Pro:
1) THE GIANTS WIN THE SUPER BOWL!!!!! w00t!
2) Michael Strahan and Amani Toomer get championship rings, which is particularly sweet, because they suffered through some really awful teams.
3) Eli Manning drinks for free in the tri-state area. This’ll buy him at least six months of peace and quiet from the New York press. That was one of the all-time great fourth quarters. I have no idea how he got away from that one sack, and Tyree’s catch was amazing.
4) This breaks up Boston’s sports hegemony for the year, which couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of fans.
5) THE GIANTS WIN THE SUPER BOWL!!!
Cons:
1) Unhappy Kate.
2) Another N years of the goddamn 1972 Dolphins.
3) Wall-to-wall Manning brothers in every commercial break next season.
4) Unhappy Kate.
I think the Pro side wins…
Since I’ve been wrong about all my predictions this post-season, let me throw out another one that I hope is wrong: Strahan is gone, and probably Toomer as well. Strahan almost retired this year, and there’s no better way to go out than winning the Super Bowl with a great defensive performance.Toomer’s also getting long in the tooth, too.
Steve Spagnuolo will likely be the head coach somewhere next year, too.
But for now, the Giants win!!! Woo!!!
I’m really not that unhappy–yes, your other cons are bad, especially since I hate the Colts and Peyton Manning with the pure and irrational passion that only a fan can muster. (I quietly glowed inside every time I saw that pep talk commercial with him saying yeah, end of season sucks.)
But this isn’t anything like last year, that epic collapse against the Colts, it was a tough hard-fought game all around. And I am so impressed by the toughness of the Giants–who I’ve been rooting for all year except for two games, so there’s a bit of carryover there too–and the scrappy underdog makes good story.
Would I have preferred that the outcomes of these two games be reversed? Damn straight. But I’m not nearly as bitter and la la la as last year–I’m writing from a room where ESPN is on, after all, unlike last year.
Congrats for your team, Chad!
Kate, it would be interesting to pour your hate for the Colts and my hate for the Pats into side-by-side graduated cylinders and see which is greater. 🙂
So from that perspective I loved the game. But it was a good game regardless. Plenty of tense action, great defense, and two classic drives to spice up the fourth quarter. The Manning-Tyree pass has got to be an all-time Super Bowl highlight. A great game for the neutral fan.
And as for the Mannings, well, commercials are why I have Tivo anyway…
cisko, my hate is unquantifiable as well as irrational. =>
I blogged my thoughts about the game, which might have been one of the best if you like football rather than just offensive football.
I was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and I admit it. I, for one, welcome our new Giant overlords. Until next year, anyway.
(1) Yes, what an amazing game. That insanely oscillating, low-probability, isn’t there a Writers Guild strike so who wrote this, 4th quarter was nail-biting excitement to audience on whatever side. I can appreciate intense football even if “my side” lost and spoiled a “perfect season” and “best of all time” deal and instead become the victims of the greatest Superbowl upset since “Broadway” Joe Namath put the Superbowl in the spotlight forever. Technically (location of hospital) “I was born on Broadway.” No Biz like Show Biz (which includes sports, politics, Science Fiction, blogosphere, and the Micro$oft bid for Yahoo).
(2) It is ironic that I, as a born 3rd generation New Yorker, should have been rooting for New England, just as strange as my ultimate New Yorker father, in his final years in Rhode Island, rooting for the Red Sox. But that’s part of the American Dream, that you can reinvent yourself and change your affiliation, home, party, ideology, and Class.
(3) As Yogi Berra said: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But I am an actual professional Futurist (as in my 2 cover articles in Omni Magazine, where I boldly and correctly
forecast things such as that we’d find a giant black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy; and that there would be [I coined the phrase] “Cybernetic War” [now shortened to Cyberwar]; and that future soldiers would have surgical radio implants [cf. RFID]; and that there would be an anti-ballistic missile defense debate and then implemented system [now called “Star Wars”]; and in Focus (BSFA) that there would be Methane Snow on Pluto, and interactive web TV). But I boldly make predictions in public, admit that I’m wrong if I’m wrong, and boast if I’m right. This time, SuperBowl 42, I was
very very wrong, except that the difference between winner and loser would be 3 points.
(4) I actually care most about Baseball among all sports. Other family members and I have ended up on opposite sides of that one, too. I have reverted to being a Dodgers fan (now L.A. Dodgers, having been a Brooklyn Dodgers fan literally half a block from where they hung out (Bossert Hotel) in boyhood). And added Red Sox, for the same Massachusetts-based reason as I added the Patriots and Boston Celtics. My science fiction and literature book editor father did graduate Harvard, cum laude. My brother Andy did graduate Boston University and marry in Cambridge, Mass; and I did do my M.S. and PhD (All But Degree) at UMass/Amherst.
I am not qualified, after only 22 years of marriage, to advice Chad/Kate except, in good faith to say this (which took my wife and friends and family years to pound into my thick skull):
(A) The 3 default fight between husband and wife are ostensibly about:
(1) money;
(2) sex;
(3) in-laws.
(B) there’s no good reason to add sports or who deserved the Nebula or Hugo to that short list;
(C) There’s no such thing as winning an argument with a spouse. Ever.
I have this vision, that years from now the only real memory of this game will be that the Pats lost. Only historians will remember the poorly executed offensive plays in the first half, the Pats’ matador lineplay, the WTF-inducing playcalling. Hell, no one may remember who won the game — like WWII, the main thing will be the loser, and everybody will think that their army won the game.
This is what it must have felt like on V-E Day: the allies rejoicing in the streets made safe, once again, for freedom. For one year, anyway.
Unfortunately edK is probably right. Hell, I’m so apeshit about the Pats losing that I’ve pretty much forgotten that their’s is the first 16 game undefeated season in NFL history, not to mention an 18 game undefeated streak when you include the playoffs. Hopefully doesn’t go down the memory hole in favor of Tom Brady’s seeming refusal to adapt to Giants’ defensive line last night. Man that sucked.
“Hopefully doesn’t go down the memory hole in favor of Tom Brady’s seeming refusal to adapt to Giants’ defensive line last night.”
It wasn’t Brady’s fault. The NE O-line couldn’t even contain the front four, let alone when the Giants sent extra blitzers. Anybody QB would’ve sucked if they had to play behind the NE O-line on that night.
“The NE O-line couldn’t even contain the front four, let alone when the Giants sent extra blitzers.”
True enough, the Giants defense was awesome. But Brady could’ve adapted his game. When they scored in the fourth quarter, it was mostly because they opted to go for more short passes and screen passes, and Brady was able to get passes off with less breathing room.