Lovie-fest?

Others would have you believe that Chicago is the capital of the sports universe.

We haven't set foot outside of the Loop in the infancy of this blog. Honestly, it's hard to argue this when the Bears are hosting their first National Football Conference championship game since Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. topped the Billboard charts. And no, I'm not gonna DOOO, what you think I'm gonna DOOO, and discuss what it felt like the last time the Packers hosted the game.

I can't blame the kid. There's nothing quite like carrying the knowledge that one home game separates the [insert your favorite here] from an immediate opportunity to compete for a prize as coveted as the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The first two days after the divisional round is still a time for accepting tangibility and reality of the damn thing. Then, more and more, you find yourself visiting that place in your conscious thought. You retreat to the depths of your mind, nurture those feelings. Caress them. Without knowing how, by the time Thursday evening, you've transformed from Smaegol to Gollum. The thoughts consume the entirety of your being. Your constant companion.

It is in the throes of this remarkable transformation that my counterpart communicated to me a phrase that crystallized what a Chicago Bears fan, any Chicago Bears fan, is sensing at 4:08 p.m. on Wednesday, the 17th day of January, 2007: "I meditate a lot to forget about the physical realm."

Where you must mentally prepare for any result, except a tie. "A tie," the AOL Instant Messenger prophesied "is unacceptable."

Cold reason alternatively competing with the essence of irrationality. Or maybe it is the other way around.

I envy completely such a football fan.

That said, Chicago, this Sunday the New Orleans Saints will be the Copernicus to your Aristotle. And you thought this blog was going to continue to be a strange combination of "Tuesdays with Morrie", "Field of Dreams", and "Fever Pitch" (the movie that sullied a World Series 86 years in the making).