Super Freaking Awesome

I'm still stunned. What an amazing game. Not sure what can top it - not sure what can come close. Does "Wide Right" compare? Sure it does and it's going to take some time for me to figure out where this win sits compared to that one. This one is probably better - mostly because of the juggernaut, hated Pats on the other end. Ruining a perfect season of a big-headed team on the biggest stage in the biggest game? That's awesome. There cannot be a better way to win a championship. It's nuts.

Gwen and I watched the game in Man Room. At the half poor Gwendolyn was exhausted (it was 2:30 am at least) and I sent her off to bed and did the rest of my viewing alone. I was nervous and tense. We played great defense in the third quarter but I could tell we were on the field too much, getting tired. Eli's first go-ahead TD drive was sweet. He was absolutely squeezing the ball into places - that pass to Boss and then the touchdown to Tyree. Then New England bounced back. Our defense looked really tired on that last Patriots drive. When we got the ball back, we had a crappy kick return and then two quick incompletes. I thought we were done. I started to prepare mentally for a loss.

But wait a minute, not so fast. 3rd and 10 becomes 4th and 1. Suddenly we have a first down and new life. Maybe.... Then things get briefly ugly again, then another first. Who's quarterbacking this team - Eli Manning or Joe Montana? Then, on another third down, "The Play" where Eli spun out of a sure sack and David Tyree made that insane circus catch. That's the exact moment where I believed we would score. We couldn't make that play and then not score. And then we did. I went nuts. Just ballistic. What a rush.

When the Pats got the ball back I had this barely restrained rocking motion going, probably chanting something like "come on come on come on" like a pyschopath off his meds while wishing we would just stop them. When Brady went down on second down I went nuts again. Two plays later, they were done.

Still, there was 1 second left on the clock for like a minute as everyone ran off the field, then back on. That was the longest minute of the game. I couldn't let myself go absolutely crazy until I saw the zeros. Then it happened. I was in disbelief. We beat a monster team. We actually did it. It was insane. I broke a playstation controller jumping around like a lunatic. That baby's getting bronzed and framed.

One of the coolest things about this for me was the fact that the Pats, with their demeanor and antics this year, built up such a huge anti-Pats fan base. Even some of my San Diego boys, who are all Eli haters to a man because of what he and Archie did to them on draft day, were pulling for the G-men. That's how much people hated these Pats. I swear a major market team like the Giants will NEVER have such a big karmic one-game underdog following like that again. It took another major market, downright evil team to form a coalition that strong. It was so cool. At work almost everyone I know was rooting Giants. That collective rooting and celebration was the best.

The saying is trite and over-stated this week, but it's true: This sort of game is exactly why I watch sports. Why I pile hundreds of hours into football. My favorite team pulling a huge upset in the biggest game - unbeatable. It's simply unbeatable. I've found myself smiling constantly the past two days. I hear songs on the radio, I smile and think of the Giants. I stare off into space in clinic, and I see David Tyree catching that ball with his head. With his head! I surf the web, and read 15 new articles a day about some facet of that game. I can't get enough. This is bliss.

The only downside is that I wish I had seen the game with my dad. Or at least been somewhere with a pocket of true Giant's fans, going nuts and living and dying with every call. I was my own little island here in Germany, but I'll take it. It was awesome. Everyone should see their team win like this. Everyone should experience it. (Except maybe Eagles and Cowboys fans - sorry George - time to pick another squad...)

I can't believe Eli Manning turned into Luke Skywalker and Frodo Baggins all at once. For Giants fans, it was like watching Luke destroy the Death Star. For Pats haters, it was like watching Frodo destroy the Ring - everything came tumbling down. Belichick was Darth Vader, Belichick was the Eye. So good. So sweet. Unreal.

Below is a little column from an ESPN page 2 columnist from Monday. I thought it was really cool, and kind of right on. (My favorite part is about Belichick's Tie Fighter - still spinning in space).

I'll never forget this game. I'm not sure anyone that watched it will.

Huzzah Giants. Huzzah indeed.

PS - Somewhere Tiki Barber is crying right now. Just bawling. And I don't fell bad for him at all...


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WE ARE ALL GIANTS

In this glorious moment, when words seem so inadequate to express the joy all non-frontrunning sports fans feel, the first thing that comes to mind is this: We are all Giants. We are all New Yorkers, just as surely as JFK declared himself to be a Berliner in 1963. How can we not feel profound brotherhood with Eli Manning, with Tom Coughlin and all the others to whom we owe both the sight of little Billy Belichick sprinting off the field in an ungracious, you-took-my-Legos huff and our collective freedom from the Boston Globe's "19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots?"

How can we not be struck at the same time by these observations: Plaxico Burress was right; teary-eyed Mercury Morris can get back to sweeping his empty driveway; Belichick's TIE fighter is probably still tumbling around in deep space.

February 3, 2008, marks the ushering in of a new age that seems so far from the promise of another historic day, Feb. 2, 2008 [the Patriots still undefeated, Tom Brady still upright], and a somewhat historic season, 2007-08, which we thought might conclude with a New England title and Belichick publishing "The Passive-Aggressive Manager's Handbook to Grumpy, Self-Serious Perfection in Football and Life." The first decade of the new century instead reminds us that games are worth playing, that odds primarily exist to enrich bookies, that America's preeminent advertising platform can still deliver a compelling sports experience and that Boston fans can now add 18-1* to Bill Buckner and Bucky F'n Dent.

In their ruthless professionalism and obsession with offensive metrics, in their ends-justify-any-means subterfuge and Only-Sing-When-You're-Winning single-mindedness, the Patriots embodied the most disturbing, dehumanizing aspect of modern athletics: Transforming play into work. In the long term, this attitude is untenable, because football is really nothing more than a complicated version of 5-year-olds chasing a soccer ball around a park, falling into each other and having a good time. It is the gap-toothed smile of Michael Strahan, crusty Coughlin enjoying a Gatorade bath. Joylessness, even under the pretext of competitiveness or dressed up in an extra-colorful Patriots hoodie, is never a force that can make sports worth watching or caring about. That is why today we are all Giants.
--Patrick Hruby
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I can still see this when I shut my eyes....