January 9th, 1988. It's a date that Washington sports fans should never forget; but it’s one almost no one remembers. On that winter Saturday, one of the bigger NFL playoff upsets took place as the Wild Card Minnesota Vikings (who barely made the playoffs that year at 8-7 in the strike shortened season) knocked off the 13-2 San Francisco 49ers, the odds on favorite to win the Super Bowl that year. And it really wasn't that close as Minnesota put up huge yardage totals on the way to the 12 point win. Now the reason this one had significance in DC was that it switched homefield advantage from the Niners to the winner of the next day's game between the Redskins and the homestanding Chicago Bears. Of course you probably know what happened, Doug Williams throws a few TD's, Darrell Green returns a punt and Joe Gibbs squad went from looking at playing 2 playoff games on the road to hosting the NFC Championship game - and winning it to go to the Super Bowl where they beat Denver. Suffice to say, the Skins caught a huge break that year and the turned it into a Lombardi Trophy.
Fast forward to this year's NCAA Tournament. Kansas, pretty much the slight favorite over Kentucky to win it all, goes out in a Saturday 2nd round game, to "traditional power" (sarcasm intended) Northern Iowa. You know who the Panthers face next? The winner of Sunday's Maryland - Michigan State game. Now while Northern Iowa can play some ball, facing them isn't the daunting task of playing Kansas. So it’s very possible, that if the Terps can navigate their way through the Spartans (no gimmie considering MSU's propensity to dominate in rebounding) they could be looking at a relative breather to the regional final...or at least not having to play Kansas.
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