I hate Tom Brady.  He's incredibly handsome, hangs out with all the Hollywood elite, married a supermodel, had a kid with another, wasn't drafted until the sixth round, has won three Super Bowls. The only thing that would make his story any more Cinderella-esque would be if he gave it all up after winning tonight and went to bag groceries and changed his name to "Kurt Warner."

I'm not especially fond of Peyton's little brother either.

And Bill Belichik is as appealing and likeable as Emperor Palpatine eating babies.  He's so loveable that he cut a poor guy the morning of the Super Bowl after the poor dupe had the Patriots logo shaved into the back of his head....

So what else is there to watch this biggest football Sunday of the year?  Other than an unhealthy, sick and demented desire to see Brady broken into six pieces and buried under the halftime platform where Madonna can dance on his bloody bones...

Well, there's Wes Welker...the mighty mite that just keeps catching passes, racking up yards and scoring touchdowns...another one of those "great stories" that litter the Boston boys PR machine.

The Giants have this Welker-clone guy named Victor Cruz...another no name from nowhere who almost singlehandedly lifted the G-Men to these high and lofty heights.

But if you're not interested in having to hear about any more of these sappy, bad script stories...just concentrate on the Giants D-Line and try hard to imagine that they're wearing the Honolulu Blue and Silver.  Imagine that the Lions are being built upon the D-Line and defense.

And much more importantly, watch the cheerleaders....watch them as they cheer behind the plays as they cut to them in between million dollar commercials and stupidly stick ads on top of their pretty faces and gorgeous...uniforms...

And hope that someday soon the Ford's will change their stubborn minds about putting a dance team on the sidelines at Ford Field.  Hope...imagine...dream...

Let me start off by saying that I hated all four teams in the NFL Championship round equally.  I had no care of whether or not I'd be able to root against Jim Harbaugh, Tom Brady, Eli Manning, or Joe Flacco.  Couldn't care less...but I still noticed something that really irked me about these games.

I saw a grand total of one...one in two games...holding calls.  Not that I didn't see A LOT of times where it could have been called without question.

Now, there is a lot of belief that in the playoffs you simply "let them play" and maybe I'm down with that...but what that really does is completely change the rules.  It completely nullifies the strength of a lot of teams.  Teams have traditionally been built "from the inside out" with a huge emphasis on the defensive line...like the Lions have been built...and it drives me crazy to see hold after hold after hold not called...Why?  Because--please, please, please--when the the Lions start becoming perennial contenders, they will be one of the most hurt by officials looking the other way.

Furthermore, it takes away from the integrity of the game.  They say holding can be called on every play...it's a judgement call by the officials...meaning the game is pretty much being played at their discretion. 

Seriously, down the stretch, the Lions DL was mugged so many times, I think Cliff Avril had to file a police report.

And it's not just holding...there are other plays from this past weekend that drew my ire. 

For instance in the Bal-NE game, Baltimore wideout Torrey Smith took a pass down the sideline, tried to stiff arm a defender and dove more than five yards to hold the ball out over the goal line for the score.  Because it was a scoring play, it was automatically under review.

So the world got to watch, replay after replay of the play and what did they see...although no announcer ever made any comment whatsoever...Torrey Smith facemasking the defender.  In fact, the blatant facemask made the play even more impressive, because Smith grabbed that facemask so hard that he actually dragged the defender with him as he flew through the air! 

Why do I bring this up?  Other than because I am so outraged that the call was so utterly blown, but during the season, Lions WR Nate Burleson was called for doing the exact same thing...big play reversed...for the Lions...If Torrey Smith has a lion on the side of his helmet, the whole play gets called back, who cares if he scored or not.

Consistency is my big issue.  Sure it's easy to complain about the refs on any given Sunday, but do they have to make it so incredibly easy? 

Another example, the SF-NY game had tons of awesome hard hitting...tons of completely illegal--according to the rules--head to head contacts...No calls...And don't think that I'm against the hitting...I don't think it should be called.  It's football for heaven's sake, it's all about hard hitting...but if you put in the rules and you're going to penalize some teams you have to penalize them all.  It's supposed to be a level playing field.

Is it because it was in the playoffs, or was it because there were four successfully established franchises playing in the games? The rules shouldn't change from week to week for ratings or for anything else.