The San Francisco 49ers are back in the NFC Championship Game again this year, where they’ll be facing the Atlanta Falcons instead of the New York Giants, and they’ll be doing it with young go-hard Colin Kaepernick instead of old can’t-catch-a-break Alex Smith at quarterback. How is the media treating this meeting between Bay Area bohemians and members of Black Hollywood‘s elite crew?

By rushing to stereotypes, of course.

We go first to Atlanta, where you just know those FalCONS are up to no good. How did they get that way? Atlanta “like[s] players with high ‘FBI’ scores.” Because they’re criminals, you see. At least that’s what that Atlanta Journal-Constitution headline writer would make you click a link to a game-week puff piece on “football intelligence,” which no reasonable person abbreviates as “FBI.”

Let’s head out to Cali, shall we? See what’s pulled those hemp-farmers away from their crystal collections and communal energy vortex long enough to turn them into probably the best team in the NFL this season? What’s their secret? Yoga, of course! And a copy of the Dhammapada– or at least an old yearbook clipping– in every locker.

If playing to the lowest common social denominator isn’t lazy enough for you, how about a tried-and-true sports cliche? We again turn to the Falcons’ hometown paper, where we now find the Durrty Burds’ fans-of-letters grasping at straws, or other print publications, as it were. Knowing that the top seed is outmatched at home on Sunday, they’re putting their eggs in the SI Cover Curse basket, and at this point, why not? Unless it can make Kaepernick and Frank Gore disappear the way it did to the alleged girlfriend of Manti Te’o, though, I think the Falcons are going to be in a bad tangle Sunday.