Alas, America's love of football games continues unabated. Take, for example, Sunday's glacial wild card game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers. The pigskin match, it seems, was one of the highest-rated games on TV. Ever.

"The San Francisco 49ers’ 23-20 win over the Green Bay Packers had 47.1 million viewers Sunday on Fox to make it the most-watched wild-card game on record," reports AP. "The previous high was 42.4 million for the 2011 Steelers-Broncos game, which Denver won in overtime on Tim Tebow’s touchdown pass." For perspective's sake, this places the game somewhere in between the final Tonight Show
Starring Johnny Carson (with 50 million viewers) and the series finale of The Cosby Show (44.4 million). Better than Cosby, not as good as Carson.

Two factors helped launch the game into the record-breaking stratosphere: a pair of noted quarterbacks (one acclaimed as much for his cool tattoos as he is for his McDonald's-advertising prowess, the other for totally, absolutely not being gay) and the record-breaking chilly weather.

The 49ers take on the Panthers this Sunday. And we hope to see more scenes like this come Sunday.

Timberwolves 109 Warriors 108- And how did the Warriors celebrate not only MLK Day but the official start of George Bush's last year in office? They lost to the worst team in the NBA, the Minnesota Timberwolves as an Al Harrington lay up in the final seconds clanged off the rim. The TWolves had lost 16 straight games on the road. Of interest is the fact that the Beard had only fifteen points and missed a couple of shots at the end of the game, this coming after spending the previous night partying in Sundance as the movie he produced, "Made in America," premiered. That might have had an effect on his performance, but we're going to let it slide as how many basketball teams feature a player who produces a documentary that makes it to Sundance?

-A few notes about Sunday's playoff games: We here at SFist have a rule about playoff games played in freezing temperatures in that whichever coach appears to be less spooked by the cold wins. Coughlin dressed like it was just a normal winter game and other than looking like he got frostbite, didn't appear to be bothered at all. Mike McCarthy, the Packers coach, dressed like Ralphie's brother in A Christmas Story. We also couldn't help notice that while Eli looked completely nonplussed by the weather, Favre looked miserable out there.

For just a little while, there there be kickoffs and touchdowns and the illusion of a level playing field.

Tonight, it's time for the National Football League's 2007 regular season to begin. ful.

So, here's how we think it'll go.

In this preview, each division's teams are ranked in order of their predicted finish from first to last. Then, musical acts from each NFL team's area are presented in the same order. Read that over again before reacting: we're not ranking the music, just the NFL teams.

And you? Agree? Disagree? Confused? That's what the comment section is for. Let's talk. We can suss this out.

Please note, there will only be bands from New Jersey representing the "New York" franchises due to the NJ location of Giants Stadium at The Meadowlands. Simple as that.

Image of wintry goalposts via NFL.com: "General view of goal posts during a snowy Monday Night Football game between the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks at Qwest Field in Seattle, Washington on November 27, 2006. Photo by Kirby Lee /WireImage"

As always, all predictions are guaranteed by American Football Spectacular to have been made with the best of intentions, and no real surety.

O, football; we're glad that you're back. The predictions commence after the jump.