It's Only Football. Isn't It?

English: American football with clock to represent a "current sports or American football event" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a season in which the Minnesota Vikings overachieved enough to win the NFC North division title over the stumbling Green Bay Packers, who won enough to make the NFL's wild card round, it must gall the Vikings and their supporters that the Packers are moving on and they are not.

The final on Sunday was Seattle Seahawks 10, Vikings 9.  Contrary to popular belief, this playoff loss was a team effort.  It wasn't just Blair Walsh's incredulous miss from 27 yards that would have won the game for the Vikings in the below-zero cold of TCF Bank Stadium.  It was Walsh being the entire offense with nine points on three field goals.  It was Adrian Peterson fumbling the ball at a most inopportune moment in the fourth quarter, which would have eliminated the need for Walsh to win the game.

After three quarters of being frozen out offensively, the Seahawks' Russell Wilson showed what a savvy, experienced playoff quarterback looked like.  He made the most out of a fumbled snap, picking it up at midfield and throwing the ball to an open receiver who almost took it to the end zone, resulting in the game's only touchdown that led to Seattle's victory.

Meanwhile, the Packers will be moving on to Arizona, having won their wild card game at Washington with ease.  Aaron Rodgers also showed the Redskins what an experienced playoff quarterback can do.

With the season suddenly cut short, everybody is predicting great things for the Vikings for next season and beyond.  Quarterback Teddy Bridgewater and Adrian Peterson are the offensive cornerstones, the defense is playing up to its potential, and the Vikings are going back indoors.  On the other hand, Bridgewater has yet to show he can be an elite signal-caller like Wilson or Rodgers, Peterson is getting older, and the Vikings are going back indoors.

In their 55-year history, the Minnesota Vikings have had more bizarre things happen that have kept them from winning a world championship, rivaling Charlie Brown's attempts at kicking a football.  It's happened at every place they've called home:  Metropolitan Stadium, the Metrodome and TCF Bank Stadium.  What kind of horror awaits them at US Bank Stadium?
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Our projected Super Bowl 50 matchup:  Seattle vs. New England
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In the second College Football Playoff championship game at Glendale, Arizona Monday, the Alabama Crimson Tide won its fourth national title in seven years (only Notre Dame in the 1940s has also done that) with a 45-40 win over Clemson.  The Tigers had been the top-seeded team for half the season.

Tide coach Nick Saban won his fifth championship, putting him one shy of the mark set by another Alabama coaching legend named Bear Bryant.

While the championship game was an entertaining shootout between two Southern football powers, all the talk has been about how far the people who run the CFP would go to sabotage their own product.  Unlike last season, in which both semifinal games were played on New Year's Day in the Rose and Sugar bowls, Alabama beat Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl while Clemson took care of Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl . . . on New Year's Eve.

Granted, the two games were one-sided and ESPN kept reminding its viewers that the new Taylor Swift video was about to be shown on fellow Disney network ABC's "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest".  But New Year's Eve fell on a Friday this year, meaning some folks were still at work and/or had to choose between partying and watching football.

Add to that the refusal of the Rose and Sugar bowls to move from their traditional New Year's Day time slots--unless it's January 2nd, because the NFL usually has first dibs when the holiday falls on Sunday (which it does in 2017).

Predictably, the New Year's Eve games had ratings that resembled flat champagne.  Still, the CFP insists on putting its semifinals on that day despite pleas to move them somewhere else.  They might get lucky next season when New Year's Eve falls on a Saturday, when more people will be home.  Other than that, an awful lot depends on the calendar and what the NFL wants.

ESPN usually gets blamed for a lot of things when it comes to sports on TV.  In this case they really can't be, unless you want to claim that the Worldwide Leader spent too much money over the next decade to let themselves be pushed around by an organization that rivals Augusta National Golf Club in not letting TV networks call the tune on when to schedule their events.

But then, it's only football.  Right?