Four remain in Lombardi hunt
Thirty-two teams and one season’s worth of guts and glory have boiled down to a four-squad tournament that will decide the competitors for the National Football League’s ultimate game, and still few are sure with whom to side for this weekend’s 100-yard wars.
The Seattle Seahawks survived an early deficit to the Washington Redskins to advance to the National Football Conference finals against a determined Carolina Panthers club that clawed its way to victory on foreign turf the past two weeks.
Both squads are a little banged up, but all of the players on both sides of the ball are anxious to take the field despite injuries that would normally keep them on the sidelines.
Football players sustain injuries all the time on the field both in practice and during the game, as most recently witnessed by Shaun Alexander’s concussion and DeShaun Foster’s broken leg, but few fans suffer the same type of trauma that threaten to keep them on the sidelines on the home front—until now.
Fifty-year-old Steelers fan Terry O’Neil is a little more connected to his team than most, as the Pittsburgh native suffered a heart-attack moments after Jerome Bettis fumbled on the two-yard line while the black and gold were about to score.
Were it not for the actions of firefighters who saved his life, O’Neil might not have been around to watch his team pull out the 21-18 win over the Indianapolis Colts. The cardiac cheerleader said that he wasn’t upset that the Steelers looked like they were going to lose, but heartbroken because it appeared that Bettis was to end his storied career on such a low note.
“A guy like that deserves better. I guess it was a little too much for me to handle,” said O’Neil.
The fanatic fan still plans to watch this weekend as the Steelers travel to Denver to challenge the Broncos for the right to represent the American Football Conference in Detroit for Super Bowl XL, but this time O’Neil will be waving his Terrible Towel from the comforts of home.
There was little pain suffered by “Good” Will Hunter on the local side, as last season’s top prog edged the competition in the Divisional Round by picking three out of four of the winners. Hunter bagged another batch of beer from Pacific Trading Co. as Miller Lite’s Pigskin Picks’ top prognosticator. Rich Brooks, Jon Cramer, and regular season champ John Blanco broke even to leave the Lil’ Mahi behind with only one win.
The bittersweet taste of the postseason is beginning to settle in as only two weeks of football remain. The good news is that they look to be the most exciting matches.
