The reemergence of the Dallas Cowboys – who play the Green Bay Packers today for the right to move on to the NFC Championship game next weekend – created some unforeseen levity once viewers spied Gov. Chris Christie hugging Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones after the team’s victory over the Detroit Lions.

“Spied” might be the wrong word. Gov. Krispy Kreme was sporting an orange sweater for the occasion, and let’s just say that orange isn’t always the new black. Indeed, though Christie described himself as a high school athlete at the time of Bridge-gate – to distinguish himself, I guess, from those “loser” henchmen who took the fall for the George Washington traffic scandal – his moment with Jones resembled nothing so much as the chubby kid trying to hang with the cool jocks. Altogether now singsong “Awk-ward.”

Christie – who has taken a lot of heat for his Cowboys’ allegiance – has been characteristically unbowed, leading the puckish New York Times columnist Gail Collins to remark that it’s “certainly the tough-talking, self-assured Chris Christie that all of us have come to know and, um, know.”

The real problem here is not that a New Jersey governor likes a Dallas team – that would hardly matter in a national election – but that the Cowboys own a company that was recently awarded a contract at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, overseen by Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. ...

The big news for us Colin Kaepernick fans is that he’s spending the off-season in Phoenix, Ariz. – working on his quarterbacking skills with Kurt Warner, two-time NFL MVP and Super Bowl champ for the St. Louis Rams and Arizona Cardinals.

So it’s all good, right? Someone who’s talented wants to improve on that. We should be cheering him on, no?

No: Let the hating begin.

“Warner should teach him how to bag groceries” is among the milder thoughts in the blogosphere. The rap is that Colin is a running quarterback who will never be a traditional pocket passer. And that may – or may not – be true.

For the uninitiated, and I must confess that Yours Truly counts herself among them, a pocket passer, like the Broncos’ Peyton Manning or the Patriots’ Tom Brady, stands and delivers, that is he stands in the “pocket” – presumably protected by his great offensive line, or O-line – to throw the ball to various teammates whose locations on the field he quickly “reads” under great pressure.

Then there is the new breed of running quarterback – led by Colin, the Redskins’ Robert Griffin III (known as RG III) and the Panthers’ Cam Newton – all of whom have struggled this season. The exception is their contemporary, the Seahawks’ Russell Wilson, who, though a running quarterback, can deliver from the pocket and read the field. He is considered more of a hybrid like the Colts’ Andrew Luck, another contemporary, and the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers, an established superstar. The thinking is that though it’s fine to be able to scramble, you have to be able first and foremost to stand and deliver in the NFL, unlike in college ball.

All this is fascinating and serves as a great subtext in my novel “The Penalty for Holding,” about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for acceptance in the NFL. My protagonist, Quinn Novak, is more of a hybrid like a Wilson, Rodgers or Luck – what former Niners’ star Steve Young, a great running quarterback who became a great pocket passer – would call a multi-threat.

Chris Christie’s Cowboy love

Stand and deliver