Super Bowl XLII: A Blustery Affair

As one of the most grandiose and popular sporting events of the calendar year falls upon us, I felt now would be the appropriate time to speak about the Super Bowl, the zenith of professional football taking place for the 42nd consecutive year.

This year's matchup has a distinctly  Northeastern flavor, much to the chagrin of the majority of Americans. No it's not Yankees/Red Sox, Knicks/Celtics, Rangers/Bruins, or even Revolution/Red Bulls, but rather the New England Patriots and the New York Giants.

Although they are two franchises that have long histories and are geographic neighbors, I can't recall there having been a rivalry between the two squads. They have rarely been relevant at the same time.

In fact, up until this decade, the Patriots were typically one of the league's worst performing teams. Now they fall under the same category as the Steelers of the 70's, the 49ers of the 80's, and the Cowboys of the 90's.

This year's Super Bowl once again gives the nation's most obnoxious, self-promoting and self-centered region a chance to once again serve as the center of the world for one weekend. Boston versus New York.

To us Northeasterners, it doesn't get much better than this. New Yorkers and Bostonians do not particularly like each other. New Yorkers think of Bostonians as dirty, uncouth, loud-mouths with massive inferiority complexes. Bostonians think of New Yorkers as arrogant pansies who are mostly transplants and aren't as great as they believe they are.

Recent sporting history would prove the last few words of that sentence to be the case, but in measuring other characteristics of each city, both are unique and intriguing cultural centers in their own right. If the game itself and the extracurricular theatrics that always come with the Super Bowl Package aren't entertaining enough for middle America, the back and forth banter between native fans of these two rival cities should make up for any lack of actual sporting drama.

Now for my game-relevant thoughts about this matchup.

I am a Giants fan. I will make that be known at the outset. I always have been, and always will be. In fact, the Giants are my second favorite franchise in all of sports, behind the Mets, of course. As ecstatic as I am that my favorite football team has made it to the zenith of its sport, I am understandably quite shocked, and have properly failed to fully absorb the fact that the Giants made it to their championship game before the Mets made it to theirs.

I'll admit that I was one of Eli Manning's harshest and most outspoken critics for the duration of the regular season. After the fiasco at home against the Vikings, I said that even if the Giants had made it to the playoffs (which considering the amount of talent on the team, and the lack of quality in the NFC it would have been monumental had they not), that Eli should not come back next year as the team's quarterback.

This is a team that is built to win now, with a demanding fan base that expects its team to perform at the highest level. The feeling is that if you play for and represent the most important city in the country, the teams' results should mirror that eminence.

Is this a fair statement or belief?

Not necessarily, but being a lifelong New York sports fan, this is a sentiment that is popularly echoed and supported throughout the tri-state area.

Yet, something happened to this team during the second half of the Week 16 road game in Buffalo that altered it's destiny. The Giants were getting whipped by a Bills team that had far less talent than they, and nothing really to play for aside from the role of spoiler. The Giants had a ton to play for: their playoff fate was hanging in the balance. If they lost, they would need to defeat the perfect Patriots in order to make the playoffs as a wild card road team.

Great.

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