Really, does it get any bigger than this?
To be honest, next weekend's Bears-Packers showdown never, ever crossed my mind.
I have had this pecking order of events to cover during my career and have checked them off as they came and went.
Bears get to and win the Super Bowl … check and check.
Bulls get to and win the NBA title … check, six times over.
White Sox get to and win the World Series … check and check.
Blackhawks get to and win the Stanley Cup … check and check.
The only rungs up the ladder that remained were the Cubs getting to and winning a World Series sometime, and then the Cubs and White Sox playing each other in the World Series sometime.
For some reason the idea of the Bears playing the Packers for the NFC championship …
Well, it didn't register. Don't ask me why. They do play in the same conference. So why not in the conference championship?
Probably because the Bears and the Packers rarely are good in the same season. They first met in 1921, they have played 181 times over 90 years, yet the only playoff game they played was in freaking 1941.
What did coaching legends George Halas and Curly Lambeau do all those Stone Age years, decide their differences with pinochle, backgammon and brass knuckles?
The Bears and the Packers were similar franchises on dissimilar tracks until the Bears beat the Seahawks 35-24 on Sunday.
Now here they are, preparing to meet on the lakefront for the right to play in Super Bowl XLV.
Please, be still my thundering heart.
“It doesn't get any bigger than this,” said Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, who normally isn't prone to express extremes. “I'm sure there'll be a lot of hype.”
Dick Butkus and Paul Hornung will receive more interview requests this week than they did their entire careers. Entire 24-hour news cycles will be devoted to the Mike Ditka-Forrest Gregg feud in the 1980s. Seances will attempt to contact Walter Payton and Vince Lombardi for comment.
This game is so big that fans in Soldier Field began chanting “Green Bay (bleeps)” midway through Sunday's fourth quarter.
Packers fans no doubt were up north in their igloos chanting their own profanities about Chicago, the Bears and the evils of Illinois' tax hike.
“They're our biggest rivals, right up the street,” Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher said. “They don't like us, and we don't like them.”
Something as trivial as a playoff game against Seattle is Toys ‘R' Us compared to something as colossal as an NFC championship game against Green Bay being more like an Army surplus store.
The Steelers-Ravens and Patriots-Jets thought they played rivalry games over the weekend. Those were get-to-know-you socials compared to the Bears-Packers main event.
The Bears weren't biting on their initial opportunity to trash talk Green Bay. Instead they complimented everything from quarterback Aaron Rodgers to cheese samplers.
“They're a great football team,” Bears cornerback Charles Tillman said of the Packers. “Aaron Rodgers was on fire (Saturday night). His receivers were amazing …”
If players refuse to amp up the pregame chatter, fans and media will be thrilled to do it for them.
This Packer Week should be like none other, at least none other since 1941.