There seems to be a sentiment out there that because neither of the NFC championship game participants reached the 10-win plateau in the regular season, that it somehow makes the NFC championship game less interesting or valid.

It's an outdated and unfair way of looking at things.

I use the term "outdated" because it sort of ignores two things that have become increasingly important in the NFL over the last decade or so: parity and, not unrelated to that, hot streaks. The talent level is spread so evenly throughout the NFL that (if we can exclude the Lions for a minute here) there's not much that separates the best team in the NFL from the worst. Winning a game in the NFL is a hard damn thing, and if you do it in 50 percent or more of the games you play, that means you're good. Period.

Winning nine games doesn't make a team mediocre. It makes it a pretty good team that, for some reason, lacked consistency. The Cardinals are a good team that shifted into cruise control when they clinched their division. The Eagles are a good team that sometimes gets confused about how much Donovan McNabb means to them and endured a two-game rough spot in the schedule, tying Cincinnati and getting blown out by Baltimore.

Don't let how a team played during a stretch earlier in the season keep you from believing that it's playing excellent football now. If you're looking at this game and saying, "Oh, this game sucks because it's between two nine win teams," you're essentially denying that teams can play better in one part of a season than another.

Is Pittsburgh the same team now as it was when it eeked out a 10-6 victory over Cleveland early in the season? Of course not. Is Baltimore the same team that got worked by Indianapolis in Week 6? Of course not. So why does Arizona have to be the same team now that it was a month or two ago?

In a league where the talent is bunched so tightly, tiny little things make the difference. Just a shred of confidence or team chemistry can mean the difference between a four-game win streak and a 2-2 stretch. The line between winning and losing is so thin.

Things vary throughout a season. Confidence wavers. Injuries happen, and so do returns from injuries. A particular unit on a team finally coming together (like the Steelers offensive line, for example) can happen at any time. There are times when things slow down for a quarterback and the game gets easier for him. Pressure and urgency vary from week to week. All of these things matter, and they can all change quickly.

Philadelphia and Arizona are playing excellent football right now, and if you don't believe me, I'm open to alternate theories as to how Philadelphia just beat the Giants or how the Cardinals just waxed the Panthers in their own building, where they were 8-0. My theory -- and this is crazy, I know -- is that it's because in those games, the Eagles and Cardinals were the better football teams.

And the last I checked, those are the only qualifications necessary to be in the NFC championship game. The Eagles and Cardinals are deserving. The system is designed to pair the teams that are playing the best now. Not the teams who got the highest grades on Chris Berman's third quarter report card.

Yeah, other teams had better records. But if you want to follow a league where your regular-season record determines what you get to do in the postseason, try college football. They've got this great system where a series of almost-randomly determined bowl games can often narrow the list of national championship contenders down to three or four, and then just leave it like that. You'll love it.