Championship Sunday

Conference Championship Sunday is perhaps more enjoyable to me than the Super Bowl itself. There's no two week period beforehand of extended hype, no half-hearted hangers-on watching the game for the sake of it, no real expectation of being entertained to an unrealistic level, just a more concentrated dose of pure football.

Championship weekend this year brings back rather less favourable memories, following the Vikings exhausting loss to New Orleans at the same stage last year. It has been like suffering a year long hangover to this point, but the prospect of two interesting games has just about finally shaken off the stupor.

Both games are extensively previewed at Football Outsiders, and I'm struggling to work out which will prove more eventful. In both Championships the sides have already met at least once this season, and with the Bears and Packers this is the winner-takes-all third round decider. I've watched both the previous games and their match-up in the final week of the regular season was a much underrated low-scoring chess match.

Despite John Madden emphasising last week that playoff games between two sides familiar with one another generally lead to more conservative play-calling, the act of feeling the opponent out one last time to find that one wrinkle or unexpected formation that could make the ultimate difference is what makes these games so appealing to the strategist in me.

It helps that the game could be played on a surface inferior to the condition of the turf on my back lawn at the moment, and if wind and rain become involved it will more likely negatively affect the visitors ('a dome team' as noted by Bill Simmons on last week's B.S Report podcast).

• A few interesting articles came to my attention from around the web this week. The first by Sports Illustrated's Joe Posnanski assesses the validity of the NFL playoff system in its current guise, and raises some interesting comparisons between the pro and college systems.
  
  The second, from the excellent 'Smart Football' site, examines a new study by a Yale professor considering the importance of first down gains in being successful across a game. It would seem to follow in the footsteps of the celebrated work 'The Hidden Game of Football' now aging gracefully.
  
  Finally, the latest college football machinations in the aftermath of the conference memberships chopping and changing. Texas has secured a Longhorns-only network deal with ESPN production which could, potentially at least, spell the beginning of more colleges seeking individual television deals and creating greater divisions between the haves and have-nots.