Three titans, plus Titans

The gooey sentimentalist, of course, must root for the Piano Recital Bowl now.

The Piano Recital Bowl is what the Blob will always call Super Bowl I, Green Bay vs. Kansas City, because the Blob was going head-to-head with Brahms while Bart Starr was throwing passes to a hungover Max McGee. See, my piano teacher -- a wonderfully quirky man with apparently little conception of  the world outside of crisp arpeggios -- had scheduled our annual piano recital for the afternoon of Supe I. So ...

So, there I was, sweating it out with old Johannes. And there were a whole pile of dutiful fathers looking on, yanking at their too-tight collars and trying to not to look openly pained as we all plinked away and oh my God I wonder how bad the Packers are beating them.

Turned out to be 35-10. McGee caught a couple of touchdown passes. Donny Anderson took the hammer away from Fred "The Hammer" Williamson and knocked him cold with it. And I didn't desecrate Brahms badly enough to make him bellow German oaths from the grave.

Fifty-three years later we're down to San Francisco and Green Bay and Kansas City and Tennessee, which means a Packers-Chiefs reunion of sorts could definitely happen. Which would be way cool in a kind of retro/throwback way.

Plus, it would mean the State Farm quarterbacks -- Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes -- would be playing each other for the big silver Lombardi thingy. And what a glorious shootout that would be.

Except ...

Except the gooey sentimentalist also loves him some underdog. And so it's kind of hard not to have warm feelings for the plucky Tennessee Titans, too.

The Plucky Titans (a registered trademark) are the ones who are not like the others, because the others are all 1 or 2 seeds. The Plucky Titans, on the other hand, are a 6 seed that's somehow jacked around and gotten itself into the AFC title game behind a gritty defense, a journeyman quarterback (Ryan Tannehill) and a blunt-force object (Derrick Henry).

They beat the Patriots in Foxborough and then handled the seemingly invincible Ravens in Baltimore with alarming ease, and there was nothing fancy about how they did it. Basically they just kept throwing Derrick  Henry at the Pats and Ravens until the Pats and Ravens said "OK! We give up! Now stop throwing Derrick Henry at us!"

So now it's on to Kansas City, which buried poor Houston 51-31 after giving the Texans a 24-0 head start just to make it fair. Then Mahomes started doing Mahomes things and Travis Kelce started doing Travis Kelce things, and the Chiefs outscored the Texans 51-7 the rest of the way.

It was, frankly, both awe-inspiring and scary to watch. Hard to imagine how the Titans are going to keep the Chiefs from setting the scoreboard on fire again next weekend.

But then, it was hard to imagine how they were going to stop Lamar Jackson and the Ravens from doing the same thing. And yet they did it.

So ... we could wind up with a Titans-49ers Super Bowl, too. Or a Packers-Titans Super Bowl. Or a 49ers-Chiefs Super Bowl.

Still rooting for the Piano Recital Bowl, though.

Hear that, Johannes?