An even field?

Is the National Football League's AFC still superior to the NFC in both achievement and potential?

For many years running before this season, AFC teams had handily won a majority of the regular-season games they had played against NFC competition. In 2004, the interconference series was so bad for the NFC that both the St. Louis Rams and my Minnesota Vikings snuck into the conference playoffs with 8-8 records. (It was questioned whether they belonged, yet both teams won their first-week wild-card playoff games on the road -- memorably in one of those games, then-Vikings receiver Randy Moss pantomimed, uh, leaving some excrement in an end zone at Lambeau Field.)

Are things changing for the NFC? For weeks this season, we rarely heard anything but Patriots and Colts, Colts and Patriots. Only recently have the Dallas Cowboys snuck ahead to No. 2 in most power polls, ahead of all other teams in the NFL save for the undefeated Patriots, since the Colts fell to New England on Nov. 4 and then to San Diego just one week later.

Through nine games each, the AFC's six playoff teams as they would be right now - Patriots, Steelers, Colts, Chargers, Jaguars, Titans - do have a better combined record (40-14) than those who would be the NFC's playoff teams - Cowboys, Packers, Seahawks, Buccaneers, Lions, Giants (38-16). But add in the records of all other teams from each conference, and see that thus far in 2007, the AFC and NFC have identical records in interconference play. (The year's series was tied up last Sunday in a win for the Chicago Bears over the Oakland Raiders.)

For weeks through the early part of this season, most "experts" were already chalking up the AFC's eventual champion as the Super Bowl winner; now, most are giving it directly to New England - with seven weeks to go in the regular season!!! - without a second thought.

The AFC teams have now won four Super Bowls in a row -- to be honest, NFC teams had won 13 Super Bowls in a row over one stretch, including over all of my years in high school and college -- but for as superior as we've been told that the AFC still is this season, I would love to see the AFC's streak broken this season.

I am a true-blue fan of the Vikings (now 3-6) and have been laughed at in recent weeks whenever I point out that, mathematically, they could still come back to win enough games to reach the playoffs (especially when four of their remaining seven games will come against the Giants, Redskins, Lions and Bears -- oh my!!)

But even if, gulp, the Packers should officially make the playoffs and end up representing the NFC in the Super Bowl, I would love to see the Pack wallop the Patriots, if that were to end up being the championship match-up.

We've still got many weeks including the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to go before the conference playoffs will arrive this year, but I just hope that the Vikings will keep the NFC competitive vs. the AFC by winning at home tomorrow over the Raiders. (It will be, incidentally, the first Vikings game I'll have attended in roughly two years. Look for me in an end zone -- I plan to be wearing a blue hoodie KFAN Radio sweatshirt.)