Never before, and never again in the history of professional football, will you likely ever see anything like this again. The Jacksonville Sharks have won four straight playoff games dating back to last year's ArenaBowl when they beat the Arizona Rattlers. On Friday though, they are going to be taking on another team that has won four straight playoff games, the Philadelphia Soul in the City of Brotherly Love in the American Conference Championship Game.
To say that the Jacksonville Sharks have had their way with the rest of the Southern Division is a bit of an understatement. In their brief history, they have won a whopping 36 regular season games and three straight division titles, and they are now the first team in the history of the league to win three division crowns in a row to begin a franchise. Jacksonville went 12-2 in its first two regular seasons in the Southern Division, and it had a 2-1 mark against those foes in the playoffs as well. QB Aaron Garcia led the way in all of those victories though, and for the first time ever, the Sharks will have to go into battle in a playoff tilt with someone aside from #8 calling the shots. Jacksonville will hope to do some more damage to the South on Saturday night when it hosts the Georgia Force in the American Conference Semifinals.
The 2012 Arena Football League postseason will kick off on Friday night from the Alamodome, where the San Antonio Talons and the Utah Blaze are set to do battle. This is going to be quite the test between two teams that have never had all that much playoff success in their histories. This will be the first playoff game for the San Antonio edition of the Talons, though the Tulsa Talons are 0-1 in their AFL postseason history. This is going to be the fourth playoff game in the history of the Blaze and their first game since the relaunch of the league in 2010. Utah is just 0-3 in those games, though.
Now that the Lakers have been eliminated they could vault pass the Nets as the NBA’s most hated team. They disappointed all season long and a lot of people lost a lot of money on sports betting.
Two years ago, James Harden and his Houston Rockets ran into Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and the Golden State Warriors before losing in the Western Conference semifinals.