Right now, sports fans are engulfed in the final weeks of the NFL season. It's during these two games that the playoff picture is finally settled, and wow are there some tight races this year. Currently there is a three way tie atop the NFC East between the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Giants and the Washington Redskins. Will RGIII of the Redskins continue to extend his historic rookie season into the playoffs? Will Eli Manning and the Giants do what they've done in years past by winning when it counts right at the end of the season and then carry that momentum to another Super Bowl victory? These are the questions plaguing sports fans right now. But film aficionados are fixated upon another race that gets settled not to shortly after the Super Bowl: The Oscar race. Here are the five films most likely to win Best Picture on February 24.

Argo
Ben Affleck's 70s era thriller has attracted glowing reviews and over $100 million at the box office. The Academy has also been friendly to actors turned directors in the past (Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Mel Gibson and Kevin Costner all have directing trophies). The political nature of the film, which is typically advantageous, may be a blow against the film this year though. Will films like "Lincoln" and "Zero Dark Thirty" siphon away votes for Affleck's film?

Lincoln
Daniel Day-Lewis. Tony Kushner. Steven Spielberg. Really, could you ask for more pedigree on a film project than that? The three creative titans joined forces to create this powerful docudrama about the passage of the 13th Amendment. The reviewers have called it one of Spielberg's absolute best, and Day-Lewis seems to be assured an unprecedented third Best Actor trophy. The one strike this film may have against it is that it could suffer a vote split with the plethora of political films this year (see above).

Les Miserables
The Academy has long had an affinity towards musicals. It wasn't even that long ago that one danced away with the Best Picture prize (2002's "Chicago"). This long awaited screen transformation of the Broadway smash is courtesy of Oscar winning director Tom Hooper, and features a sensational cast. The credentials are there. Unfortunately for the studios case, so are the mostly mixed reviews.

Silver Linings Playbook
Oscar has long shied away from comedy in the past, at least for the top prize. But David O. Russell's winning charmer about a two dysfunctional outcasts who start up a relationship may be able to buck that trend. Russell shockingly found himself in the Academy's good graces two years ago with "The Fighter." He is looking to return to the ring with the only film in the race that leaves audience members smiling.

Zero Dark Thirty
This is the late entry in the race, and boy has it made its presence known. Kathryn Bigelow's sobering account of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden has taken a majority of the initial Best Picture prizes from critics groups, and is drawing even better reviews than her recent Oscar winning masterpiece "The Hurt Locker." Everything looks good for Bigelow's film now, but there are still a couple months left. Wait and see what happens when competitor studios start to attack the film for alleged historical inaccuracies.