Hello all. Happy Friday Before Conference Championship Sunday. Lots of discussion about Manning-Brady 17 on the AFC side and the two best teams in the league facing off on the NFC side this week. Good football games are expected to fill our tv screens all Sunday afternoon in the penultimate week of the season, unlike the the College Football Playoff semifinals, which did not live up to the hype (to the tune of about $20 million).

Hype. It’s funny. Now that’s a word that I actually feel like I’ve had a break from lately. I mean, relative the nonstop bombardment of such terms to which we are all blasted on a daily basis. Christmas hype. Oscar hype. Star Wars hype. Not in the past couple weeks though. It was anti-hype.

Can we hype some #content about the [*Redacted] s being for real? Nah. Seattle’s deep post-season run of destiny? Over. Even the Rams move was more of a beatdown on the outlook of St Louis more than any unexpected over-the-top salesmanship of Los Angeles. Individual awards fluttered by without second consideration (CaMVP, DPOY JJ Watt, COY Ron Rivera, EOY Mike Maccagnan).

“Hold up,” you’re thinking, “why do Maccagnan and Watt, both whose seasons are over, get links but Cam and Ron don’t?” Well, the answer is simple, because [DFO] has been as guilty as anyone about not giving the Panthers their due. There’s simply nothing worthwhile to which the coach and star player of the team with the best regular season record and #1 playoff seed can be hyperlinked. Granted, this site also hasn’t called out Newton as classless so, I’d say, that’s about a 60% compromise, yeah?

Fortunately, with the playoffs in full stride, the hype machine is back to 11. Politicians are making sorry-as-hell bets, non Mile High weather is getting tons of press (as well as the associated conversations regarding toughness), fans are producing songs, and the teams themselves are keeping their fans on edge. And how are they doing that?

Hashtags.

Hashtags are the future, folks. And they are how to galvanize a bunch of rag tag citizens who don’t understand the importance of purchasing officially licensed NFL Equipment tee shirts from the Official NFL Fan Store at NFL.Com. Lots of money to made here so there’s a reason so much time and effort have been into establishing these hashtags.

Carolina Panthers: #KeepPounding 
Apparently more than just a playoff thing, ‘keep pounding’ is an excerpt from a speech given by former Carolina player and coach, Sam Mills, during his battle with cancer (he passed away in 2005). I did not know any of this before writing this post and now I’m just angry at how excited CBS is going to be to give us 73 hours of tragic Mills coverage if the Panthers win on Sunday. It’s actually a pretty good slogan to adopt even if you don’t know the backstory.

Arizona Cardinals: #BeRedSeeRed
Seriously? This is what we came up with? You’ve pushed the Red Sea moniker since Fake College Stadium opened and now you’re abandoning the not-too-bad #RiseUpRedSea tag for this? It doesn’t even really make sense. I get that the Cardinals PR team is trying to promote people posting photos in Cards gear — which is a great way to pressure people into buying new stuff and stop wearing that Neil Lomax jersey — but, newsflash kid, you don’t need to tell people to post selfies online. They fucking do it anyways. See, this is why college degrees are no substitute for real world experience (especially in Arizona where the education system is just all kinds of potato).

Denver Broncos: #BroncosCountryPlayoffs
Way to make Arizona look cutting edge, Denver. Is this some kind of subtle message that you’ve found your quarterback of the future in Joe Flacco?

New England P*triots: #LetsGo
While still embracing #DoYourJob, Robert Kraft continues his annual resolution to copyright the entire english language, one boring statement at a time. So, start saving your quarters now because, if you think you’re going to be able to give any sort of direction to another human being without ol’ Bobby K getting a taste, you’re sorely mistaken. Really looking forward to the upcoming P*triots hype of: #ScoreMore, #CouldYouHandMeThatPencil, #JustLikeWePracticed, #IDo, and #TurnLeft.

Also, Let’s Go requires an apostrophe and, therefore, makes for a shitty hashtag (to which all Massholes will respond that other hashtags presented would be written with spaces between the words so everyone is a cheat-AH and Cam Newton, like Mike Tomlin, has no class).