Dear Packers fans,

Congratulations on your team’s championship. Throughout the season and the Super Bowl, the Packers demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity and potentially devastating injuries. We enjoyed watching the tenacity of the team’s defense and the cool-headed play of Aaron Rodgers, a man who deserves a championship after the crappy way you idiot Favre fans treated him. On behalf of almost everyone at KSK, I hope you celebrate the Packers’ championship with all the Leinenkugels and cheese curds the region can muster.

But never forget one thing:

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We are living in a glorious age of schadenfreude. The reputations of our sporting icons are falling like our stock market in the wake of a typo. So this week we present you with the question, which sports personality’s reputation would you like to see crushed under the weight of scandal? We’ll kick things off with our own honorary selection, the Jesusback. If for no other reason than to watch Shanoff frantically defending his beloved.

Make your picks in the comments, and please wait ten spots before selecting again.

TR: HURRRRRRR Hey Brett I bet Aikman fondles my nuts like this the entire game.

BF: Awshoot thatainno meadyahumpin yobigolhushpuppy. Datdere loftyfeller gunnacuponolBrittfar’s gibletslikeuhprickerinthefield, itellyuh.

Wooo, Sunday Night Football! Oh wait, Steelers-Ravens? Can I downgrade that “Wooo” to a “Meh”?

Yes, it’s Pittsburgh versus Baltimore in the race for second place in the AFC North. The Steelers are without Ben Roethlisberger, backup QB Charlie Batch, and Head & Shoulders spokesmodel Troy Polamalu. In place of Roethlis-Batch will be rookie fifth-round draft pick and former Oregon Duck Dennis Dixon, who — as Cris Collinsworth will tell you several times tonight — has only thrown one pass in the NFL until now.

Thus, in order for the game to stay interesting tonight, we’ll need to cull all the hate these two teams inspire. I hate the Steelers. Christmas Ape hates the Ravens. Ravens fans hate Christmas Ape. Ed Reed hates not throwing laterals. 21st century industry hates both cities. And EVERYONE hates Ray Lewis.  HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE!!!!!!!!!!

The Ravens announced earlier this week that they’ll be passing out tens of thousands of rally towels at M&T Bank Stadium prior to Sunday night’s blood feud with the Steelers. Being that they’re made by Under Armour, you know they’ll have that special illegal immigrant craftsmanship.

This tactic is far from new; teams do this all the time when the Steelers visit for nationally televised games. Can’t let those TV cameras pick up a home crowd flecked with twirly yellow spots! The Broncos tried to shake up the tradition a few weeks back with orange pom-poms, which was, uh, an interesting approach. Anyway, it’s just particularly hilarious to see it from the Ravens, whose fans, despite failing to grasp the crushing irony of doing so while dressed in white trash fabulous purple camo pants, rant unremittingly about how stupid Terrible Towels are. And it’s true – towels as sports fan accessories are dumb. I freely admit that. BUT NOW YOU TWIRL THEM TOO! Welcome to the club, you unoriginal Old Bay bumf*cks.

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I’m the most sensitive person in the world to people hating on my team, but I can’t resist this deranged video comparing the Steelers unfavorably to the New York Yanks football team. If you say you haven’t heard of the Yanks, you’ve clearly been sleeping, because according to this video, they practice on a tropical atoll and have won 12 Super Bowls compared to the Steelers’ paltry three. Not only that, but the Yanks have a much more macho dead celebrity trainer and a thugged out Ben Franklin on their logo. Hate to say it, but: advantage Yanks.

Tip of the hat to PSAMP for digging up this honey mustard sauce-dipped nugget of concentrated insanity.

The Wall Street Journal takes a moment away from cranking out my pointillism portrait to remind us that the Cleveland Browns of Baltimore were almost named the Baltimore Marauders, which rolls off the tongue similarly enough to “murderers” to just maybe work. But, alas, the team took the name of a scavenger bird that figured heavily in a famous short story poem written by an author who had little connection to Baltimore other than the fact that he was buried in it. Unless, of course, they took their name from that WCW wrestler, which, while quizzical, but would explain a lot of the sulking of the fanbase. Or Raven Symone, who, like Ray Lewis, started out as a charming little girl, but then killed some folks (I’m assuming. She does work for Disney) and gained way too much weight.

