A couple of thoughts about the Super Bowl:

- What kind of world do we live in when Eli Manning becomes the Super Bowl MVP?  Holy fucking crap.  The league leader in turnovers during the regular season, goat in NYC for the past four years, butt of just about every Giants joke (which all end "but your quarterback is still Eli Manning"), and the only guy in the entire NFL that I’m confident I could beat in a fistfight, goes on the road and beats Tampa, Dallas (and Tony Romo), Green Bay (and Brett Favre) and New England (and Tom Brady).  If this isn’t a lesson in "anything is possible", I don’t know what is.  In a related story, I’m now going to quit my job and spend the rest of my life blowing myself.  If Eli Manning can turn himself into Joe Montana over five weeks, I think I only need four hard-working days to figure out how to S my own D.  And once I figure this out, I really don’t need money or health insurance or the like.  Fuck it.  

- Because work is so busy, I couldn’t get the day off today, which meant that I couldn’t attend the Super Bowl party I usually attend in New Jersey (I would have crashed in NJ last night and needed Monday to recover).  Therefore, I watched the game alone in my apartment (cue the violins).  However, this worked out pretty well, since Site Guy Brendan was in town on Saturday night and we got very, very drunk, which resulted in such a bad hangover on Sunday that I called my sister (who’s almost a nurse) to ask her about the possibility of me not having a hangover but rather being afflicted with meningitis.  I honestly don’t know what’s happening to me lately, but I’m getting tremendous, brain-bleeding hangovers.  I had three Super Bowl party options in Manhattan, all thrown by close friends, all with lots of food and fun guaranteed – and one was even within walking distance.  But still, I was confined to my apartment with my near-fatal hangover, even though I only drank canned and draft beer the night before (lots of it, but still).  Also, though I feel asleep in my bed on Saturday night, I woke up on my couch at 7am Sunday morning, with no idea how I got there.  Whoops.    

- Steve Spagnuolo made himself a shit-ton of money last night.  Good lord.  The blueprint (which, might I point out, was first discovered by the Eagles) was simple: hit, punch, kick and possibly bite Tom Brady every single time he dropped back to pass.  I don’t know enough about the logistics of defensive play-calling, so I couldn’t tell you if it was Spagnuolo’s defensive schemes, the Giants front seven playing the game of their lives/just wanting it more, the Patriots o-line turning into pussies, or the NE coaching staff not making adjustments to the Giants pass rush (you know, like the Eagles didn’t against the Giants when they gave up twelve fucking sacks and first-round pick Winston Justice played his way out of the NFL in a single game*), but any way you cut it, Spagnuolo walks out of this game looking like a genius.  Kudos to that front seven and Spagnuolo (who, might I point up, is a Jim Johnson protégé), and good luck to Steve coaching the Redskins next year.  Poo on the Pats o-line.  Just poo on you.

[* Winston Justice is still in the NFL, but should not be.  In the broad spectrum of individual choke jobs in my lifetime as a Philly sports fan - and believe me, there are many - there's Mitch Williams in Game Six, Andy Reid deciding to have his team stroll down the field with under two minutes to go in the Eagles-Pat Super Bowl, and then that performance by Winston Justice.  In a way, his is almost worst, because sometimes closers hang curveballs over the plate and Reid is a coach and not a player.  I don't think I've still ever seen a single worse performance by a professional athlete than Justice in that game.  And yes, I'm still bitter about it.  A lot.]

- Speaking of poor performances: Tom Petty – yikes.  I know the guy was never much of a singer to begin with and he’s not known for his energy, but wow…I wasn’t sure if it was Petty up there or Bernie.

(Question: Have you ever met anyone who would describe him/herself as a "huge Tom Petty fan?"  Petty’s one of those guys who, when you sign up for BMG in high school, you order his greatest hits cd as one of your eight initial free ones just because you can’t think of what else to order and you feel like you should.  I guess "Wildflowers" was a decent album, but I don’t know anyone who owns a Tom Petty cd besides the greatest hits or "Wildflowers," has ever seen him live, talks about his music in public, trades any of his bootlegs, etc.  Strange.)

