Feb. 3, 2011: 3 days until Super Bowl XLV

In order to accurately pick a winning team in the Super Bowl, you must breakdown the personnel of each team into offensive, defensive/special teams and coaching. Today I will be focusing on the offense for both teams.

Offensive line:
The core to any good team is its offensive line. If you don't have a great front five you won't have much success in football. The quarterback can't throw without them and the running back can't run without them. The Steelers were 11th in the league this season with 120 yards per game, while the Packers were 24th with right at 100. The Packers did a better job, however, of protecting the man under center by giving up 38 sacks, to Pittsburgh's 43.

Advantage: Steelers. Running the ball is the most effective way a team has success in the NFL.

Backfield:
Packers' quarterback Aaron Rodgers threw 28 touchdowns to just 11 interceptions. Roethlisberger, for the Steelers, had 17 touchdowns and 5 interceptions (through 12 games this season). Rodgers makes his offense work. They certainly have the ability to run the ball, but it is Rodgers's offense. The Steelers have always been a grind-it-out on the ground team that controls the clock and the line of scrimmage.

Advantage: Pittsburgh

Wide Receivers:
Greg Jennings is the best receiver in this game, averaging almost 80 yards per game and has caught 12 touchdowns. Pittsburgh's core of receivers are good with Mike Wallace and Heins Ward, but I expect the Steelers to continue their pound-the-rock mantra in this Super Bowl, just like in year's past.

Advantage: Green Bay

Feb. 1, 2011: 5 Days until Super Bowl XLV

Even with television trying to clean up the halftime show after the Janet Jackson incident, the Super Bowl still fails to bring in a good show. Sure, the Black Eyed Peas are somewhat more relevant than Prince or the Rolling Stones, but the R & B group's biggest songs, "Boom Boom Pow" and "I Gotta Feeling", were major successes in 2009, and would have been more relevant last year. Instead, those songs have been ingrained into our skulls to the point that, two years later, it gets the same play, if not more, as songs that just came out.

Why can the Super Bowl not give the fans a good show? Why in the 2000s, which was supposed to be a new age of life, did we get Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Bruce Springsteen and The Who? Not like it was any better before that, where they tried to fit 100 artists and one song each from them into a 8 minute time frame. None of the shows above came close to the absurdity in 2001 when Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Aerosmith, N'Sync, Brittney Spears, Mary J. Blige and Nelly.

The Super Bowl is the championship game of one of the most physical sports played. It deserves better than teeny boppers and past-their-prime performers to make a mess of their field. The Super Bowl used to have some of the best collegiate marching bands come play during the break. When Prince performed in 2007, he was joined by Florida A&M's band. However, the only part most people recall about that show was the provocative silhouette "the artist formerly or is currently or whatever known as" threw onto the viewing population.

I don't see this getting any better. The only way I could see a nice remedy would be for fans to vote online and they do some sort of band playoff to determine who plays in the Halftime Show. That way the fans get what they want. The Black Eyed Peas are an ok step in the right direction in terms of the kind of music that should be played, but there is a definite room for improvement.

Jan. 31, 2011: 6 Days until Super Bowl XLV

The Super Bowl is kind of a mix of emotions for me. It is the best game of the year in the pros and has become a must-see event. This year's game between the Steelers and Packers is a great match-up for me as a football fan. However, this is also the final meaningful game until high schools start back up in mid-August.

Looking back on the year that was in the world of football, it has been a very memorable one. We witnessed a great National Championship game between two of the three most deserving teams in the nation, which capped off an exciting year in the college landscape. The quarterback who won the Heisman and National Championship for his team was in a jumble of controversy all year. How could you not love watching that?

Things in East Tennessee remained on par with the previous years: The Titans didn't live up to expectations, the Vols brought us as far up as fans could go, only to bring us right back down (sometimes in the course of one second) and Maryville and Alcoa brought back their state titles to Blount County.

The Daytona 500 and March Madness are about the only things left to keep me sane in the world of sports until football season. That's little comfort for a football fan who'll still have five antagonizing months until kick-off. So let's enjoy this final week of the football season. Regardless if your team was two seconds away from an 8-5 record or your pro franchise was the eighth-worse team and dumped their quarterback and head coach, try and suck it up to look back on your favorite moments on the gridiron. Then sit back and enjoy a great game between two storied NFL franchises.

Jan. 29, 2011: 8 Days until Super Bowl XLV

Who do you pull for in Super Bowl XLV? If the Jets had beaten the Steelers, I would say quite a number of people would go for the Packers. I kind of like the circus Rex Ryan would have brought, but a bad first half last Sunday ruined any hope of that.

