Mike Wilbon's great column in Sunday's Washington Post

One of my favorite sports writers puts yesterday's Steelers-Jets game into perspective.

(I didn't realize that Jerome Bettis's legs were cramping so bad he could barely walk.)
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In This Classic Drama, Roles Changed in Minutes

By Michael Wilbon
Sunday, January 16, 2005; Page E13

PITTSBURGH

There's nothing more compelling than human drama in the playoffs, than the theater of an athlete responding positively in the face of pressure or being crushed by it. And there was so much of it Saturday, from quarterback Ben Roethlisberger twice escaping apparent defeat to kicker Doug Brien twice handing back apparent victory.

Jaded or naive fans think that grown men who are paid millions of dollars don't care as much as college boys on scholarship. They should have seen the Steelers and Jets in the AFC playoffs. They should have seen grown men praying and looking away from the field and wiping away tears. They should have heard the sighs of both relief and disappointment. It isn't often you see the hero and the goat switch places more than once in the final minutes, but that's what made the Steelers' 20-17 victory over the Jets an instant classic.

Ben Roethlisberger hadn't lost a game as a professional, not a single one. He had won 13 straight starts, led his team to a 15-1 record as a rookie, become the darling of a town that holds football as dear as any town in America, save perhaps Green Bay. But it really seemed Big Ben had blown it with just less than two minutes to play. He had gone an entire season without throwing a killer interception, but the regular season isn't the postseason and his pass over the head of Plaxico Burress that turned into a David Barrett interception appeared to be a stone-cold killer for the Steelers. Talk about rookie mistakes (whether his jammed right thumb was hurting or not). And talk about a play that changes careers. . . .

Big Ben could have been forced to live a long time with this despair. Meanwhile, the Jets' Brien was standing at redemption's doorstep. He had missed a 47-yard field goal with two minutes to play that would have put the Jets ahead, but this one, with four seconds left after Roethlisberger's bad pass, was from only 43 yards. If Brien could hit this one, it would give the Jets unthinkable back-to-back road playoff victories in overtime. You do that in New York, even after clanging the first kick off the left corner of the crossbar, and you're up there pretty high . . . until next week, anyway.
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More:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12874-2005Jan15.html?sub=AR

when the Giants won on a field goal in the closing seconds and all the Giant players were on the sidelines saying prayers and holding hands, only to repeat it the next game against Buffalo in the Super Bowl when Scott Norwood missed from 47 yards on the last play of the game.

Those kinds of games are what football is all about for fans.

We sports fans live for the thrill, the excitement, the pathos and the irony that well-played games - especially in the playoffs - provide. We love the adrenalin surge we get from watching frenzied fans rooting in their local Parthenons for their hometown warriors. We're on the highest of highs when our football heroes reach that Holy Grail of sports: The Super Bowl. If our team is the least-favored, we cheer for them all the more fervently (rooting for the underdog is a wholly American trait).

And we'll go through this roller coaster of emotions again today, and next week, and at the beginning of February in Jacksonville.

Gotta love it! :)