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UMD’s Joshua Brown flew high for a slam-dunk among his 20 points against Northern State. Photo by John Gilbert.

The football season – never-ending as it seems to be – will end Sunday when Cincinnati faces the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl.

Frankly, I think it’s great that no team from Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Green Bay or New England is in that game, and instead two teams that nobody could have picked at the start of the season will end up battling for the NFL championship.

As usual, the Super Bowl victory will probably come down to quarterbacks, and both teams have Cinderella stories looking for a big finish.

Matthew Stafford spent 13 years struggling with the struggling Detroit Lions, during which he earned my sympathy when receiver after receiver seemed to drop very catchable passes, before being acquired by the Rams for this past season, and he has been brilliant all season – proving what a great quarterback can do when his receivers catch those passes.

On Cincinnati’s side, second-year Ohio native Joe Burrow defies his lack of experience by making big plays every time the circumstances call for one, and he out-dueled Ryan Tannehill to beat the favored Tennessee Titans, then he out-dueled Pat Mahomes and beat the heavily favored Kansas City Chiefs.

Actually it’s unfair to say he out-dueled Mahomes, because they both were sensational all the way through the AFC title game.

Mahomes has always amazed me by looking so calm on the bench, as if he could take a nap during the most dramatic moments. But in overtime, Mahomes made one unlikely panic move and his pass was deflected and became an interception. Then Burrow brought the Bengals in close enough and turned it over to an even younger standout, rookie placekicker Evan McPherson, who won the game with his 12th field goal on 12 post-season tries.

It’s been fun watching outstanding young players take over the spotlight from Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady and Mahomes.

And you also realize that if a quarterback is going to win the Most Valuable Player award in the NFL, it should be rightfully won by Burrow, who bought a surprising Bengals team to the Super Bowl.
If not, Stafford is a good candidate. But another choice candidate would be Justin Herbert of the Los

Angeles Chargers and Kyler Murray of the Arizona Cardinals, and Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills.
The Bengals, Rams, Bills, Chargers and Cardinals all had strong seasons and all were huge surprises.

To me, the Super Bowl is a legitimate toss-up, and I hope it proves to be as exciting as every game was during the last two weekends of playoffs.

So often the game becomes a blowout, but I hope this one lives up to its billing. If it does, I am going to have to go with Cincinnati to complete its magical season.

Hockey, basketball, movies!

My son, Jack, and I took a chance and went to Zeitgeist last Wednesday, and got the last two seats that were unsold to see the Minnesota premier of the documentary Hockeyland, a fantastic job getting inside two high school hockey teams as they played their season two years ago.

The filmmakers chose Eveleth-Gilbert because of Eveleth’s domination of the first decade of the state hockey tournaments in the 1940s and ’50s.

And to contrast the Golden Bears they picked the new, emerging state power – Hermantown, which happened to have high hopes for a state Class A title in Blake Biondi’s senior Mr. Hockey season.

It was fantastic, done well, and using close-up looks at real players, it couldn’t have been better, or nearly as good, had they paid millions of dollars to portray those kids.

There was a second preview last Thursday, then showing at Hibbing, and then off to the Twin Cities.
When it comes back for normal theater time, see it!

College hockey hits its stretch drive this week. The UMD men came off a bye week to play at St. Cloud State Tuesday night, and goes to Denver to face the first-place Pioneers this weekend. Denver has a 5-point lead on North Dakota, with Western Michigan is at St. Cloud State and Colorado College is at North Dakota – the team that faces UMD next weekend as the Bulldogs battle to rise into contention.

The UMD women are at home against first-year Division I team, St. Thomas. The Bulldogs remain locked in fourth place, six points behind Wisconsin and Ohio State, who are five points behind first-place Minnesota.

In basketball, UMD’s women easily blew past MSU-Moorhead and Northern State of Aberdeen last weekend, although they had to depend on their solid, pestering defense to stay out of reach of Northern, when the Bulldogs shooting went cold.

The UMD men, completing doubleheaders both days, also romped over Moorhead, and caught Northern at the start, jumping ahead, expanding the lead to 46-32 by halftime, and weathering a much stronger second half by the Wolves to win 88-75.

UMD’s usual dynamic duo, Austin Andrews and Drew Blair, did their part, Andrews leading all players by scoring 23 while Blair had 19, but Joshua Brown hit three 3s and scored 20 to give those three 62 of UMD’s 88 points.

The Bulldogs clinched the North Division title, and have only one remaining home game, against Bemidji State on Feb. 17.

In high school play, Hermantown went up to Cloquet and hammered Cloquet-Esko-Carlton 8-0 behind hat tricks by Kade Kohanski and two goals by Dominic Thomas.

The Hawks outshot C-E-C from start to finish, with a 49-10 edge at the second intermission, shortly before the game went to running time in the third period.

Hermantown won its second straight since losing 6-3 to Maple Grove a week ago by beating Totino Grace 5-1 on Saturday.

On this weekend, the Hawks are home against Holy Family on Friday and St. Thomas Academy at 3:15 pm.

Saturday, as former Duluth East coach Mike Randolph – now an associate head coach with Trent Eigner at St. Thomas Academy – makes his first trip home to the Northland by playing at Grand Rapids Friday and Hermantown Saturday.

Cloquet-Esko-Carlton will try to get things in order after a tough outing on Monday, when the Lumberjacks jumped to a 3-0 lead against Duluth East, but wound up losing 4-3 when East’s Noah Teng scored with 15 seconds left in overtime.

Canada stung the U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team 4-2 to conclude the preliminary round’s battle of unbeaten co-favorites. All five teams in the U.S. and Canada’s pool advance to the elimination round, and a rematch between the two teams is anticipated for the gold medal.

Maddie Rooney, former UMD and 2018 gold medal star, took the loss, although she got precious little help fron her flat-footed defense.