We Are About to Witness a Football Monstrosity

GREEN BAY, Wis. —  This is like ripping Sneezy, dumping on Elmo, trashing each of the 101 Dalmatians.

But somebody has to say it.

The Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars have ruined the NFL playoffs.

The Panthers and Jaguars have turned today’s storied conference championship games into freak shows.

The Panthers and Jaguars are not old enough, frustrated enough, or charming enough.

They are not wanted. They do not belong.

Apologies in advance to their long-suffering fans.

Heck, some of those poor people have not missed a game in franchise history!

The Panthers in Green Bay is like a heathen buying his way into church.

The Jaguars in a championship game against Bill Parcells is like a kid deacon calling out the pope.

Admit it. The proper opponent at Lambeau Field today would have been the Dallas Cowboys.

They would have slipped and slid into eventual ignominy, but at least they would have made sense. The Cowboys would have filled the field with the sort of emotions on which football was built--anger, fear, humiliation, revenge.

The Panthers will fill the field with . . . curiosity?

Admit it. The proper opponent for the Patriots today would have been the Denver Broncos.

John Elway deserved another shot at the Super Bowl. The city of Denver deserved another chance at big-game redemption. Parcells deserved a chance to pull another postseason upset.

The Jaguars deserve . . . what, an opportunity to show it’s a better football town than Gainesville?

It would be different if these were, as cliche factories like to say, “Cinderella” teams.

The Panthers and Jaguars are not Cinderellas.

They are Frankensteins.

They were built with a combination of parts never before available to NFL teams, a mixture of pieces that were powerful even before being combined.

So the franchises cost the owners $140 million and 60% less TV revenues for three years. So big deal.

In return for those hits, they received the most lucrative NFL commodity of all--players.

As many good players as they could squeeze underneath a $37.1-million salary cap, the same figure that governed the rest of the league, only the new teams were essentially starting from zero.

And as many good players as they could fit in two seasons of double draft picks, which included extra picks in the first and second rounds in 1995.

Yes, they were also given a kennel full of players from the expansion draft, the types of players that filled the rosters of previous expansion teams like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Seattle Seahawks.

The difference was, because there was no free agency then, the Buccaneers and Seahawks were forced to keep those players.

Of the Panthers’ and Jaguars’ combined 106 roster spots, only 11 are currently filled with players from that draft.

Castoffs? Retreads? Has-beens?

Not quite.

The Panthers have a first-round quarterback in Kerry Collins, a top veteran tight end in Wesley Walls, and a defense with four players who were legitimate stars on their former teams--Eric Davis, Kevin Greene, Sam Mills and Lamar Lathon.

The Jaguars are led by a former favorite pupil of Packer Coach Mike Holmgren--quarterback Mark Brunell--and a former Pro Bowl running back, Natrone Means.

Sure, both teams have no-names on the roster, but so do the Packers and Patriots.

The Panther and Jaguar leaders are veterans who could be leading other teams into the playoffs if the two new teams didn’t exist.

These teams have two of the best coaching and front-office groups in the game.

But everything was made too easy for them.

Then these Frankensteins make the playoffs after two years and we’re supposed to go ga-ga?

Not in football, we don’t. Not in the only sport that equates endurance with achievement.

Football is the only sport where, the longer it takes you to score, the better. Isn’t a game-winning drive of 15 plays always more celebrated than one of two plays?

Football is the only sport where fans pride themselves on arriving three hours before a game, staying two hours afterward, remaining outside in terrible conditions throughout.

So, for now, football should not be celebrating the Panthers and Jaguars.

The NFL will counter these arguments by saying that to allow those teams to begin life as a doormat would be bad for the game. Since when?

Football permanently won the hearts of many in the 1980s when the Seahawks advanced to the AFC championship game. Will there be a bigger story in sports than when the Super Bowl finally features the Buccaneers?

The Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars are about as cuddly as a Cabbage Patch Kids Snacktime doll.

Fun to look at, but you wish they would stay the heck out of your hair.