Championship Week 2007 kicks of from the Vortex, where the Eastern Division Champion Jody's Colossal Waste of Time hosts Pirk's Wicked Oil Profiteer$. This will be the first ever playoff meeting between the league's most acronymic franchises, although the P.W.O.P. and C.W.O.T. have met in the postseason once before, when Jody crushed Pirk 54-32 in the 2004 Draft Bowl.

For a while this season, P.W.O.P. looked once again like a Draft Bowl candidate. (Pirk has already played in five over the first ten seasons.) The Profiteer$' season was on the verge of collapse following a 1-4 midseason stretch that left the Oil Men with a 3-6 record. Pirk then dramatically snapped out of its funk with a 47-9 ambush of these same Colossal Waste of Timers in Week 10. Tony Romo and company proceeded to run the table towards a 7-6 finish and clinched their second straight Wild Card berth. Adding in last week's playoff victory over the Abstract Machines, Pirk enters this Championship Week bout with Jody with a five-game winning streak, the franchise's longest since 2002.

Much like talk of a fifth Beatle, there are whispers of this year's C.W.O.T. being more of a fifth wild card than a dominate division champion. Jody's 7-6 mark is the worst record ever for a division winner, and the C.W.O.T. now find themselves with the lowest record of the four Championship Week teams. Moreover, much like their Eastern Division rival Brewmeisters, the majority (five) of Jody's seven wins came against teams that failed to make the playoffs. Finally, the C.W.O.T. stumble into the tournament having lost two straight to close out the regular season. All of these points are moot now, however. Jody is just as close to the Super Bowl as their Championship Week brethren. While they may lack the glossy credentials of the other remaining teams, they're just one big game away from making their second Super Bowl appearance in three years and record fifth overall.

The C.W.O.T. are indeed familiar players in Championship Week. This is their third straight appearance in the semifinal round and eighth overall. For those scoring at home, that means only three times in the league's eleven have the Pewter & Black failed to reach the Final Four. For P.W.O.P., this marks just their third Championship Week appearance and first since 2001. The Profiteer$ are the only original franchise to have never played in a Super Bowl.

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The P.W.O.P. – C.W.O.T. game is a nice under card for what figures to be Championship Week's Main Event – a no-holds-barred battle between the visiting Anderson Brewmeisters and the Western Division Champion Thomas' Bock Boys.

The two beer-themed franchises butted heads early and often this season, offering up the lion's share of the league's bulletin board chatter. Anderson, coming off a 12-win season, started it off by trashing the Boys – who managed only three wins in '06 – in the preseason Rankings. Thomas proceeded to jump out to a 4-0 start, far better than the Brew Krew's 1-3 mark. The two met in Week 5, and Anderson regained some face by cooling off the visiting Boys 32-24. Undeterred, Thomas went right back to work punishing the league, surging to 8-1 before finally wrapping up the No. 1 seed with a mark of 10-3. Anderson has pulled it together down the stretch, winning four of its past five games, including avenging last year's Super Bowl loss by eliminating the Raze in last week's Wild Card round.

The Brewmeisters return to Championship Week for the second straight season thanks largely to their big guns; Peyton Manning, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Brian Westbrook contributed a combined 40 points in the rout over Piana. Last season's swagger has shown up just in time for the Krew, who feel they let the league title slip away from them in Miami last season. One more win and they'll get a shot to make amends in Glendale next week.

The Boys from Bockville are thrilled to be back in the playoffs following a one-year hiatus. Things certainly looked bad following last season's Draft Bowl loss, but the reemergence of Randy Moss and the Patriots stout defense has paved the way for Thomas' worst-to-first run in the Western Division. That division title – the franchise's second – puts Thomas back into Championship Week for the first time since 2003 and fourth time overall.

Sporting such a fierce war of words, the Anderson-Thomas rivalry has never been fully realized on the gridiron. Only once before have they ever met twice in a single season, and that was way back in 2000. That year, having already beaten the Brewmeisters in a regular season tilt, the first-year Bock Boys then defeated the defending Super Bowl Champion Brewmeisters in a Wild Card contest as well. This year, of course, Anderson is the only club remaining to have scored a win over Thomas. Can they return the favor of that 2000 sweep, or will the Bock Boys extend their dominating season? One thing's for sure: we'll all hear about it on the boards for quite some time.

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