a Super Bowl (42 years and counting) or a soap-opera Minnesota team that’s never won one (0-4 and holding)?
On the AFC side, there’s the heavyweight Indianapolis franchise taking on a New York Jets team that’s either Cinderella or the Wicked Stepmother, depending on your Dolphins’ worldview.
Locally, nationally, historically, star-studdedly, the Super Bowl in Florida should be a hit. That’s unusual, too. The last three Super Bowls here brought the boring 2006 Bears (Lovie Smith the coach, Rex Grossman the QB), the nothing 1999 Atlanta (name a player – besides Eugene Robinson ) and the 1996 Chargers (wiped out by San Francisco).
About the only thing lacking in today’s Final Four is coaching pedigree. That’s typically a given in the Super Bowl. But none of the four coaches today has a championship on his resume. None has been to a Super Bowl.
The Jets’ Rex Ryan and Colts’ Jim Caldwell are rookie head coaches, too. They present the kind of extremes we’ll get in a Super Bowl week. Ryan never stops making headlines. Caldwell’s never made one. Ryan would be king of Super Bowl Week. Caldwell would be largely ignored in favor of quarterback Peyton Manning.
Manning is one of the most common links to these four finalists: domes and passing. New Orleans’ Drew Brees threw for more touchdowns (34) than any quarterback this year. Minnesota’s Brett Favre and Manning tied for second with 33.
The Jets, by all measure, are the old-school team.
“Running the ball, winning with defense, that’s their game,” said Dan Marino, the former Dolphins quarterback turned CBS analyst. “We’ll see how that works on the Colts. That’s one of the interesting parts to this.”
Running and defense worked for the great Dolphins’ teams of the ’70s, of the great Bears team of the ’80s and the Cowboys of the ’90s. If the style needed a motto, it was delivered when Bill Parcells thrust a fist in the air after his New York Giants outmuscled no-huddle Buffalo in 1991.
“Power wins!” Parcells shouted.
Does it still? Or do quarterback’s arms?
One game doesn’t decide that riddle. But these two games will decide just what kind of a Super Bowl we’ll have here. And what kind of visitors we will. Midwest heavy from Indy and Minnesota?
Or just loud from New York?
Great day. Great games. No matter who loses, our backyard Super Bowl wins.