Instead we get probably one of the most boring match-ups in terms of what to consider when picking a team. There is really no one to hate or like, unless you already have strong feelings towards one team already. There could be a case that Ben Roethlisberger is the most hated man in this Super Bowl. His off-field actions this past offseason makes a great point. James Harrison has drawn the ire of the NFL for, what they call, violent play. Someone could say there is nothing flashy about the Packers. They can be a bit on the boring side.

Roethlisberger has been on his best behavior and actually seems like he's turned a corner with his personality. I for one think the NFL's penalties on Harrison have been a little too much this season.

Honestly, this Super Bowl has nothing but some genuinely likeable guys. Aaron Rodgers, Clay Matthews and Troy Polamalu are all guys that have some amazing character to match their amazing play on the field. Heck, even the coaches Mike McCarthy and Mike Tomlin are easy to cheer for. Just pray ESPN doesn't try and do a Super Bowl pre-game show with Mike & Mike & Mike & Mike. With so many players that you cannot cheer against, this Super Bowl has all the makings of being the most boring, at least when it comes to the week leading up to Super Bowl XLV.

Thursday, Jan. 27: 10 Days until Super Bowl XLV

Heading into Super Bowl XLV, what is the major story? Is it Aaron Rodgers looking to make his own legacy and get out of the Favre shadow? Maybe the Packers themselves making a return to "America's Game" for the first time since 1998? Can the Steelers win their third Lombardi Trophy in six years?

In my opinion, this game is about the season-long redemption of Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, but maybe even more important, will he be able to refrain from off-field controversies after the Super Bowl.

At Super Bowl XL, in February of 2006, Roethlisberger won his first Super Bowl trophy. Four months later, he found himself in the hospital following a motorcycle accident. This accident was only a year after Kellen Winslow's crash, and the league was concerned about these kinds of things and warned their players that they could be breaching their contractual agreements. Three years later, "Big Ben" won his second Super Bowl. Five months following that, he was accused of sexual assault by a hotel worker in Lake Tahoe. Not a year later, Roethlisberger found himself in a similar situation, when he was accused of the same thing by a 20-year-old college student. As a result of all these, he was suspended for the first four games of this season.

Regardless if you or I think the suspension is fair, or even our opinions on the various charges he's faced, Ben is putting himself into very bad situations. This guy has the opportunity to be in the company of Terry Bradshaw, Troy Aikman, Joe Montana, Steve Young and Tom Brady as quarterbacks with three or more Super Bowl trophies.

The thing about Roethlisberger, too, is that he is still in the prime of his career. The type of quarterback he is, being a tough-nosed, somewhat mobile and hard to bring down player, is on par with his team's mentality. He's also only 28 years old. Peyton Manning is 34 and Tom Brady is 33. Ben still has many years to play, and he could conceivably win three or four more trophies the way his career is going, and also the way the Steelers keep making Super Bowls.

However, if Ben Roethliberger doesn't keep his nose clean and keep himself out of these bad situations, these will be the things that people will ultimately remember him by. Right now, Roethlisberger is more comparable to Favre than is Rodgers, because this is a wait-and-see situation with both of them.

Tuesday, Jan. 25: 12 Days until Super Bowl XLV

There are just 12 days until the biggest sporting event in America and the AFC & NFC title games are still fresh on my mind. So many potential cool match-ups could have come from this past weekend. However, the Packers versus the Steelers is probably the best one. These are two of the winningest teams in the history of the NFL.

After all, the trophy that these teams will be competing for, was named after the great Green Bay coach, Vince Lombardi. Green Bay is also kind of the grandfather of the NFL, as they lay claim to the first two Super Bowl titles in history. They later won another with Brett Favre (which seems like a distant memory with everything surrounding him as of late), but they have only been back once, and that was the next year. Ironically, that title game was in 1997 and three years later the Patriots, the team Green Bay beat 35-21, started their own legacy.

The Steelers are the team that everyone knows they are good, but they never become the "flavor of the year", like New Orleans was last year and the Colts seem to be every year. Pittsburgh can become the first franchise to have won at least one Super Bowl in the at least four of the six decades the NFL has been in existence, at its current state. They seem to always be lingering around. Both Terry Bradshaw and Ben Roethlisberger have one big thing in common, they both were not particularly great quarterbacks, but they had great talent around them and each had defenses that were extremely good.

This match-up between these two titans of the NFL world has been a long time coming. This game, however, will be a battle of youth. Because while we will hear about Lombardi and Noll, or Bradshaw and Favre, or the Steel Curtain and the Minister of Defense, ultimately new legends will be talked about on February 6 that fans will be talking about for a long time to come.