XL

Was it just me, or were both the AFC and NFC Championship games kind of . . . boring? Sort of reminiscent of how the Super Bowl itself used to be, back when every year it was the Broncos or Bills getting trounced by a vastly superior NFC team. The guy I felt sorriest for last night was Joe Buck, the Fox Sport's announcer who had to try to make those last 10 agonizing minutes of the Seahawks-Panthers game seem worth watching.

Any early predictions for Super Bowl XL? I saw last night that the early line is Steelers by 3 1/2. This amazes me. The Seahawks went 13-3, won 11 straight games at one point, led the league in sacks, have a spectacular offensive line , a great linebacking corps, the leagues' most underappreciated quarterback in Matt Hasselbeck, and the NFL's best running back in Shaun Alexander. How is it possible that they're still flying under the radar?

All that being said, if I had to pick one way or the other at this point I'd probably go with the Steelers. They've gone through the one, two and three seeds in the AFC with relative ease (things did look scary for a few seconds against Indy thanks to Bettis' untimely fumble, but the Steelers were clearly the superior team in all their playoff games) and there's little doubt that top to bottom the AFC is the tougher league this year. My early prediction: Steelers 31-24.