Sporting Madness

Who will face the Colts in this year's Super Bowl? Join me in the live blog below to find out! NFC Championship Live Blog

I'll be live-blogging today's games shortly, but first I thought I'd put up some predictions. Both these games could go either way, like anything in the playoffs, so these are just idle thoughts, not guarantees. If you want something with a better chance of success, check out Peter Pattakos ' picks over at Cleveland Frowns ; he's 8-0 so far these playoffs! With that out the way, let's get to the games. AFC: New York Jets at Indianapolis Colts: The Colts were a dominant team during the regular season. They went 14-2, and weren't particularly trying in the games they lost (one against the Jets). Meanwhile, Jets' head coach Rex Ryan thought they were eliminated at one point, and they only snuck into the playoffs on the last day. The Colts also beat their curse of resting starters with last weekend's win over the Ravens, so there's lots of logical reasons to pick them. However, I'm not going to. For one thing, small athletic teams like the ...

To get some material for the Vikings section of this preview of today's NFC championship game, I spoke with Dan Zinski . Dan does a great job of covering the team for Fansided's The Viking Age . My questions and his responses are below. Andrew Bucholtz: At the start of the year, did you think the Vikings would be in the NFC championship game? How about at the start of the playoffs? Dan Zinski: I'm not embarrassed to admit I thought the Favre experiment would be a flop. I figured he'd stink or his arm would drop off and we'd limp to the finish with Tarvaris Jackson as our quarterback, and not even make the playoffs. Once we made the playoffs, however, I thought we had a good shot to beat whoever we faced in the divisional round, just because we've been so dominant at home. I was surprised we crushed Dallas as bad as we did but I wasn't surprised that we beat them. A.B.: Adrian Peterson seems to be getting less attention these days, as much of i...

As part of this preview of today's NFC championship game, I spoke to my Fanball colleague Mark Hooper of Who Dat Blog to get his thoughts on the Saints. My questions and his responses are below. Andrew Bucholtz: The Saints didn't finish the regular season particularly convincingly, but they turned in a very impressive win over the Cardinals last weekend. Were you expecting more rust from them, or did you see that kind of dominant performance coming? Mark Hooper: To be honest, I didn't see that coming. I expected more of a track meet, and I thought that first play from scrimmage set the tone. I really was thinking the Saints would do their normal slow start then finish strong, but they were cranking on all cylinders from play one. Drew Brees had arguably the best game of his season balancing the running and passing game, keeping the Cardinals on their heels all day. The Saints could do anything they wanted at any time. A.B.: Both the Saints and the Vikings have ...

Today will feature the NFL's conference championship games, and I'll have plenty of coverage of them here. For starters, I wrote a pair of pieces for The Good Point talking to notable football bloggers about some elements of this weekend's matchups. You can check out the preview of the AFC contest between the Indianapolis Colts and the New York Jets (3:00 p.m. Eastern, CBS) here and the preview of the NFC clash between the New Orleans Saints and Minnesota Vikings (6:40 p.m. Eastern, FOX) here . To go along with those pieces, I'll be posting the complete interviews I conducted with each of the bloggers here. The AFC ones will be up shortly, with the NFC ones to follow in the morning. I'll also have my breakdown of each game with predictions up in the morning. Finally, I'll be live-blogging both games right here. Feel free to stop on by and join in the fun!

I'm finally back from this weekend's softball tournament in Golden, B.C. It was a lot of fun, and our team won our division, placing fifth overall out of 16 teams in the process. Anyway, I should hopefully have some fresh content up tonight. Until then, here's the final part of my interview series for my unconventional thinking piece at The Good Point . Today's instalment features my full interview with Frank Mineo (drinkyourmilkshake) of the great Steelers' website, Behind The Steel Curtain . You can also check out my full interview with Minnesota Vikings blogger Brandon Peterson over at his excellent site , Vikings' Throne . Read on for Frank's thoughts on the Steelers, Dick LeBeau 's defensive innovations, the zone blitz and the 3-4. Andrew Bucholtz: Many have attributed much of Pittsburgh's success over the last couple of decades to Dick LeBeau 's zone blitz scheme. How important do you think it has been to the Steelers? Frank Mineo: D...