Who do YOU think will play in this year's Super Bowl?

The semi-final round of the NFL playoffs will kick off later this week with four teams left in the mix for this year’s Super Bowl trophy.

On Sunday, the San Francisco 49ers will play the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship Game. That game will kick off at 2 p.m. in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta and will be televised on FOX.

Later on Sunday, the Baltimore Ravens will face the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game. That game will start at 5:30 p.m. in Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass. and will be televised on CBS.

In the NFC title game, I’ll be pulling for Baltimore, but I don’t know if they’ve got enough gas in the tank to get the win. Baltimore barely beat Denver last week, and the Patriots are especially hard to beat in the playoffs. In the end, I look for the Patriots to win, 28-19.

I think the AFC title game will be very close, and while I’ll be pulling for the Dirty Birds, I don’t think they’re going to beat the 49ers. Atlanta almost let Seattle come back and beat them last week, which indicates that their defense isn’t strong enough to win them a Super Bowl. In the end, I look for the 49ers to edge out the Falcons, 21-16.

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On Monday of last week, Alabama head coach Nick Saban got a traditional “Gatorade shower” at the end of Alabama’s dominating win over Notre Dame in this year’s BCS National Championship Game and a few days later someone asked me about when and where this tradition began.

While no one is for sure, the tradition of dumping a cooler full of icy liquid on the head coach after a big win is believed to have been started by New York Giants players in 1985. Many believe that Giants nose tackle Jim Burt carried out the first “Gatorade shower” on Oct. 20, 1985 when he dumped an ice chest on head coach Bill Parcells, who’d just led the G-Men to a 17-3 win over the Washington Redskins.

However, other sources say that former Chicago Bears defensive tackle Dan “The Danimal” Hampton carried out the first “Gatorade Shower” on Dec. 16, 1984 when he dumped an ice chest on head coach Mike Ditka, who’d just led the Bears to a 30-13 win over the Detroit Lions. That win clinched the NFC Central title for the Bears that season and sent them to the playoffs for the first time since 1979.

Every time that I think about the “Gatorade shower,” I can’t help but think about former Hillcrest High School head coach Maurice Belser. Belser, who played guard at the University of Alabama, led the Jags to a 21-20 upset win over Class 6A Theodore in the 2008 season-opener. At the end of that exciting game, which came right down to the very end, several Hillcrest players tried to dunk Belser, but he stopped them. Later he explained that the only time he felt a coach should be dunked is when they’d won a title, for example, a region, division or state championship.