- What’s worth pointing out is that every ball that Tom Brady threw over 15 yards was way off the mark – even when he wasn’t being rushed.  I don’t know if this is the fault of his ankle or if this was because he was made so jittery by the ever-present pass rush, but it was frustrating to watch, even for a non-Pats fan.  The "best" ball he threw over 15 yards was in the fourth quarter to Randy Moss, who was double covered and had to slow down for the pass, which was knocked incomplete.  Brady was way off until that one scoring drive in the fourth when he seemed to put it together a bit.  Strange.       

- More of a general playoff note, but it’s ok if the Giants cut Jeremy Shockey, right?  I’ve always thought he’s been terribly overrated, and Eli looks to have a good rapport and synergy with this Boss kid.  So Shockey’s gone, right?  Is there any reason to keep him around?  Any?

- Note to the Patriots: Look, I know you guys are the Patriots, the Greatest Team Ever, Masters of the Universe, Pride of the Massholes, Cocks of the Walk, Fucker of Hot Bitches and Fucker-Upper of All Who Stand in Your Way, and All Around Geniuses/Superstars, but you guys had a lot of balls eschewing a 47 yard field goal attempt and going for it on 4th and 13 with a 7-3 lead in a low-scoring game in a dome.  It’s a fucking dome!  It’s probably 55 degrees and zero wind!  And it’s 47 yards!  And it’s 4th and 13!  Not 4th and 5, but 4th and 13!  Just an unbelievable decision, even without the hindsight of the Pats eventually losing by three.

- Note to Atomic Wings on Broadway: Look, I know that you guys were probably really, really busy for the Super Bowl.  When I ordered my wings before the game started, I didn’t expect them to arrive in 30 minutes.  Realistically, I assumed they’d get there in an hour or a little more.  But almost three hours???  Three fucking hours for twenty wings?  Again, I’m sure it was busy, but you guys didn’t think to bring in a couple more delivery guys or wing makers for Super Bowl Sunday featuring the home team?  Maybe call Paco and Francisco at home at offer them $6 an hour instead of $4 to work some OT for the SB?  Really?  You thought you’d be able to handle it?   

- One of my favorite plays in the game was on a pass rush by Kawika Mitchell from the middle linebacker position.  I’m not exactly sure when it came, but the Pats were deep in their territory in the second half.  The ball was snapped and Mitchell slightly turned his body, as if he was going to drop back to defend the pass.  He then turned back and rushed the quarterback through a wide open lane in the o-line, and though he didn’t get a sack, he delivered a hit and disrupted the play, causing an incompletion.  What’s remarkable is that his little fake, as quick as it was, was just long enough for the left guard and center to lock up on their men, allowing for that large hole in the line for Mitchell to rush through.  

I’ve never seen anything like that before.  It was kinda like play-action, but from a defender: a little fake causing the o-line to believe he’s defending the pass, and then shooting like a bullet up to and through the o-line.  It worked so well and seemed so obvious that I wonder why more teams don’t blitz in this way.  Just an excellent, excellent play.

- All the commercials sucked.  Truly.  I can’t recall a single one that stood out.  How hard is it to come up with a funny thirty second commercial when you have a whole year to plan?  Christ.  Please, Big Company, send me a case of PBR and $80 and I’ll have five decent ideas for you in a week.  Or two.  Or longer.  I’m not really good with deadlines.  Which is why I work so cheap.

- In what we will call "The Play", when Eli broke those tackles and found David Tyree for that amazing completion, I have to admit that my first thought was, "You know, that looks a lot like a play that a guy I know used to make all the time."      

- On Saturday night, I was out with some buddies and we were talking about who we wanted to win the Super Bowl.  Obviously, I was torn.  On the one hand, there’s the Patriots.  When I was in school in Boston, prior to all the titles in the town, I liked the Boston sports teams, loveable losers like my own Philly teams.  And then championships happened.  And then 16-0 happened.  So like the rest of America, I was rooting against the Pats, because Massholes are unbearable and often very, very dumb, and I don’t want them to be happy.  Pretty simple, really.

