Just. Wow.

Apple (AAPL) just reported its Q4 numbers. And, um, I think I just wet my pants.

"The company sold 37 million iPhones in the quarter, 15.4 million iPads, 5.2 million Mac computers, and 15.4 million iPods, it said."

Q4 revenues at Apple came in at a whopping $46.1 billion. In just one quarter! And this $46B in sales represents a 76% surge over Q4 2010's revenue figure.

I love Google. I love Amazon. There are many other companies out there growing at an extremely fast clip, offering the best products or services in their niche, and fulfilling a consumer or business need that is totally pervasive today. But whether or not you love the fanboi-ism that Apple has either deliberately or unintentionally created all across the country and the world today, there is one thing that these numbers simply do not permit denying at this point:

Apple is the single greatest company in America today.

There is just nobody even close.

Interesting Football Tidbits

If the NFL playoffs go with the chalk the rest of the way, we will have the New England Cheatriots facing off against the Green Bay Packers in Superbowl XLVI in Indianapolis on February 5. And that will be the first time in NFL history that the two statistically worst defenses in the NFL will match up in the Superbowl. Those two teams each gave up over 411 yards of total offense per game through the 2011 regular season, and while the rush defenses on both teams are more middle-of-the-pack, the Cheats and the Packers are also the two worst teams against the pass in the entire league -- a good 20% worse than even the next-worst pass defending team -- which should be interesting because the passing game is far and away the strength of the other team. If the chalk takes it the rest of the way, we'll be looking at the #2 and #3 offense and the #2 and #2 passing offense, playing against the #31 and #32 teams both in total defense and in passing defense. That game could be just crazy.

Speaking of the playoffs, all the buzz in New York City this week is word that a bunch of Jets teammates have anonymously ripped Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez in the press this week, saying among other things that he has no legitimate fear of being replaced by head coach Rex Ryan, and several players questioning his work ethic. Of course, if you watched "Hard Knocks" this preseason, you already saw shades of that lack of work ethic, and the beginnings of a potential attitude problem, as I think it would be hard for mostly anyone to have been exactly "impressed" with Sanchez's personality if you sat through all the episodes of that series earlier in 2011. In this case, you've got the usual complement of talking heads, former players especially, who are ripshit about this move, questioning any player who would dare take such shots anonymously instead of just coming out and assigning a name to the comment. Because, the thinking goes, the next time Sanchez walks into that locker room, he's going to be wondering "Was it you who said that bad stuff about me?", "Was it you?", "Or you?". But that doesn't really seem to be the case here, does it? In this case, I count at least four different players specifically cited in that story -- at least some of whom are apparently leaders on the team in one capacity or another, so not insignificant players like the story from the third-string quarterback that broke last week. The bottom line for Sanchez is, it's not just one player here or one player there. It's most of his entire team who think these things about him. So focusing on who said it and how we find out who said what is, in my view, completely missing the point in this case. Mark Sanchez's team has a problem with his lack of preparation, his poor work ethic and his entitled attitude, and of course with the results that has led to for the entire team now here, three years in to the Sanchez / Rex Ryan experiment. At this point, the Jets can either waste time chasing down who said what and why they said it, or they can start moving on by beginning to work on fixing those problems. And nothing short of that is going to get the Jets team with this nucleus of players back where they want to be.

And before I go, did anyone else out there see this story? That Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow is Americans' favorite active athlete today? Seems crazy, doesn't it? But "Tebow was recognized by 3 percent of Americans surveyed as their favorite active pro athlete, placing him above Kobe Bryant (2 percent), Aaron Rodgers (1.9 percent), Peyton Manning (1.8 percent) and Tom Brady (1.5 percent) in the Top 5." Above Tom Brady, above Aaron Rodgers, above Peyton Manning? I mean, Tebow is more beloved by sports fans in this country than those three titans who happen to play in the exact same sport, and the exact same position as him, already? That just seems crazy. As does the fact that Tebow takes this top spot much faster than any other athlete since the inception of the poll in 1994, attaining the vote before the end of his second season as a pro. It took LeBron James eight years to reach this status, and Kobe Bryant 11 years before he became America's favorite active pro athlete. I'm not sure I would describe Tim Tebow as my "favorite" pro athlete just now, but I don't have any problem admitting that I would like to watch Tebow play this weekend more than I want to watch any other single athlete in professional sports in the world today. So maybe there's really something to this after all.

NFL Playoffs -- Divisional Round

Another week, and yet again all anybody can talk about in the world of sports is Mr. Timothy Tebow. Man, you just cannot feel good going into a sudden-death, overtime type of situation against that guy, can you? The moment the Steelers lost the overtime coin toss and Denver elected to receive, pretty much everyone in that stadium -- the Steelers and Broncos players included -- knew the Broncs would be winning the game on that drive. Not sure we knew it would happen on the literal first play from scrimmage in overtime, but when you've got Tebow and just need one score to win, its ovah baybeee.

