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Once clear sides are determined on the two games deciding the conference championships this Sunday, the job becomes deciding which one is the Top Pick and which one is the four rated game.

The Green Bay Packers over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is the most obvious side this weekend, and it is reflected in a point spread rising. The Packers opened as a four point favorite, a line reduced to three points, which has now crept back to the home team at Lambeau Field favored by 3½ points.

This line move, taking a favorite down and then back up, historically favors the underdog. Tom Brady and the Buccaneers getting a spread that presumably was moved down by smart money and now pushed back up with public backing.

Advantage Bucs.

The edges for Tampa Bay pretty much end right there, while the data points to a Packers win featuring Aaron Rodgers leading a double-digit point spread triumph.

Can we have a top pick on the Packers with knowledge that they are firmly entrenched in a point spread trap?

When I was 16, my oldest brother gave me a trip to Super Bowl I for Christmas. Jack was nine years older than me, still is, and his girlfriend at the time lived in Los Angeles and had a brother my age.

It was my first trip on a plane, and it was delayed that Friday night out of San Francisco with heavy fog … but once I arrived in LA it was a storybook weekend. Turns out Sue’s brother was a very cool guy who was friends with this up-and-coming band on the LA scene. They were playing a song in their garage that was popular at the time, For What It’s Worth, by Buffalo Springfield, and the football game on Sunday was played in perfect weather without a full stadium.

Well that band, the Backgrounds, never made it big. I could have known that with a basic knowledge of the music business given they were playing someone else’s music. But the football game played that weekend did catch on big time. It wasn’t called the Super Bowl when played on January 15, 1967, simply the AFL-NFL Championship Game, and tickets for the game that year averaged $12.

Now, I did have a basic knowledge of football in 1967, and when asked by the principal at my high school who I thought was going to win, I had been called into his office for booking bets on campus, I told him to lay the double-digit spread and take the Green Bay Packers.

In those days, the American Football League was considered a stepchild to the more established National Football League. The fact that the two league’s were meeting at all was due to an agreement ignited by Al Davis and consummated by league founder Lamar Hunt with NFL officials including Pete Rozelle and Tex Schramm. Davis had raided the NFL by signing top quarterbacks to exorbitant salaries that forced the established league to the bargaining table. The negotiations resulted in an agreement to merge the American and National football leagues into one league with two conferences, the American and National.

The two leagues didn’t begin play in that format until 1970, but had agreed in their bargaining that the contracts between the AFL and top quarterbacks would be nullified and the competing leagues would meet in a title game beginning in 1967.

As a kid fresh out of college and working for the Oakland Raiders my life was everything I wanted it to be. I relished time I spent with Al Davis, and those times I would sit in the second floor conference room listening to him and head coach John Madden discuss their game.

Often, the banter between Davis and Madden was lighthearted and anything resembling a heated exchange was more a jostling with each other rooted in a deep seeded respect for one another. One of their favorite debates was centered around the most important position on the football field.

Madden would tout the offensive line and how it governs everything. Davis would listen as Madden would explain that without an offensive line there would be no holes for runners or time for a quarterback to complete passes. And, without that, a defense would be forced on the field too often and set up for failure.

Davis may have agreed, but he never expressed that. Instead, he talked about how he contended the most important position on the field was cornerback. He would say with a laugh how it doesn’t matter if you’re controlling the clock if you have corners giving up touchdowns.

Now, in the 1970’s, both Madden and Davis could have this conversation with good humor because the Raiders had the best of both those worlds. Their offensive line was anchored by three future hall of fame members; Jim Otto, Gene Upshaw and Art Shell. Defensively, the Raiders defensive backfield had future Hall of Fame member Willie Brown, who worked with a trio of the best safeties and corners in the game, George Atkinson, Jack Tatum and Skip Thomas.

While the debate on the most important position on the field always landed on the choice between the offensive line and defensive backfield, both men agreed on one absolute, to win in the National Football League you had to have a quarterback to get the job done. In those days, future hall of famer Ken Stabler filled that role for the Silver and Black.