On the other hand, there’s the Giants.  Speaking of unbearable and dumb fan bases, you don’t get much more obnoxious and much less smart than Frankie from Long Island with the muscles and the hair gel verbally fellating Brandon Jacobs between Jagerbombs and talking about how big the tits on his girlfriend, who is from Jersey, are.  Not only that, the Giants are obviously a hated division rival of the Eagles.  Ugh.

So it was really a lose-lose situation for me as a fan.  If the Pats win, Boston gets yet another championship and a truly legendary 19-0 season.  If the Giants win, an NFC East rival is king, and the city I live in, filled with its shitty fans, gets a year to gloat.  If possible, I would choose "c" – one of the two teams wins and I hit the lottery.  You know, to make me feel better.  But since that wasn’t an option, I went to my tiebreaker, as I always do in championships in which I have no vested interest: Which fan base deserves it more?  Remember, my home city has the longest championship drought of any city with four sports teams – by far.  I know intimately what it’s like not to have a championship, and, in short, it’s not awesome at all.  So by default, I was pro-Giants.  Terrific.  Maybe I should start rooting for poverty while I’m at it.    

But on Saturday night, my buddy Patrick said something that changed my perspective.  He pointed out that if the Pats win, even if it does complete the perfect season, it would still be just another championship to them.  The Massholes, he reasoned, wouldn’t be too obnoxious about winning, because they were so obviously supposed to win – the best team ever, going against the #5 seed in the far inferior conference, led by Eli Manning?  C’mon.  A Pats would win not equate to "WOW!" but rather "Duh."  So at the point, even though I was leaning toward the Giants prior to this to stop perfection, I decided I would route for the Pats.

This allegiance lasted all of thirty seconds into the game.  Almost immediately, I switched sides and rooted for the Giants.  The Pats…I just hate them.   I hate their arrogance, I hate their coach, I hate their fans, and I hate their gorgeous, gorgeous quarterback.  And when the Giants started bullying these pretty boys, I ate it up.  Even though I had a significant financial interest in the Pats winning (by 12.5), I was all Giants.  And when they won, it was sweet, so sweet. 

Thus marks the first and last time I root for the Giants.   

- Finally, I got this email this morning from Eagles fan Dan in Overland Park, Kansas:

So, you finally get to be in a city when a team wins the championship and it’s the fucking arch-rival Giants derailing history.  How’s that for a kick to the balls?

Yes, in its 25th year, I did break my streak of not being in a city that wins a championship.  I was a four year-old in Philly when the Sixers won in 1983, which I have no recollection of.  I was in Boston from 1997-2001, and just when I left, Beantown became Titletown, USA.  Conversely, prior to moving to NYC, the Yanks were the biggest dynasty in sports.  Two months after I arrived, they lost to the D-Backs and haven’t been back to the Series since.  So I was beginning to take this me living in cities that can’t win stuff personally. 

But lo and behold, the New York Fucking Giants win the Super Bowl when I maintain a residence in their city.  Of course, they play in Jersey, so I don’t know if this counts, and of course, they win only when I’m seriously considering moving out of NYC, but the fact remains that their helmets say "NY" and so do my bills.  Streak over.

And yes, they’re a division rival of the Eagles.  But I have many Giants fans friends and I am happy for them.  And more selfishly, I could say that during the regular season, despite getting beat by them twice, the Eagles were not that much worse than the Giants; again, Eli leading a 5th seed team to a championship shows that anything is possible.  So there should be hope for me as an Eagles fan.

But the funny thing?  There’s not.  There is no hope for me as an Eagles fan.  No hope at all.  Now that my "streak" is broken, it means that I’m in no way bad luck.  Instead, it means that the teams are root for are truly and fundamentally incapable of winning a championship.  I can nothing to influence this, no matter how hard I try or how much I hurt.  My dedication is futile.  Hopeless.  A lost cause.  But at least now I know this, thanks to the New York Giants. 

(I would like that winning lottery ticket now, please.)