Here’s the tension:

A. Instant replay ensures that football, a game of inches, gets called correctly down to the inch. It creates an absolutely fair playing field.

B. Instant replay slows down the game and features some odd technicalities so that sometimes extremely important, apparently reviewable calls cannot get reviewed. It makes referees a central part of the game.

Talk to me before the Super Bowl, and I’m pretty strong on the A side. Now I’m not so sure. You’re telling me you can’t review the 15-yard late hit on Ben Roethlisberger that continued a Steelers drive in the third quarter (this was one of three personal fouls against the Cardinals that drive), just because it’s a “judgment” call? Take a look at that on replay and there is your incontrovertible evidence to overturn the call.

I don’t think we can get rid of instant replay. We should all blame replay, though, for increasingly intrusive referees (and some terrible personal foul calls) and belligerently bored sportscasters.

Most comments about the new ESPN.com design, which was about a year in the making, likely focus on the increased video/audio components, or at least their bump in publicity.

However, my favorite aspect of the new site is the “Editor’s Choice” feature. Today it asks whether yesterday’s hit on Willis McGahee was merely legal violence, or against the rules. Maybe I respect the feature simply because it says “Editor” above, or maybe it’s a worthy replacement of the endless “SportsNation” promotions, which don’t provoke much insight. For example, today’s SportsNation question: “Which team is more likely to return to the playoffs next year? The Eagles or the Ravens?”

Um, after this NFL season, we have no idea. We can speculate endlessly about Donovan McNabb’s health or Joe Flacco’s maturation, and we will, but it ultimately comes down to offseason moves, health, and a host of other decisions or strokes of luck. Meanwhile, the editor’s choice feature asks a significant judgment question with actual implications.

Congratulations to the Arizona Cardinals on their Super Bowl appearance. As a Seattle Seahawks fan, I know how exciting a team’s first appearance in a Super Bowl can be.

Of course, Arizona in January is much different than Seattle in January, or Detroit in January (where Super Bowl XL was played). It’s like summer. How do those people understand the changing of seasons?

In the playoffs, they haven’t had to worry about the changing of seasons. Their first game came under the roof of University of Phoenix stadium, their second in Carolina, their third again at home, and the fourth will be the Super Bowl in Florida.

Maybe if this team were 15-1 and from a warm weather locale, we’d understand. But the Cardinals went 9-7 in the regular season, feasting off six wins from their lowly NFC West counterparts. They lost 48-20 in chilly Philadelphia to the Eagles, the same team they beat in Sunday’s NFC Championship Game. We could count a 30-24 Week 6 overtime win against a Dallas team that at that point we esteemed far more than the Cardinals. Otherwise they beat Miami in Arizona during the pre-Wildcat era and took down the Bills at home.

Nothing to make anyone believe they could win one playoff game, let alone one against the Carolina Panthers, who were 8-0 at home and the league’s hottest team. Of course, Jake Delhomme entered the picture (again, Seahawks fans should remember Delhomme’s stinker in the 2006 NFC Championship game), and the Panthers neglected their running game.

In this crazy NFL season, the one question we can’t answer is “why?” Why have the Cardinals won three straight games? Why did they win one game? Why does this Super Bowl appearance bear some echoes of Super Bowl XL, which pitted the Seahawks against these same Steelers?

My early pick: the Cardinals. They won’t fall prey to Bill Levy’s questionable calls, Kurt Warner and his receivers can certainly pick up the Steelers’ blitz, and Pittzburgh doesn’t have enough of an defense to take over the game.

Bill Simmons might have been exaggerating when he wrote in his column Friday that it was inexcusable for the Carolina Panthers to not triple-team a player like Fitzgerald.

How wise Simmons looks now. Fitzgerald just racked up his third touchdown catch of the first half. He faced single coverage in each of the last two – one, on a deep quasi-flea flicker and another at the goal line. Each decision is indefensible.

I wonder if Eagles defense coordinator Jim Johnson’s presence in the upstairs booth, rather than the sideline, has a certain effect on the intensity of the Philadelphia defense. Intensity, though, has nothing to do with the awful choice to leave Fitzgerald in single coverage (it just happened again as the Cardinals drive down the field with a minute remaining in the half).

I wrote this column for the school newspaper in mid-September, just as the NFL season got underway.

Let’s revisit my major predictions:

1. Aaron Rodgers will lead the Packers to the NFC North title. Um, not so much. Surprisingly, I did not predict that the streaky, and ultimately shaky, tandem of Tarvaris Jackson and (the aging) Gus Frerotte would lead the Vikings to the NFC North title. Rodgers posted great statistics, but ultimately faltered down the stretch of several games. With a more consistent running game, this prediction could’ve come true.

2. Matt Cassel won’t be able to save the Patriots season. Who knows what I meant by the ambiguous word “save”? Technically, I was correct. Cassel and the 11-5 Patriots didn’t make the playoffs, but Cassel certainly earned himself a starting spot somewhere for next season, once the Patriots execute a sign-and-trade. In my ensuing discussion of the AFC East, I completely ignored their only playoff team, the Miami Dolphins. So yeah, I didn’t anticipate a 1-15 team going 11-5 with a college-level offense.

3. The St. Louis Rams will challenge Miami’s epic run at 0-16. Soooo close. Right record to fall, wrong team to do it. If only I had paid attention to one or two Rod Marinelli press conferences before I wrote this prediction.

4. The NFC East will remain the most difficult division in football. This is also technically true, if we’re looking for the most difficult division to play in without committing a crime or getting sucked into the locker room drama. Maybe not the most compelling division in the league (AFC East and NFC South get nods), but certainly better than either West division.