I'll tell you what -- anybody who saw value in the Pittsburgh Steelers this past weekend, giving nine points on the road at an upstart Denver team with something to prove, is out of their minds. Let alone, a Steelers team with a literally limping Ben Roethlisberger, and missing their top runningback, their center, and their leading tackler on defense? Giving nine points. On the road!

That had to have been the most obvious pick I've seen in the NFL playoffs in a few years. And this, from a guy who has had a long-standing rule never to bet against the fix-waiting-to-happen Pittsburgh Steelers. But with all those injuries, going on the road, and giving nine points in a game between two stingy defenses? That story just doesn't make any sense.

Denver's game this weekend at the Cheatriots is a different story, however. Unlike the Steelers, the Cheats are more or less totally healthy right now, and the full roster of key players on offense seem to be firing on all cylinders. New England is also at home this coming week, they have a much better offense than the Steelers even with both teams equally healthy, and Tim Tebow and the Broncos -- who just got beat pretty hard by the Cheatriots a few weeks back -- have that much less to prove this week after the home win against Pittsburgh last weekend. With the line on that game hovering right around two touchdowns, that one is a heck of a lot harder to pick than this past weekend's freest money around, but I'm thinking I would probably hold my knows and go with the Cheatriots as long as the number is under 14. I mean, they'll already know all of Denver's plays ahead of time by the time kickoff comes around next weekend, right?

Elsewhere in the NFL, there wasn't much surprise in the first round playoff games, as all four better seeds won in all four games, three of which (other than the Steelers) were favored by Vegas. The best game this weekend in my mind is the Saints playing at the 49ers, with the Saints installed as an early 5-point favorite on the road, across the country, at a team that was 13-3 in the regular season and which has the league's stingiest points-against defense. As much as I want to go with the home team and take the generous offer of five points, I'm just thinking that the Saints can find a way to eke out a touchdown or so margin of victory in this one.

Elsewhere, it's the Giants getting 8 points at the Packers, another line which intrigues me somewhat. I mean, didn't the Giants just take a late lead at Lambeau and end up losing in the final minutes by 3 points to these same Packers only a month ago thanks to a late Aaron Rodgers comeback drive? This same Giants team that today is clearly playing significantly better than it was a month ago, while the Packers have just as surely come back down to earth a little bit since losing the undefeated season to the Chiefs a couple of weeks later? I was expecting something a little smaller than 8 points, and I am inclined to think that the Giants are the better value on this pick as long as that number remains above a touchdown.

And in the final game of the conference semi-finals, it is the Houston Texans, in their first-ever playoff run as a franchise, traveling to Baltimore to play the Ravens. Houston is getting a lofty 8.5 points from the sharps in Vegas, and even though that is admittedly an awfully big number to give to a seemingly inconsistent team in the Ravens, something tells me that the Ravens will come through nicely at home, where they went 8-0 in the regular season. With Matt Schaub this could easily be an entirely different story, but me thinks that T. J. Yates is probably looking at his worst game as a starting quarterback in the NFL thus far for Houston. Given especially how poorly the Texans have performed against the spread this year, I'll take my chances and go with the Ravens and lay the 8.5 points in this one.

2011 NFL -- Parting Thoughts

Wow. Rex Ryan, what a clown (surpassed perhaps only by his brother and Cowboys' defensive coordinator Rob Ryan). As a regular sports radio listener for hours a day in New York City, I can tell you that Rex Ryan is getting killed up here right now. I mean, you can't go two callers without someone ranting like mad about all of Rex's bravado, his phony predictions, the way he has managed Mark Sanchez, and I could go on and on. I mean, imagine Waffles on one of his "off the meds" days, multiply the anger by maybe 50 or 60 times, and then imagine one such Waffles calling in after another, after another, and another, and another. It is just unbelievable the beating Rex Ryan has taken, and the depths to which he has fallen after his team predictably failed to even make the playoffs after coach Rex guaranteed another superbowl victory for this team in the preseason this year.

On the flip side, it is almost equally amazing to behold the way that both Tom Coughlin and Andy Reid managed to play their ways into saving their jobs for at least another year. I mean, these guys looked completely dead and buried just a few short weeks ago. After his Giants lost embarrassingly to the hapless Redskins at home in a crucial game in Week 15, the Giants' postseason hopes were significantly in doubt and Tom Coughlin's chances of returning as Giants' head coach in 2012 seemed virtually nonexistent. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and after steamrolling both Rex Ryan's Jets and then the Dallas Cowboys in the final two weeks of the regular season, the Giants are postseason-bound, division champs, and Coughlin is all but assured of returning to produce yet another late-season collapse for the G-Men. And make no mistake, you happy Giant fans this week: that's exactly what happened this year again. You just got into the playoffs anyways after another pathetic season because the Cowboys are so laughable late in the season, and the Eagles were so laughable for almost the entire season before rattling off four straight wins to finish up strong.

