One of the many advantages that a sports blog writer has over a traditional sports writer is the opportunity for personal indulgence. A guy who writes a column for some official publication, you see, presumably has to write about what is interesting to a large readership. The blogger, by contrast, is at liberty to write about what may only be of interest to him.
That is the moment of personal privilege I want to take just now…
When the playoffs began, there were 12 teams. You may recall that I quickly embarked on what is for me an annual exercise -- the ranking of the 12 playoff teams in terms of personal preference.
Not prediction -- what I think will happen. Just preference -- what I would like to see happen.
So I ranked the 12 teams from most loved to most hated. The Packers occupied the #1 spot, naturally. But do you recall who was my #12 team? The Pittsburgh Steelers!
The truth is that almost any collection of 11 other teams could have been in the playoffs with Pittsburgh, and I still would have ranked them #12. If the Super Bowl had been a Bears-Steelers match-up, I would have cheered for the Bears.
Now if it had been Vikings-Steelers… Well, I just couldn’t have watched that.
In any case, my point is this. I would have cheered for anyone to beat the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. And I would have cheered for the Packers to beat anyone in Dallas that day. How painful, therefore, would it have been to see the Steelers beat the Packers?! And, conversely, how sweet was it to see my beloved Packers beat the hated Steelers!?!
I was just reminded today that that was the match-up -- that high risk, high reward match-up. My sweaty palms all that afternoon and into the evening testified to the high risk. And the lingering smile one month later is testament to the high reward!
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