If we, as football fans, don’t point these things out when we can – when they present themselves — then we deserve all the negative vibes we get.

A month ago, Alabama, coached by former Browns defensive coordinator, one-time Toledo head coach and Kent State product Nick Saban, beat Georgia for the college national championship in a game that was a classic in every way, shape and form.

And then Sunday night, the New England Patriots, coached by former Browns head coach Bill Belichick, were defeated by the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 52. That, too, was a classic in every, way, shape and form.

Yes, the two biggest games on the football landscape were both not decided until the very last play.

And this has been going on – at both levels – for several years now.

How cool is that?

How totally cool is that?

As football fans, we can’t ask for anything more than that. We just can’t.

This is why we watch these games. This is why we greatly anticipate them. This is why we clear our schedule so we can sit in front of the TV from the opening kickoff to the final gun.

There are those people – the non-football fans who don’t know anything at all about the sport and don’t care, and are actually quite proud of their ignorance, thank you very much – who chide us for what we do when we watch football. They think we’re just a bunch of lunkheads who sit hypnotized in front of a TV set for four hours at a time when we could be doing something different, something so much more productive, like eating hummus or discussing French poetry.

They don’t realize that we’re watching great, compelling, non-scripted theater. This stuff is so good that it seems like it’s made up. But it isn’t. It’s real.

And when we get games like these, it gives us the privilege of telling them – once again, much to their chagrin — that they’re missing the best programming on TV.