Diana Caramanico's right knee is in a padded brace. Her left knee's oozing blood that gravity is pulling to her sock and sneaker. She's sweaty and exhausted. Her hair's a mess.

With 27 seconds left on fourth-and-goal from the 13-yard line, she just caught the game-winning touchdown from quarterback Terri McVaugh. It gives her football team, Keebler Kellogg's, a 33-26 win over Red Lantern on a sunny, unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon behind Upper Darby's

Beverly Hills Middle School.

It's the kind of storybook ending Terrell Owens—and this entire city—still wishes occurred in last year's Super Bowl. Give T.O. credit for returning from his leg injury to play in the big game, but if you want to talk commitment, talk to the 6-foot-2-inch Caramanico. She's one of 90 ladies playing—for nothing more than the love of the game—in the six-team, 10-game-schedule Suburban Women's Football League, a two-hand, rough-touch league that's run uninterrupted since 1975.

Caramanico, 26, was married in August, but because she won't skip a football game, she's only seen her husband, Geoffrey Owens, who plays pro basketball in France, once since their honeymoon. She's no stranger to game-day pressure. A Penn grad like Owens, she remains the Ivy League's all-time leading scorer (2,415 points) in women's basketball.

"Actually, my favorite thing to do in sports is to catch," says Caramanico, who, like most of the women, plays both offense and defense; the following week would see her return an interception 55 yards for a crucial touchdown in a 38-22 opening-round playoff win over Boomers.

Using adapted NCAA rules, SWFL teams play two 30-minute halves with a running clock and a two-minute warning. Among the major differences is a smaller field. It measurers 80 by 40 yards, making it 20 yards shy and 5 yards shorter on each sideline.

This isn't quite Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights (although the women do play Sunday rainouts on Friday nights at 69th Street Field), but the intensity does incite rivalry (50 to 100 spectators show up for contests), and around here, the SWFL postseason might be the only one this city sees this football season. Red Lantern (6-3-1) will play Bungalow (6-4) at 10 a.m. Sunday back behind Beverly Hills in the SWFL semifinals. The winner will meet Keebler Kellogg's (7-3) at 10 a.m. Dec. 11 in the title game.

Bungalow player-coach Pam Jackson, 48, is one of just two original league founders along with Chris Greeley, co-coach of Red Lantern. Bungalow is the defending champion. Most of Bungalow also played for a 2002 national slow-pitch softball championship team, but in Jackson's opinion, "Softball doesn't even compare to this."

(There are also two unrelated women's flag football leagues in Roxborough and the Northeast. In the spring, there's also the Philadelphia Phoenix, one of 35 teams in the sixth-year National Women's Football Association, the world's largest women's tackle football league. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday at Drexel University, the Phoenix is holding its fourth and final tryout.)

Back on Nov. 13, with her team trailing Red Lantern 27-26, Northeast native and Temple grad Jackie Cipolloni, 41, who had a U.S. Olympic softball tryout in 1996, began Keebler Kellogg's winning drive by catching a pass at midfield with 1:22 remaining, then another for 10 more yards with 1:06 left. "Playing for first place (and top seed in the playoffs) comes down to that," says Cipolloni, who is in her 18th year in league.

Red Lantern (although their uniforms are black and blue—like many of the players' flesh on Monday mornings) had time for three plays but couldn't score. Still, before leaving the field, Red Lantern's co-coach Roe Wells hugged Keebler Kellogg's coach Janet DiIorio, who has also been the league commissioner for the last decade.

DiIorio, a 58-year-old white-haired grandmother from Folsom, Ridley Township, resembles Eagles' coach Andy Reid if only in their, well, roundness. She even apes Reid by covering her mouth with her "playsheet," a green-colored sticky notepad with a two-column list labeled "Us" and "Them." She uses it to chart the number of times both teams' players are involved in offensive plays.

"Don't compare me to Andy Reid," protests DiIorio. "It takes him 10 minutes to even get a play in, so even if he does there's still not enough time [to run it]. I just don't like his offensive play calling. He has to give that up. He has to give something up."

When she's reminded that Reid and the Eagles gave up T.O., and then lost injured Donovan McNabb, DiIorio professes her disgust with the discipline levied against the talented, talkative receiver, and her disappointment in the Eagles' quarterback.

In some ways, the SWFL is very much like the NFL. Consider that 95 percent of the offensive plays in the SWFL involve passing (West Coast offense, anyone?). In other ways, the two leagues are very different: Consider that the passing burden for Keebler Kellogg's falls on quarterbacks like McVaugh, who smokes a cigarette when her team's on defense to shed the stress. "Usually, she has a Big Gulp Pepsi, too," DiIorio says.