Today, for the first time in at least a decade, I watched the whole of both NFL conference-championship games.

If you follow this blog you will know we were out of the country for about eight years in succession when the National and American conferences got around to deciding their Super Bowl representative.

I have made a point of seeing all (or nearly all) of every Super Bowl, going back to Super 1, in 1967 (when my father went up on the roof and pointed an antennae toward San Diego; the game was blacked out in L.A.). But the two games that set up the final matchup … I typically missed them over the past decade.

This year, however, we were staying at my brother’s home in Southern California, and he is a serious NFL fan — who also had preseason-wagered money on two of the four teams.

So, we settled in for seven hours of Super Bowl Semifinals, with crab dip and chips and cheeses and all that sort of stuff …

And we were rewarded with two awful football games.

First came the Atlanta Falcons playing host to the Green Bay Packers, which ought to have been a good game. Or at least had a chance to be. We thought.

The Packers were carrying an eight-game winning streak, and they had Aaron Rodgers at quarterback, and he had been tearing it up for two months. Also, his favorite receiver, Jordy Nelson, was back in the lineup, despite two recently broken ribs.

And then the Falcons surged to a 31-0 lead in the first few minutes of the second half. It ended 44-21.

It actually could have been a competitive game. Atlanta got a touchdown, and the Packers responded with a drive that led to a 41-yard field-goal attempt that went awry.

The Falcons got a field goal on their next possession, but the Packers put together a nice drive, and fullback Aaron Ripkowski barreled down to the 3-yard line, shedding tacklers along the way … right up till the moment when he fumbled and the Falcons recovered. Instead of 10-10, it was 10-0, and then 17-0 as the Falcons drove the length of the field.

And it was over.

The Packers cared enough to score three touchdowns in the second half, but at no point did it look like they might actually win, and we were talking about current events long before the game was over.

We had no great expectations of the second game, not with Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots involved.

We were not surprised, but we were disappointed.

I was not aware of the recent history of the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Patriots and Tom Brady, but it is awful … and stayed that way. Before the game, Phil Simms, the color commentator, talked about how the Steelers have tried to play a zone defense against Brady, and how he routinely thrashes it … and that is how it worked out. Even with Simms suggesting/insisting that the Steelers would have to throw something at least a little different at the Patriots.

Nope.

Meanwhile, the Steelers looked like a team with no rushing game, when Le’Veon Bell got hurt, and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was ineffective, and by the time it got to 17-6 in the second quarter that game was done, done, done as well.

It ended 36-17.

So. Seven hours of noncompetitive football. Ugh.

And I waited eight years for this?

It appears clear, now, that the teams in the Super Bowl, New England and Atlanta, are the teams that deserve to be there. Neither was troubled in punching their tickets to Houston and Super Bowl LI (51), coming up on February 5.

We can hope that the championship game will be competitive, but given the Patriots and Belichick and Brady versus the never-won-this-thing Falcons …

Well, at least it won’t take seven hours to watch.