Alas, America's love of football games continues unabated. Take, for example, Sunday's glacial wild card game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers. The pigskin match, it seems, was one of the highest-rated games on TV. Ever.

"The San Francisco 49ers’ 23-20 win over the Green Bay Packers had 47.1 million viewers Sunday on Fox to make it the most-watched wild-card game on record," reports AP. "The previous high was 42.4 million for the 2011 Steelers-Broncos game, which Denver won in overtime on Tim Tebow’s touchdown pass." For perspective's sake, this places the game somewhere in between the final Tonight Show
Starring Johnny Carson (with 50 million viewers) and the series finale of The Cosby Show (44.4 million). Better than Cosby, not as good as Carson.

Two factors helped launch the game into the record-breaking stratosphere: a pair of noted quarterbacks (one acclaimed as much for his cool tattoos as he is for his McDonald's-advertising prowess, the other for totally, absolutely not being gay) and the record-breaking chilly weather.

The 49ers take on the Panthers this Sunday. And we hope to see more scenes like this come Sunday.