With Super Bowl XLVI scheduled for Feb. 5, there are two long weeks between the conference championship games and the final game of the 2011-2012 season.

That's a life-time in the 24/7 news cycle of the modern media, which leaves time for an unprecedented amount of hype along the media-dominated Acela corridor for a game between two glamorous QB's, a backlash to all the hype and a backlash to all the backlash.

And that's just until this Thursday, by which time every possible story-line will have been beaten into the ground.

The Pro Bowl and the Senior Bowl next weekend will be a brief respite to the Super Bowl hype, but neither game has ever generated much attention with the casual fan.

Instead, the "Year of the QB" discussion will likely reach new heights, as people debate whether a second Super Bowl championship would ascend Eli Manning past his older brother or whether a fourth would ascend Tom Brady towards the top of the greatest QB ever discussion.