NFL 2013 Season Conference Championships Picks

This is Brady's 13th season. He missed most of 2008 with his injury in week 1. So if you discount that season, this would be appearance number 6 in 12 seasons (just confirming Jeremy's game comment). Of course, if they make it an then lose in the Super Bowl, he will have the most Super Bowl losses among active quarterbacks, which obviously should make the Patriots look elsewhere for the QB position next year.

And for my NFC comment, I'm a little surprised at how the Seahawks were the overwhelming choice on here. Granted, it's a small sample size. I could be wrong, but my guess is that almost everyone felt it could go either way but gives a slight edge to Seattle. Anyway, should be interesting.

Here's an interesting take on Richard Sherman's post-game interview. For all the barbs being tossed at Sherman for being crazy at the end of the game, it's nothing more than a product of an industry that sees value in shoving a mic in the face of a player mere seconds after making the biggest play of his career, or attempting to garner some newsworthy information from the half-time coach interview as he is heading to or from the locker room. For all we know, Crabtree could have been saying some pretty nasty things to Sherman all game, and since Erin Andrews was the first person to talk to Sherman after the play, the emotion just came out. It was, however, the cleanest crazy-person-live-emotion-sports-rant in the history of such rants.

The 49ers "survived" the Packers in the first round. I'm giving a slight edge to the Seahawks.

Missing a mugging in the endzone, and the most obvious hold in the history of the world on the most vital play in the game might have had something to do with that. Just saying.

Calling no penalties doesn't mean it was even.

The Richard Sherman thing is basically a manufactured controversy.

I think a lot of it is a manufactured manufactured controversy. I've seen way more high horsing about people on high horses over this than I've seen people on high horses over this.

... Belichick's comments were unprovoked, mind you, while Erin Andrews asked Sherman "who was talking about you" (a different question like "tell me about that play" may have extinguished the whole situation, so in a certain since she set Sherman up). ...

Also, to nitpick a bit, I would say it's not Erin Andrews' job to extinguish it unless it was going in some really bad direction. As it was, he broached the topic of people talking about him and she understandably asked for a follow-up. At least that's how I remember it.

Except this...there are good arguments to be made for people calming down about this, but why do people feel like one of those arguments is that Sherman went to Stanford and had notable academic achievements/pursuits? How does that matter? What is the implication here? Are intelligent, scholarly people immune from criticism for bad behavior or lapses in judgment? I feel like what these people are trying to do is "shatter your preconceived notions of what that scary dreadlocked athlete is" by encouraging you to embrace your preconceived notion of Stanford students as mild mannered, bookish folks who couldn't possibly be anything like the rest of those football players.
In other words, they're telling us, "See? He doesn't fit in the pigeon hole you made for him! He fits in this one we made for him!"

I didn't mean for it come across that I was suggesting that Andrews was somehow responsible for it. I was just contrasting that he didn't just give up the "Crabtree" thing as opposed to Belichick essentially starting his press conference (20 hours after the fact, when he had ample time to decide exactly what he was going to say) with "Wes Welker is guilty of the most intentionally dirty play I've ever seen. To her credit, she said that she never felt like things were out of control and that she wanted to continue the interview. Her handlers pulled the plug on it, which she speculated was because of fear that the language might have gone sour if it continued. According to Andrews, she said that Sherman "lost his mind and it was awesome."

Anyway, people seem to focus a lot of the discussion on how intense he was or that he was scary or something, but it's really about the message that he was delivering. The delivery itself just accentuated it. A crazy sounding positive/neutral interview would have been a short-lived novelty on you tube, but probably not much else. A calm interview where he said the same things he said would have still created tons of angst because it's just not pleasant.

Either way, if someone is going to create a meme calling Sherman an asshole, than Belichick deserves an equally snarky and vulgar comment basically saying the same thing.

I have another question, this time for Jon. Do you think the setting was important to people remembering it? In other words, being on live national TV right after a highly viewed sporting event? And that even if he was calm about it the reaction would have been just as angst-filled?

And if so, do you think people in general would have reacted the same way if Bill Belichick's comment had come during a post-game on field interview, in his typical calm and seemingly icy way of delivering his responses?