5. A couple of notes on the Seahawks, including one about them making the playoffs with an 8-8 record. Wishful thinking. I also didn’t expect Larry Fitzgerald to become the greatest receiver in NFL history over just two playoff games. Congratulations to the Cardinals for finally “vindicating” the pundits who choose them year-after-year, thanks to a 9-7 record in a weak division and two warm-weather playoff victories against teams with no offensive output.

6. The media will continue to reinforce the stereotype of the great white quarterback. You might not think this is true, but look at how much more attention Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan get in the mainstream press, merely because they manage to overshadow their middling statistics with one or two clutch plays per game, than the true keys to their teams, like the Ravens’ less-friendly Ray Lewis or near-MVP Falcons running back Michael Turner. It’s easier to look at a quarterback as the savior.

7. Finally, the Steelers will beat the Cowboys 31-18 in the Super Bowl. I wanted to revisit my NFL predictions now, before the season actually ends, to announce beforehand that I originally typed in the Eagles instead of the Cowboys, but decided Dallas was a safer pick. For some reason, I chose Tony Romo over an excessively motivated Donovan McNabb. One more thing: if the Steelers and the Eagles make the Super Bowl, can we play the game at a muddy high-school field in the middle of Pennsylvania? These teams don’t belong in a warm-weather game. Bring on the rain, the mud, and the greatness.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs2008/columns/story?page=HotRead17/EdReed

A Hot “Reed,” if you will.

This is an example of sports feature journalism at its best – a single-athlete profile that helps us transcend our stereotypes and prevents us from extrapolating a player’s real personality out of the uniformed fellow on the field. This particular profile deserves special mention because Reed doesn’t have much of a dominant personality or any controversy surrounding him – he’s merely an excellent football player with rather normal aspirations beyond the gridiron.

The last two football coaches at my church-affiliated Division III school have each adopted a mantra of “faith, family, football” to define their program and its priorities. Somehow, it’s not surprising, because of the slew of openly Christian football players in the major-college and professional ranks.

On the heels of a feature article on ESPN.com about the often-misunderstood Kurt Warner, we have a NCAA title game (minus Utah…) featuring Heisman winners Tim Tebow and Sam Bradford, who also find support in God.

With Bradford and Tebow in tonight’s title game, and Warner in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, journalists cannot avoid issues of faith in their pregame profiles of the three athletes, all of whom are the clear leaders of their team.

It’s foolish to examine Christian athletes merely through the lens of their televised activities, such as postgame prayer circles or gestures to the sky (almost inevitably after successes on the field). Of course, it’s also foolish to examine Christian athletes merely through their other public activities, often the “good” that they do or the ways that they profess their faith publicly.

In the Warner article, he downplays his Christianity through anecdotes about him swearing in the locker room. The broader point is that he still messes up and that he doesn’t adopt a “holier than thou” attitude, even if some Cardinals apparently feel that way, probably legitimately. At any rate, in perhaps an awkwardly intrusive way, the article is a must-read for anyone remotely interested in how religion plays out in the public sphere.

Anyway, this Tebow article is written in such a surprised, admiring tone because Tebow hasn’t yet fallen prey to the moral issues inherent in professional sports. He’s not yet negotiating for a $49 million contract instead of a $48 million contract, and in fact he won’t get anywhere near that (which sounds fine with him). Tebow does all the right things publicly. His life is about being a Christian role model.

Bradford, too, in this article, discusses his pregame ritual of reading the story of David and Goliath (from 1 Samuel).

Anyway, I primarily want to pose questions with this post.

My perception is that football players as a whole are either more public about their faith, or that a greater percentage of football players are faithful, as compared to other sports. Note the large postgame prayer circles. Note the many quarterbacks who talk about their faith and its connection to their leadership. Maybe this is a mere error of perception, because football players perform only once a week, making their games much more of an isolated event than the long, rigorous seasons of basketball or baseball. Think about this: maybe the weekly ritual aspect of football, even if games happen on Sundays, play into the weekly ritual aspects of Christianity in its mainstream American form.

I’d be interested to learn about other examples, whether of Christian football players, or of athletes from other faiths (this in particular), regardless of their sport.

Matt Ryan whistled down in the end zone after two Cardinals clutched him and stopped his forward progress. With those players still clinging to him, and milliseconds after the whistle, Ryan completed a short pass to Michael Turner for a gain. Instead the officials call a safety on Ryan.

Worse, Cris Collinsworth loves the call. Listen, if Ryan was holding the ball with his head down, I understand whistling the play dead to protect the man from getting pancaked. But the quarterback looked straight ahead and held the ball up while the Cardinals held him. Reward his resourcefulness. A no-fun rule that really hurt the Falcons here.

Another crucial point: play-by-play men serve up opinions to analysts on a plate. Collinsworth never got challenged on his point; instead, the play-by-play guy I’d never heard of lobs him a question. Put me in the booth!

A few thoughts:

1. Michael Turner is not quick. He might have 4.4 speed, according to Cris Collinsworth, but he doesn’t hit holes with any sort of burst. Atlanta’s change-of-pace back Jerious Norwood (a backup with serious starting potential) just broke an 8-yard run and probably could use more carries.

2. The Atlanta offensive line looked out of sorts, but has come around in the first few minutes of the second quarter.

3. Larry Fitzgerald is a big-time receiver. After his incredible touchdown, NBA aired a short clip in which Kurt Warner emphasized that Fitzgerald makes catches like that every day. Shortly afterward, receiving running mate Anquan Boldin dropped an easy pass across the middle. Advantage: Fitzgerald. I’m partial to my fantasy guys.

4. I enjoy a rare opportunity to watch Atlanta play. Well-coached, disciplined team that won’t get blown out by many opponents. Their recent drive just turned this game’s momentum from a sloppy affair into playoff football. Let’s get serious.