Right now, think about who is likely to watch the Super Bowl with you. Maybe you already have your Super Bowl plans set, but if you’re like me you don’t. Still, we can probably name 10 people who we’re likely to be watching with when Super Bowl XLVII kick off on Feb. 3.

I bet you can name two to five people who are almost guaranteed to be there and you might be able to go 10-for-10, give or take an acquaintance or two.

To go a step further, I bet that the only reason you might not be able to name at least two to five Super Bowl-watching friends is if you recently moved to a new city or you will be moving to a new city between now and Feb 3.

I’m not picking on you, recently moved person. I’m just pointing out that this is what happens when we make a transition.

And I think that’s what’s happening in the NFL right now.

I would have been more certain of this if the Houston Texans had defeated the New England Patriots on Sunday. If that had happened, we would be guaranteed to have a Super Bowl for the first time in 10 years that didn’t include either Tom Brady, Peyton Manning or Ben Roethlisberger. Let me be clear that I didn’t want this to happen. I wanted the Patriots to win for the sake of normalcy. I want to know that Brady is still the best quarterback in football as evidenced by him playing in the Super Bowl.

I’m not ready to make a transition.

But I still think that’s where we find ourselves. At the beginning of the season, if I had named 10 quarterbacks likely to play in the conference championship games, which will take place this weekend, this would have been my list: Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, Peyton Manning, Matt Ryan, Matt Schaub, Joe Flaco and Matt Stafford. Obviously, this list is somewhat in order of likelihood inasmuch as I would have said the first six are way more likely than the last four.

Only one of the top six ended up in a conference championship. If the Texans had defeated the Patriots, none of the top six would’ve made it.

For the sake of clarity, I’ll name the four conference championship quarterbacks in order of predictability — Brady, the Falcons’ Ryan, Flaco of the Ravens and 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

Following last weekend’s games, Kaepernick’s playoff performance placed him atop everyone’s “who’s hot” list, which perception dictates, right or wrong, that he’s the best quarterback left in the playoffs. Going into the playoffs, Kaepernick would have rated third in the category of dynamic new quarterbacks behind RG3 and the Seahawks’ Russell Wilson. But now, he’s unstoppable. Unless, of course, someone stops him, which could happen.

This happens, though. This is how we go from the Magic-Bird-Jordan era of the NBA to the Allen Iverson-Tim Duncan-Kevin Garnett era to the Kobe-Lebron-Carmello-Kevin Durant era. It’s how we go from Joe Montana and Dan Marino and John Elway to Troy Aikman and Brett Favre and Steve Young to Brady and Manning and Roethlisberger.

And the truth is, it’s how we go from our high school friends to our college friends to our post-college friends to the jokers we hang out with now.

But be warned, recently moved person, the Colin Kaepernick in your life right now might end up being one of your best friends of all time or you might not even remember his or her name a year from now.

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photo via bleacher report.

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