And yeah, the Eagles. I had already written Andy Reid's eulogy here in Philly -- posted it right here on the blog in fact less than a month ago -- and then what does he do? Immediately after everyone and their mother had written this team off entirely following a horrible Week 13 give-up loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Monday night football to drop the Eagles' record to 4-8, Reid leads the team into Miami for a convincing 26-10 beating, a complete steamrolling of the playoff-hopeful Jets in Philly the in Week 15, and then into Dallas for another convicing beatdown in a suddenly completely meaningless game for both teams, and then a strong win over the Redskins at home to end the season on a four-game upswing. 8-8 still blows chunks for this team in 2011, but even though all four of those teams Philly beat in December ended up missing the playoffs, Andy Reid still comes out smelling like a rose, especially as Mike Vick's return from several games missed due to broken ribs coincided with the team's late-season resurgence. So, it seems Andy Reid, too, amazingly played his way right back into a job in Philly, which means, much like with the Giants above, another season coming up of struggle, of a total lack of defensive focus, complete and utter clock mismanagement, and probably a playoff berth but not much more than that to hope for for the fans in the city of brotherly shove. Oh well.

Tony Romo. Still the biggest choker this side of Greg Norman in a major. Romo's knack for stepping down in December is becoming legendary. Despite a 19-2 career record in November after going 4-0 in the month here in 2011, Romo adds a 1-3 record this year to his 7-10 lifetime December stats, just when it matters most. And Jerry Jones can say whatever he wants about not blaming Jason Garrett or Tony Romo for a lot of what went wrong this year, but the simple fact remains that the division was clearly the Cowboys' for the taking this year, but they simply could not step up and go and win the games that they had to win.

Did I mention enough times here how gutless and slimy the firing of Dolphins head coach Tony Sparano was late last year? After starting off the season 0-7 (against four teams in the top four seeds in this year's postseason, as well as the Chargers and the Jets who both missed the playoffs in the AFC but had formidable teams and were in it until the end), the Dolphins went on a tear, ending with a 6-3 push to finish at 6-10 for the season, tying the all-time NFL record for most wins by a team that started off 0-7 on the season. After Sparano had piloted that team to a 4-2 record following their 0-7 beginning, Sparano was summarily fired from the team following the Eagles' beatdown of the Fins in Week 14, and the team just went on completing with Sparano had clearly started, and what he had already proven he had the ability to do in his previous time in Miami. That team just never quit, and I give Tony Sparano about 95% of the credit for how they finished up this year. 6-3 in their final nine games. Even if that stretch did include only one game against s 2011 playoff team.

Speaking of new coaches who really did step in and change things around, doesn't it kinda seem that way with Romeo Crennell in Kansas City? I mean, in three games following the firing of Todd Haley, Crennell's Chiefs beat the Packers for their only loss of the entire 2011 regular season, lost an overtime game to playoff-hopeful Oakland, and then beat the division champion Broncos while laughably shutting down Broncos' quarterback Tim Tebow. He's been involved with a lot of successful team endeavors in his career, so who's saying Romeo Crennell can't lead the Chiefs back to the top of the lowly AFC West next season? The Chargers will likely have a new head coach so who knows how that is going to go, the Raiders are kind of stuck with Carson Palmer, who fulfilled his destiny of throwing more picks than touchdowns again in 2011, and they've got the Broncos who look to be kind of stuck with Tim Tebow who simply cannot throw the football, period. This division is the definition of "up for grabs", and with Crennell the Chiefs might look as good as anyone else to compete for the title in 2012.

And speaking of Tim Tebow, no season in review post could ever be complete without some treatment of Tebow's overall performance this year. My take on the situation -- and this is not something I've heard anywhere else but I still think there is something to it -- is that Tim Tebow seemed to turn it on and on and on, higher and higher and higher, almost on a weekly basis there in the mid to late part of the regular season this year, and all the while Broncos EVP John Elway was there, on the sidelines with the fake smiles, on the radio giving out the backhanded compliments, etc. It was very clear that Elway had not yet bought in to the Tim Tebow madness, and I'm sure no one felt that more than Tim Tebow himself. But then, just after the Broncos' loss to the Cheatriots where Tebow played ok and led his team to an early lead and a first-quarter touchdown run, Elway came out and really spoke the praises of Tebow for the first time. Give the guy a little security, a little taste of a true compliment from the guy he had been fighting so hard for the affection of for the past couple of months, and it was just enough to get Tebow to take his foot off the magic gas just a little bit. The team then proceeded to get blown out by the given-up Buffalo Bills 40-14, and then followed it up in a win-and-you're-in game to end the season with a 7-3 loss to the divisional rival Chiefs, at home no less. Tebow threw for 185 yards in the Buffalo loss, but his team was behind the entire game and thus had to abandon its preferred style of running on 85% of offensive plays, and Tebow still connected on only 13 of 29 attempts and only 2 of 11 attempts of 11 or more yards downfield. And in the abysmal defeat by the Chiefs in Week 17, Tebow was almost unspeakably bad, going 6 of 22 for a 20.1 qb rating. Nice. Tim Tebow becomes only the fourth quarterback in NFL history to start a playoff game next weekend after completing less than 50% of his passes for the season, a feat not done since the mighty Scott Zolak and his 42.8 completion percentage back in 1998.

