The Best Bowl Ever

And we've seen some good Superbowls over the past ten years or so. Superbowl XLII will definitely go down as the best.

With an unprecedented flourish, one team or the other was really going to make a bit of history. Either go undefeated, the first time since before I was born with the 1972 Dolphins, or beat the undefeated team that the analysts were calling the greatest of the great dynasties of football.

I always root for the underdog in a game like this--it makes it more fun. Unless it's my Bears, I always root against the favorite. Since the Pats weren't my team, it would have been no fun to root for them yesterday. That's kind of like rooting for the bully. You pull for the Davids to beat the Goliath.

The real fun of the Superbowl is that this is my championship game. This is the one sport I watch with any vigor. I don't watch basketball at all, hardly ever see any hockey, and am only remotely interested in the 162-game season that is baseball. Football is the sport I follow. Every Sunday, I watch at least three games, and now with NFL Network, I watch all the ten minute replays of the games I coulnd't see. The perfect 19 game season, with the best playoff structure, is football. I don't even watch college football because of the wacky rankings and polls and bowl games that don't matter. NFL has a rigid structure and system.

I was astonished at three lead changes in the fourth quarter yesterday. I thought for a while that the Patriots weren't giving it their all, but then scratched that idea--the Giants just played tougher. When the underdog wins, everyone is happy--except for Goliath.

And what do you think of them going for it now, on fourth-and-thirteen, with seven minutes to go in the second quarter, when they could have hit a 49-yard field goal? If your kicker can't hit a 49-yarder in a dome, you're in trouble. Vinatieri must have been smiling after that.