I wouldn’t say that I’m a New York Giants fan (that loyalty goes to the Indianapolis Colts, good or bad season), but man you have no idea how excited I was when they beat the New England Patriots tonight in Super Bowl XLII to crush their dreams of a “perfect” season.

Here’s my hit list of thoughts about the game and season that I don’t have time to expand upon right now:

• For the past two seasons, the Patriots season has came to end with a loss to a Manning.
• With the Patriots losing, the season no longer seems a loss. After the Colts lost to San Diego in the second round of the playoffs (and the second time this season), I seriously didn’t care about the playoffs any more this season, and my only interest was in seeing the Patriots lose. And honestly, I’m a little shocked due to what I know of football history.
• As I said before the game, the “odds” makers were off their rockers. These two teams played a tight game in week 17 and the Giants have been playing better while the Patriots seemed to be slowing down towards the end (just look at Tom Brady’s touchdown numbers plus the win margins). A two touchdown win either way was highly unlikely.
• Only after losing in the Super Bowl, the mainstream media admitted that a win by the Patriots would have been covered with a”cloud” due to their being caught cheating. Ya think!? Now maybe you backpeddlers can stop trying to teach my children that cheating is okay, as is “winning” at any cost.
• Roger Goodell needs to get some kahones and some smarts…
  • Fines and the “loss” of the 31st draft pick as the only means of punishment for cheating is ridiculous. Please, take a page from the NCAA’s punishment book…
    • Fines (the NFL has figured that one out).
    • A deduction in a teams’ salary cap for a certain period of time (to equate to the loss of scholarships in college). I’d personally allow them to keep their draft picks since that is the future of the team, not the “now”, which is who should be punished.
    • No post season play at all for a certain period of time, regardless of regular season record (that one might have worked out well for the Patriots this year though, depending who was still on the team after the salary cap cuts).
    • But we know the later items will probably never happen due to money and there’s probably some clause somewhere that forbids such action. I’m no lawyer, but I can imagine they’ve covered just about every angle.
    • I have heard the excuse that, “every team is doing it”. If that were the case, dish out the punishment across the board and give yourself a bit of integrity.
  • The destruction of the evidence is mind boggling and throws up conspiracy theory flags. I’m interested to see what the Senate is able to pull from that, but regardless, that just seems like a foolish move to me if there was nothing to hide.
• While Peyton still got quite a bit of air time, Eli has finally stepped out of Peytons’ shadow, at least somewhat. Eli still has a way to go to being as good as Peyton, but he also has his ring now, and did it faster than Peyton.

That’s all for now…let the usual flaming from Patriots fans begin. In the meantime, I’m personally looking forward to the Combine here in Indy, the 2008 draft and then what will hopefully be another spectacular season (including what should be a good game up in Green Bay). Wouldn’t it be a nice story line to have a Manning vs. Manning Super Bowl?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.