Game (face) time II

Here we go again, even better than last week: is there anyone on the planet who would argue that we are not now down to the best four teams in pro football?

And that today's games, for the conference championships and a berth in the Super Bowl, aren't the highlight of the season?

On top of which, we get the two best announcing teams in football - Simms and Nantz on CBS, then Buck, Collinsworth and Aikman on Fox.

And both games - the first, Atlanta at Philadelphia at 3 p.m., then New England at Pittsburgh at 6:30 p.m. - likely be played in snow and sub-freezing temperatures, making it football as it was meant to played in January, on the frozen tundra (even if it's not on Green Bay's Lambeau Field, may Brett Favre and the Packers R.I.P.).

I mean, we get Michael Vick, who even the greatest players in the world say is "in another dimension"; Philadelphia, with the monkey on its back of year after year collapsing in the NFC championship game;

the defending Super Bowl champion Patriots

and Bill Belichick's demonic defensive schemes

against unbeaten Steeler rookie Ben Roethlisberger.

It doesn't get any better than this.

So don't bother calling or stopping by between now and tomorrow morning, 'cause I'm putting on my game face right now and it's staying on the rest of the day and into the night.

Or, to paraphrase the memorable bumper sticker from back in the day,

Don't bother knockin', cause I ain't unlockin'