At long last, New York and Boston gets to settle an overblown regional rivalry through the medium of professional sports. It must be very cathartic to finally get that opportunity.

Did you know that Week 9 against the Giants was the last game that the Patriots lost?

Were you aware that that very game ended with Eli Manning throwing a touchdown pass to Jake Ballard, who wears the same jersey number that David Tyree wore as a Giant? A David Tyree who made a Giant Snatch, which was the Official Bill Simmons These Are My Readers Most Luckiest Leg Sweep In Rocky IV History?

These will be IMPORTANT COINCIDENCES used to create an extra sense of drama for a game that doesn’t really need it, but you’ll be bombarded with them nonetheless. But it’s the Super Bowl. If it weren’t these, it’ve been something about Jack Harbaugh whipping both of his sons with the sticks that correspond to the colors of the teams they now coach.

Kyle Williams won’t be in the Super Bowl, however, as he is the worst and people who are the worst don’t get to be in the Super Bowl. Unless they happen to sign as a backup for a good team, a la Leinart in 2008. Good luck with that, Kyle.

It was a pretty fantastic day of football overall. Alex Smith did some reverting to the “We Want Carr” Alex Smith of old as the game wore on and Eli Manning got the bejesus beaten out of him, but showed remarkable toughness for a man-child who typically displays anything but.

Hopefully the Giants will get to apply one of those shots to Dreamboat before the entire New York cut down on the field by a American flag draped Goodell firing squad. Meanwhile, Niners fans seem pretty angry about the Bradshaw fumble being blown dead late in the 4th quarter, but his forward progress was stopped on the play, so live with it. We’re moving onto our sports championship sequel, which Simmons will rank far ahead of other Super Bowl sequels like Cowboys-Bills, Steelers-Cowboys and 49ers-Bengals because those teams aren’t really movie stars.

Oh, and Coughlin brushing off Eli as Manning was furiously yelling that the playclock was running out just as the Giants were about to attempt the game-winning field goal was my favorite thing of the day, except for the whole Lee Evans/Cundiff sequence from the first game, which I’ll have on loop the entire week and maybe also forever and ever.

Here’s your tortured Peter King lede for the NFC Championship Game:

“It’s going to be a blood bath,” Giants defensive tackle Chris Canty said this week of the NFC Championship Game.

Right sentiment, wrong adjective. “Mud.” Mud bath.

Lofty set-up, wrong grammatical device. Bloodbath is a noun; it’s not an adjective. “If I may say so, you look positively bloodbath today.” “Why thank you, what a bloodbathy thing to say.” As adjectives used to describe the NFC Title Game, we underestimate mud bath.

When the Giants and 49ers get together in the postseason, great things happen. Joe Montana gets destroyed. Roger Craig fumbles with a chance to ice the NFC Championship. People named Trey Junkin botch snaps on potential go-ahead field goals. And the refs ignore brazen pass interference on said botched field goal attempt turned desperation pass. More of that, please.

I’ll take an exciting game regardless of the outcome, but I am inclined to say I’d prefer the Giants win only because the idea of Eli having more rings than Peyton is delightful. Also, it’s been annoying to watch San Francisco fans first be like…

Then be all…

Anyone who sat through the BCS National Championship this week got their fill of hearing about anything honey badger-related, given Brent Musburger’s insistence on dropping Tyrann Mathieu’s nickname on damn near every play. So it’s probably poor timing for Jim Harbaugh and the 49ers to tell reporters that they are using the honey badger as their inspiration or spirit animal or what have you in advance of the team’s playoff showdown with the Saints this weekend.

We’re not adverse to the little critter having crossover appeal. Far from it. Recall that KSK featured the honey badger in a KILL KILL KILL post a year and a half back. Our only suggestion is maybe go a little easy on the honey badger overkill, sports figures in search of cheap motivational ploys. Can’t hurt to give the Golden Eagle a chance at being an avatar of badassery. At least you won’t be piggybacking on a nickname that was widely mocked just days ago on a national stage.

Because the Texans and Ravens got stomped yesterday, with a win tonight the Steelers can assume the top seed in the AFC with two games left against the Rams and Browns. Too bad the yinzers are without Maurkice Pouncey due to injury, James Harrison due to other people’s injuries and with a gimpy Graydick on the road against a 10-win team fighting for the possibility of its own playoff bye. Speaking of THE BEN, its his first-ever start in San Francisco, which Peter King might find INTERESTING because Roethlisberger grew up as a 49ers fan, just as any bandwagon hopper in Findlay, Ohio in the ’80s would be.