/Charm City looks okay when you’re driving past it on 95
//that’s a lie; it still looks wretched
///has no use for Baltimore other than to make tasteless jokes about Chinasaurus

For all the readers who hate my onslaught of homerism on KSK and want to see me get my comeuppance, today may be your lucky day. Because there is no ending to the Steelers season that could be more embarrassing and soul-crushing than losing a fourth straight AFC Title Game at home to the shithead Ravens. 0-16 wouldn’t be as bad. Losing the Super Bowl, while immensely disappointing and painful, wouldn’t be as bad. Ravens fans can explain a loss away by saying where they got was a lot further than a rookie quarterback and a rookie head coach should have taken them. Steelers fans have no such fallback. Well, they can always complain that that Palamuuluu guy wasn’t totally healthy.

But with great risk comes great reward. The Steelers can go 3-0 this season over a hated rival and 2-0 against them in the playoffs. For all the talk of how promising Flacco looks, Ray-Ray, Terrell Suggs and Bart Scott are all free agents this year. Their best receiver, Derrick Mason, turned 35 yesterday (Why weren’t Ravens fans celebrating his birthday? Quick guess: He’s not white). This could be the Ravens’ best chance for a while.

I’d love to be here to live blog it for you (that’s a lie) but I have to brave the crowds in D.C. to hit the bar on the Hill. So enjoy the bloodbath in open thread form. And, hey, the only home win in an AFC Championship Game in the Cowher era did come against a Harbaugh brother.

Why is Phil Simms the only guy in that booth still doing the headline games?

Earlier this season, I enumerated just a small litany of ways in which Baltimore would barely qualify as a third-rate bombed-out township in the Gaza Strip. I could continue to list these ad infinitum, though I fear my hate would consume all of existence.

More than being possessed of a massive persecution complex that results in them being massive dicksmacks, I loath Baltimore fans for their false sense of toughness. I’d like to think that’s what rooting for a bunch of talk-talking, post-tackle-dancing, bounty-hunting drama queens will do to a fanbase, but I fear the problem runs a little deeper.

An instructive story:

I was at a game at an interleague game at Camden Yards in the spring of 2004 (this being still when the Or-ee-oos were the closest available MLB team to me) during the brief period when the Ravens were trying to orchestrate a trade for Terrell Owens which he nixed in favor of going to Philly (even T.O. isn’t dumb enough to want to play for the Ravens). The game was between the Giants and the Orioles, yet an entire section of Eagles fans had gotten tickets for the express purpose of chanting “WE GOT T.O.! WE GOT T.O.!”

Yes, at a game between the San Francisco Giants and the Baltimore Orioles, a group of Eagles fans had bought up an entire section at a baseball game and driven in just to taunt people from Baltimore about a football transaction that had taken place in the off-season. And this wasn’t a quick little chant. It went on FOR FOUR FULL FUCKING INNINGS! And nobody tried to stop them, save shooting them the occasional ugly look.

See, I respect the doucheiosity of Philadelphia fans. Because they’re legitimately scary. Truth be told, I’d be nervous attending a game at the Linc wearing visiting team colors. Not M&T Bank. Sure, pretend hard-ass Ravens fans will threaten you plenty if you show up in a road jersey. Stabbings, ass-kickings, other vague and unconvincing intimations of violence, what have you. And they’ll act on exactly none of it.

Because behind their (FEARSOME!) purple camo and plastic chains, they’re a bunch of exurban bitches wracked by insecurity. And guilt for having stolen a franchise. And the trademark Baltimore inferiority complex. And a Who’s Who of infectious disease.

Oh, how I hate them and everything in their city.

Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. I enjoy The Comics Curmudgeon guy. His wry take on the daily funnies never fails to brighten even the darkest day. The best part about him? His work is on the Intarwebs, meaning one need not visit Lord Baltimore’s herpetic lesion on the Chesapeake Estuary to access it.

For the rest of Bawlmer, let me extend to you my fondest Festivus greeting:

DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE

Preferably getting capped in the street like Bodie.

The Cowboys are in the process of being, to quote Emmitt Smiff, “blowed out.” Ben Roethlisberger was hurt (grrrr), the Patriots are on the verge of being eliminated with an 11-5 record. The Bucs lost to the Raiders. Detroit is 0-16. And the era of Favre is drawing to a close.