The Bears play the Packers in the NFC championship.

They won’t play in a dome. They won’t play in balmy weather. And they won’t play nice.

They will be in the bitter cold, probably with a good deal of snow, a lot of grunting and a lot of hitting.

It will be old school football, bringing back memories of George Halas and Vince Lombardi.

This will be the first time in the modern era that the Bears have played the Packers in the playoffs. They played each other in the 1940s, but that was when there wasn’t an AFC.

I think there is an AFC championship game, too, but nobody cares about that.

The Bears-Packers match up is the game that people want to watch, because it brings back memories of the old style of football. It also brings back memories of a more nostalgic time in America, when our nation wasn’t going completely broke, when people had jobs, when our country kicked ass and took names.

Now, the past always looks better, more comforting than the future, chiefly because we all somehow survived the old days. And I am sure that back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, when the Bears and the Packers were in their heyday, there were all kinds of things that went wrong with our country.  Read more...