Our live blog last week was easily the most enthralling of the season, so I have little doubt the follow-up will be an inevitable 9-6 derpfest. At least you dear readers will get to mock your live blog moderating homer endlessly when the Steelers finish with 120 total yards on offense.

[In case you're curious about the live blog banner image]

Do you know why the annual San Francisco/Oakland preseason game was marred by multiple instances of serious fan violence? Well 49ers President Jed York has a theory, and it has nothing to do with excessive alcohol consumption or long-held frustrations over the team’s quarterback situation.

York suggested that a different type of crowd attended Saturday’s game than the one that normally shows up at Candlestick. “I think when you have a preseason game, when you don’t have your regular-season ticket holders coming to the game, I think that plays a big factor into it,” York said. He said that’s another reason why the NFL wants to eliminate some preseason games in favor of 18 regular-season games.

See, if the players had just listened to us and agreed on that 18 game season we’d be able to cut the preseason in half. As everyone surely knows, the preseason is nothing more than a breeding ground for the poor. So if you think about it, that guy who got shot should really be mad at DeMaurice Smith.

via Deadspin
Image via Yahoo!

BTW: If you’re looking to loosen up those fantasy sports muscles, play the Draftstreet baseball game over at With Leather. It’s free to join and you could win part of a $300 prize pool. Oh, you don’t want $300? Never mind then.

Not that anyone’s keeping score, but this is the third straight show where we’ve featured an interview with an NFL starter. This week’s victim is 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis, who stopped in to talk about his work in those K-Swiss ads that came out earlier this month.

Some of this was covered in the With Leather post, but a lot of it is new, including Patrick’s explanation of Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” is his favorite workout song. Am I the only one that automatically associates that with the subway scene in Risky Business?

You can roll straight to the Willis interview at the 40-minute mark. It’s a long-assed show; who could blame you?

We also interviewed Shakey. It’s exactly what you’d expect it to be.

You can listen to the show on the player above, download the MP3 here, follow the show on Twitter and on iTunes or from the host site.

Or to cornily reference another, more recent, Darren Aronofsky movie: Black Swoon. However you want to painfully set it up, Mike Singletary was fired by the 49ers on Sunday night after leading the team to its tenth loss of the season, which culminated with a heated sideline exchange with Troy Smith.

Singletary’s head coaching career started on such a promising note, both for professional and entertainment purposes, with a 5-4 record as an interim coach in 2008. That encouraging start (by recent Niners standards, at least) coincided with the new classic “I want winners” press conference rant and the incident where Singletary dropped trou in the locker room at halftime to fire his team up.

In the time since, it’s been mostly giant crosses festooned around his neck, statements of absolute certitude followed closely by comic ineptitude and releasing a DVD that will show you how to be sub .500 in your everyday life. We’ll miss Singletary’s over-the-top antics and ice grilling of referees, but his departure opens up yet another vacancy for Jon Gruden to be a future failure. Odds are he’s going to get one of them.

This is what we killed all those Indians and Mexicans for? What a gyp. The best football team west of the Mississippi is… what? The Chiefs? Maybe the Chargers. Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? The Cardinals are 4-9 and they’re still not mathematically eliminated from the playoffs because they could still technically win the NFC West.

Antonio Gates, Malcom Floyd and Patrick Crayton are all inactive tonight. So if you have Vincent Jackson in fantasy, then congrats, jerk. Marmalard gonna have to carry the team on his back, doh. FOR JESUS MADDEN! Meanwhile, Alex Smith flashed his one allotted glimmer of competency last week, so expect no fewer than five pick-sixes tonight.

Unrelated, but I think this would also be my reaction if I had to view Norv’s crater face from up close. GAH! LASERFACE IS CRIPPLED WITH BY UNSIGHTLINESS!

As will be cited no fewer than 600 times per minute this evening, the winner of this game, despite being 4-7, will only be a game behind Seattle and St. Louis for first place in the NFC West. And that’s fantastic. I hope the winner of this division loses 10 games. And then goes on to win the conference. Something extreme that would impel the league to do something with its playoff structure. Of course, whatever solution they came up with would be even worse somehow.

In the meantime, ESPN is pulling out all the stops to inject hype into this contest during the pregame.

Here’s this week’s Designed Rush feature at SB Nation.

BOOSH! That’s stone cold certitude, served Mike Singletary style, which means pantsless while losing by 30 points to the Seahawks. While Singletary has so far been an okay head coach, he’s excelled like few other in communicating through unalloyed coachspeak at all times. Being grilled by a stupid sports journalist about how Yahoo! reported that Alex Smith experienced problems getting the playcalls in from offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye? Antagonize like you never antagonized before!

No really sure what the need for the fuss is, especially when we know it was Raye’s insipid music keeping the playcalls from being heard.