By Stephen Silver

So it’s Steelers vs. Seahawks. As I demonstrated the other week, every Super Bowl matchup had a predictable hype angle going into it. But Steelers vs. Seahawks is without a natural hook, except that it’s a one-seed against a six-seed, both team nicknames start with an “S,” and in the ’80s both teams had coaches named “Chuck.”

But of course, the angle we’ll be hearing is, “Bettis—Back to Detroit.” It’s the “Will TO Play?” of Super Bowl XL. The long-beloved future Hall of Famer, about to retire, never having played in a Super Bowl, returns to his hometown to finally play in one. It’s a heartwarming story, certain to become extremely tiresome as the next week and a half wears on. Expect “Bettis Fatigue” stories to begin appearing on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. It will be the second most popular press story of Super Bowl week, after, “We really hate having to be in Detroit.”

We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though. Here’s another angle: Both teams reached the Super Bowl by defeating underperforming quarterbacks named Jake in the conference title games, thus winning blowouts in games that were supposed to be close.

The Steelers won in Denver behind the heroics of Ben Roethlisberger, who, after flopping in both playoff games last year, has had the sort of postseason Tom Brady used to have. Jake Plummer, meanwhile, didn’t do a whole lot to assuage fears that he’s still the mediocre Jake of old, and added to the misery by showing up with a beard and hairstyle that made him uncannily resemble the “Macho Man,” Randy Savage.

The Seahawks, meanwhile, managed to confine Steve Smith’s extreme anger to sideline tirades, and thus shot down the Panthers in a way the team with the best defense in the league, the Bears, could not. Coming a week after their first playoff victory in over 20 years, Seattle goes to their first Super Bowl, attempting to win Seattle’s first professional sports championship since the Sonics in 1979. 

Fans in Philadelphia, meanwhile, especially enjoyed watching the first Eagles-free NFC championship game in five years. The Chunky Soup commercials with McNabb’s mom were for sure the best part.

Elsewhere in the league, the Lions hired Rod Marinelli as coach but have failed to fire Matt Millen, indicating they don’t expect to be taken seriously for the foreseeable future. The Bills replaced Mike Mularkey with two-time firee Dick Jauron, whose new boss is older than my boss and your boss combined. And the Texans have chosen to give former Elway backup Gary Kubiak the keys to Reggie Bush.

Finally, Karl Taro Greenfield’s profile of commissioner Paul Tagliabue in last week’s Sports Illustrated has drawn tons of attention, probably because it wasn’t a straight hagiography like most stories of its kind. Things we learned: Tagliabue hates baseball, has a gay son and hasn’t attended a regular season NFL game from start to finish in many years. However, the report by the Boston Globe’s Ron Borges on Sunday that Tagliabue “is strongly considering calling it a career” strikes me as slightly bigger news.

Coming Next Week: Super Bowl preview