Keep an eye on Indianapolis for what I would guess is a seriously developing story. Colts' owner Jim Irsay's surprise firing of the Polians -- who have run his team since 1998 a week before the team drafted one Peyton Manning as their quarterback of the future -- on Monday I think speaks volumes about the team's focus going forward. Now that the team secured the right to pick Stanford's Andrew Luck with the #1 pick in the NFL draft coming up this spring, it looks to me like Irsay expects his team to give some very serious consideration to trading Manning and going with Luck as the team's next quarterback of the future. The Polians had been perfectly vocal that if Peyton is healthy, he is their quarterback for the next few years, and now the team wins the right to draft Luck, and a day later the Polians are fired? Strange things are afoot at the Indy offices these days, you just watch.

Coach of the Year honors go squarely to Jim Harbaugh in San Francisco this year. I was just getting on the John Fox bandwagon, but then the loss to the Cheatriots followed by the late-season collapse has taken him totally out of the running, despite a very impressive effort nonetheless in 2011. Even after going five games without starting Tim Tebow and while still playing the "currently" passing-heavy style of offense in the NFL, the Broncos ended the season with 2708 passing, and 2632 yards rushing, and compiling over 500 more yards rushing than yards passing in 11 games with Tebow at the starter. For Fox to have spearheaded this kind of change -- keep in mind that in Week 1, Kyle Orton threw for 304 yards for the Broncos while they rushed for only 38 -- and to have come from 1-4 to 8-8 and a division win, Fox really deserves an honorable mention here despite the three losses to end the season. Other coaches worth a mention in this category this year include Marvin Lewis, who led Andy Dalton and the Bungles Bengals back to the playoffs in an unlikely story, and Mike Munchak who led the Titans to a 9-7 record in a similarly surprising outcome. In the NFC, most of the great head coaching jobs were done in the NFC West, with Harbaugh leading the back of course, but even Ken Whisenhunt in Arizona and Pete Carroll in Seattle are probably worth at least noting, given how they led their teams to second-half success in the face of extreme adversity. But Jim Harbaugh -- no matter how quickly his team loses in the playoffs to the eventual superbowl winning Packers or Saints -- to go 13-3 with Alex Smith at qb and essentially the same personnel that Mike Singletary ran absolutely into the ground over the past couple of years, that is really something special.

And while I'm on the topic of postseason awards, not sure I've seen this much elsewhere either, but the performance of Packers' backup quarterback Matt Flynn on Sunday against a strong Lions defense in a must-win game for Detroit to protect their playoff seeding -- 480 yards on 31-for-44 passing, with a franchise record six touchdowns -- most definitely changes things for me in the MVP vote. I had already written previously about the Saints' Drew Brees playing his way into the MVP voting with his incredible, record-setting, among the best-ever individual seasons for an NFL quarterback this year by the numbers. But if the Packers' unknown and inexperienced backup can go in there on a dime against one of the league's tougher defenses and throw for five hundy and 6 scores, then it seems stunningly obvious that Aaron Rodgers is not at all the most valuable player to his team this year. Shiat, the Packers might better with Flynn in there for all we know, as long as he still has that incredible core of Jennings, Jones, Finley, Nelson and Driver in the receiving corps! But if you take away Drew Brees from the Saints, I don't get the feeling at all that Jimmy Graham, Marques Colston, Darren Sproles, Lance Moore and Robert Meachem are going to be treating the Saints' no-name backup to a five-spot and six touchdowns on the day. The Saints seem a heck of a lot more like the Indianapolis Colts to me than what the Packers obviously are. Give me the incredible record-setting season in passing yards, completions and completion percentages from Drew Brees and his 13-3 record this year, and after Matt Flynn's performance on Sunday, I'll take Brees for the league's MVP hands down.

I'll be back later in the week to take another look at my preseason NFL predictions and how badly I screwed them up this year. Hope everyone had a great new year and is ready to put 2012 all in.