NFC Championship Football

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman (25) hits the ball away from San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree (15) and is intercepted by Seattle Seahawks outside linebacker Malcolm Smith (53) during the NFL football NFC Championship game, Sunday, Jan. 19, 2014, in Seattle. The Seahawks won 23-17 to advance to the Super Bowl. (AP Photo/The Sacramento Bee, Paul Kitagaki Jr)

(Paul Kitagaki Jr)

SEATTLE -- It was not a game of inches. It was a game of golf carts.

The carts drove on and off the field Sunday with injured 49ers and Seahawks players riding on back. San Francisco's LaMichael James was helped off the field with a neck injury. Then, Seattle's Doug Baldwin was in a cart with a hip injury. It was offensive lineman carted off with sprained ankles, and trainers confiscating the helmets of concussed players, and nobody will ever "unsee" the twisting leg of 49ers linebacker NaVorro Bowman at the goal line, and him disappearing, helmet still on, beneath the stadium on the back of a cart like a gladiator.

Seattle beat San Francisco 23-17 in an epic NFC Championship game, riding toward a date in two weeks with the Denver Broncos. After Sunday's wrestling match, Fox broadcaster Terry Bradshaw presented Paul Allen with the George Halas trophy, but he should have just handed the owner a jackhammer.

Denver, you sure you're up for this?

That's the question to ask in the run-up to the Super Bowl. The AFC champions will show up with Peyton Manning and his 55 regular-season touchdown passes. The NFC champion will bring a pair of brass knuckles.

There will be blood. There will be bruises. Be sure: This game will be brought to you by Advil. Staffers of the Seahawks were running around the stadium after the game hugging one another, saying, "Can you believe we're going to the Super Bowl!?!?" But the Seattle players? They're thrilled, naturally. But before the trip East they're going to join the 49ers in their respective training rooms for a cold whirlpool, a mountain of ice and some medical treatment.

More of this fierce, physical competition, yes please.

Allen accepted the NFC title trophy after the game, and said, "This feels even sweeter," than the trip to the Super Bowl in 2006. He thanked Seattle's fans. Then, the stadium turned into a dance party. But it's going to be difficult for some time to shake the memory of what was a physically bruising, earth-moving conference championship game between two wonderful teams.

In an era where we see the league cracking down, over-correcting with cautionary penalties on what used to be deemed good, hard football play, this game was a throwback. Physically demanding. Mentally exhausting. Hard hitting. Down to the end. And both teams staggered off with the respect of everyone who witnessed.

So here's hoping what we saw on Sunday doesn't turn out to be a one-time thing between these two franchises. Here's hoping the 49ers and Seahawks get back here next season for more of this. Didn't see him in the celebratory mosh pit on the field after the game, but what this title fight needed was Don King standing on the goal posts at the end shouting, "REEEEEE-MATCH!!!!"

Who did you have in the final meaningful play of this game?

Michael Crabtree, 49ers big-play receiver, streaking down the right sideline? Richard Sherman, Seahawks ballhawk defensive back, running with him? Ball in the air and 68,454 spectators breathless, and you just didn't know, did you?

It struck me watching the replay of both men reaching up that I'd seen similar pivotal plays in 49ers history. Last season's Super Bowl final play ended on a goal-line pass to Crabtree that fell incomplete in the corner of the end zone. Years earlier, in January 1982, Dwight Clark reached up in the right corner of the end zone at Candlestick Park in an NFC title game and broke the Dallas Cowboys backs.

Clark, incidentally, was wandering around the press box at CenturyLink during the game. He went relatively unnoticed here. And maybe if Sherman hadn't made a remarkable play on the ball, tipping it to Malcolm Smith for an interception, old No. 87 might have willed Crabtree a couple of inches higher for a catch that might have snapped the Space Needle in two.

"Not until Sherm tips that ball to Malcolm did it hit me," Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. "It's a magical moment... did we really do this?"

Yes, Seattle did it. It won the NFC. It beat the 49ers. Yes, the Seahawks will physically pulverize the AFC's Broncos in the Super Bowl. Manning has seen fierce blitzes, and complex defensive schemes. He's played against some of the greatest pass rushers and linebackers of all time. But what he and his teammates have not seen is an opponent capable of transforming itself into a giant fist.

The Seahawks serve knuckle sandwiches.

Seattle was superior in the regular season to San Francisco. It was better again on Sunday, winning a fight on a football field not by knockout, but with a convincing decision marked with gutsy down-field play. The respect earned was highlighted in the post-game when Baldwin, who re-entered the game after that hip injury, vented about the media pundits description of the Seahawks receiving corps as pedestrian and mediocre.

"Pedestrian?" he said. "I guess we're going to walk our (expletive) to the Super Bowl."

Sherman spoiled it some by being flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct and taunting after his big play. Further, by calling Crabtree, "a mediocre receiver" in the post-game news conference. It happens. The moment swallowed him up, I guess.

The magnitude of this competition was tainted some too by the awful injury to Bowman, who most certainly deserved better. Nobody wants to see the path to a Super Bowl paved with golf carts. But in the end, what the NFC Championship game ended up was an epic gateway to a growing rivalry.

There will be no cries of bad calls. The officials mostly let these teams play. What the 49ers provided to Seattle was a worthy opponent who vetted the Seahawks on Sunday with tackles and hits, and in the end, declared them fit to represent the NFC.

Every champion needs a test like this.