In the NFL, every team has a chance

Cebu - Can you picture a LA Clippers vs. Golden State Warriors series for the Western Conference Championships? In the National Football League, these things happen. In fact, the championships are on today. (see BALLS Channel this morning)

In the NFC Championships (Super Bowl semifinals) the Arizona Cardinals are the Clippers and the Philadelpia Eagles are the Warriors. If there is such a sorry francise, the Cardinals are it. To underscore the point, the Cardinals have been to only one postseason game (1994) since 1947. Ownership, too, has parallels with Donald Sterling.

For the Eagles, this is their fifth NFC championship in 8 years with one trip to the Super Bowl that they lost. But for a city who booed Santa Claus and hometown boy Kobe Bryant, only a championship will do. The Eagles were a dysfunctional team the first 2/3of the 2008 season. In fact, Eagles QB Donovan McNabb was benched for poor play and talk was that he wasn’t expected to be back next season. Then they turned it up a notch and made it to the playoffs, barely.

In the playoffs, they beat the Minnesota Vikings and the defending Super Bowl Champs, the New York Giants to come this far.

The other half of the semifinal, the AFC Championships, are between two teams with bruising defenses, the Pittsburg Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens. Because each teams philosophy is defense, I’d expect a low scoring ballgame. But I believe that the Steelers will win it.

In the NFC, the Cardinals are lead by the second most accurate passer in the history of the NFL, Kurt Warner. Warner, a deeply religious person, has an incredible story. From a grocery store bagger to MVP and Super Bowl Champions with the St. Louis Rams. He accidentally became the Rams QB after their starter QB went down in a preseason game. He then was released by Rams due to bad performance, was picked up by the Giants, was then benched and finally surfaced in Arizona as the second QB after stud Matt Leinart. But Leinarts injury and poor performance allowed the Cardinal’s coaching staff to start Warner this year.

After losing 4 of the last 6 games, the Cards were considered as the worst team to ever make the playoffs. But then they beat the Buffalo Bills and stuffed the error prone Carolina Panthers in the next game to be in a very improbable place- a game away from the biggest gig in the planet!

That’s why I have a bias of the NFL over other sports- you will never know the outcome of the game even if its between the best and the worst team. In the NBA, I would be crazy to say that the LA Lakers or the Cleveleand Cavalaiers won’t make it in the playoffs

I know that most of us don’t understand the NFL. The lack of TV coverage and the presumption that it’s purely an American game (full or hard hits and nothing more) is enough for most of us to switch to the NBA Channel. But if you try a bit harder to understand the game, you can feel the emotion, the passion of each play as it unfolds. Once you understand the NFL, the NBA is nothing but patintero. – THE FREEMAN