Charlotte is still in the dumb-struck phase of the Carolina Panthers’ improbable trip to the Super Bowl, so before we start seeing wild over-reaching on what-it-all-means, I’d like to say that it is just really, really, really neat. Really.

There is something about a championship Niffle game being able to draw and hold the attention of a town because it is just one game and not a series of games. Even non-sports people can be sucked up in it for a few hours. It was, well, neat to go to the Teeter yesterday for game munchies and find all the employees decked out in Panthers gear. If wasn’t for their name-tags you wouldn’t have been able to tell them from the customers.

And the one prediction I’m willing to make is that after two weeks of hype, more people around the country will know the Panthers play in Charlotte. As to whether they’ll think that is in North or South Carolina, I ain’t saying.