The NFC Championship – A Sunday To Remember

Agony or Euphoria?

For Seattle Seahawks fans, this Sunday will be a day to remember, but exactly how it will be remembered is the burning question.

After the Seahawks managed a victory against the New Orleans Saints, assuring the road to the Super Bowl would go through Seattle, the stakes were high enough. The 2014 NFC Championship game was already going to be a landmark day in Seattle sports history.

Then the San Francisco 49ers beat the Carolina Panthers. And somehow the stakes got even bigger.

It is the team that the Seahawks and their fans love to hate. It is a rivalry as bitter as freshly squeezed lemon juice. It is two division foes facing off for the chance to go to the Super bowl. And it shouldn’t be any other way: the two best teams in the NFC found their way to the title game.

I’m here to make a bold prediction: the team that represents the NFC will be the one with the dominating, top-of-the-league defense that pummels you with their toughness and physicality. They will have a run-first offense, but a mobile quarterback that can make big plays with both his legs and his arm. It’ll be the team with the passionate and animated coach whose found success in the NFL after leaving a Pac-12 school. You know the coach that sometimes looks just like a big kid on the sidelines?

Yeah, that team is going to win… Pretty daring, right?

The 49ers and Seahawks follow the same blueprint and are built the same way. That is just another element to what has made this rivalry so enthralling the past few years. When these teams meet you can sense the eagerness on each sideline, the desire to prove to the other that they are truly greater and to say, “You do things the same way we do things, but we are better than you, and we are going to prove it.”

Sunday at 3:30pm, at CenturyLink Field, both teams will have a chance to prove it. There is nothing Seattle would like more than to see Colin Kaepernick and Coach Jim Harbaugh knocked off their high horse. Russell Wilson would never stoop to this level of sportsmanship (which I applaud him for), but nothing would make me happier than to see Wilson “Kaepernicking” in the end zone after securing the victory for Seattle.

I am a Seahawk fan and I’ll be honest, I’ve restrained myself up to this point. Just like 99% of my fellow fans, I have a disgust for the 49ers that runs deep. I hope the Seahawks walk all over them; they are so embarrassed that they dread the day they have to come to Seattle again. I want 49er fans to look back on this game and get that horrible feeling in the pit of their stomachs, the one that takes years for the diehard fan to get past.

I need to see Harbaugh acting like a buffoon on the sideline while his team goes down in flames. I hunger to see Kaepernick remember that for him and his 49er teammates, there is no such thing as a good day in Seattle. I want the Seahawks to hurt the 49ers. I won’t wish injury upon them, but I want to see them in pain. Intense pain.

And 99% of San Francisco fans share my kind sentiments, only they direct it towards Seattle. There is absolutely no love lost between these two teams. Not from the players and certainly not from the fans. There will be no mercy in this game. No feeling bad for the losing side.

Somehow for the football gods a trip to the big show wasn’t enough. Championship Sunday will feature two of the best rivalries in football. In the AFC it is Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning. Despite Manning’s insistence, it is all about the Golden Boy and the Sherriff.

In the NFC there is no doubt: it is San Francisco vs. Seattle. It’s a bitter feud that spans across the entire 53-man roster and even the coaching staff.  It will be a game bursting with harsh words and hard hits. And afterwards we will be left with an even more intense rivalry than before.

Who will feel taste the spoils of euphoric victory and who will feel the bitter agony of defeat?

I’m going with the team whose coach jumps up and down a lot…