Coach from the Couch: Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over

Super Bowl XLII has ended, and with it, another year of football is over, unless of course you are one of maybe five people who watches the Pro Bowl. 

I admit it, I’m one of the five. Super Bowl Sunday is a highlight and a lowlight in that regard. It's what you’ve waited for all year, but when its over, football season is over as well. The only thing left to watch is the NBA.

There could be NHL contests to tune into, assuming you pay to get VERSUS. Most people don’t, though, so hockey, one of my favorite sports, is ruled out for viewing pleasure.

March Madness is just around the corner. This is the best, pure tournament in terms of competition and betting practices—nothing is better than watching the NFL on a giant screen TV and sitting on a couch, eating a sandwich and looking at a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. Those days are done.

All we can do now is wait for next year.

There still is that one last review of the NFL left though, so let’s get right on to the super review of Super Sunday.

First and foremost, there will be no talk of Tom Petty, hoards of high school teenagers rushing the stage, and commercials, because, quite frankly, Coach from the Couch hates all that additional fluff. 

The Super Bowl is the BEST TWO TEAMS in the NFL playing for the title of that particular year, so anything additional is a waste. All it does is attract non-fans for one day, as they take up room on the couch, eat your food and drink your beer. Go to Mardi-Gras and exit my living room please.

The final game boiled down to the undefeated New England Patriots and the New York Giants. New England was one of the largest favorites in Super Bowl betting history, even though a few short weeks ago they just squeaked out a win against these same Giants. The Giants were sporting a nine-game road winning streak, tops in the NFL for the year. Any game where you are considered the heavy underdog, and is not played on your home turf, I consider a road game.

Tom Brady, spotted numerous times wearing some sort of protective boot gear, but fine and ready to play on game day, might as well have been added to the “fluff” pile of commercials and side stories. Call me crazy, but if I were the quarterback of an undefeated team getting ready to play in the Super Bowl, and BOTH my feet were cut off in some sort of freakish kitchen butter knife dropping incident, I would still be on the field and feeling no pain on game day. So I’m thinkin’ Tom’s foot did not hurt.

The Super Bowl really didn’t pan out like anyone would imagine. First, you’d think this would be a high scoring contest—just based on the previous meeting of these two teams. Even Brady trashed talked that New York wasn’t giving him enough credit for scoring more points in Plaxico Burress' prediction. The Super Bowl ended 17-14, and until the fourth quarter, was one of the lowest scoring Super Bowl contests ever at 7-3.

Whoever had those numbers on the “Squares” office pool sheet better have purchased donuts on Monday morning!!!

Secondly, Randy Moss again was pretty much a non-factor and Wes Welker was awesome; a sad Super Bowl for a guy who caught the league high in touchdowns this year. Thirdly, if anyone were to tell you that Tom Brady would be firmly planted on his backside again and again throughout the contest, while the Patriots offensive line looked like a bunch of 160-pound high school kids blocking a professional defensive line, you’d have probably laughed. While Eli Manning came away with the MVP award, the real hero of the game was the outstanding play of the New York defensive line.

Finally, if someone told you the best play of the game would be Manning scrambling for his life, avoiding turf planting of his own, throwing it high for David Tyree, who pinned the ball against his helmet with one hand, while warding off a defender with his other, then grabbing the ball at the last possible instant, securing a 33-yard catch and setting up the winning score, you’d once again probably have laughed.

After all, the contest should have been out of reach for the New York Giants at that point. Yet all these things actually happened, and the Giants pulled off one of the greatest upsets ever in Super Bowl history.

All talk of cheating was erased with this one loss. Now nobody really cares about the extent of New England’s “Spygate” like they would have had, had the Pats won. 

Sure, Congress will waste millions of the taxpayer money to “get to the bottom of this”, but quite frankly, at this point, who gives a flying farf-ig-noogan.

Justice was served in the form of a loss, let’s move on with our lives. 

Just have Congress issue the statement “Cheaters never win”, a statement that may result in many of them giving up their seats during the next election. How about Congress worry about the fact that you can still secure the same mortgage rate terms on home loans than you could a few years ago to get us all into this financial mess. Also, gas prices are so high that pumps click off before the tank is full because you’ve reached your credit card limit on only one fill-up.

Anyhow, the sun sets on another football season. We thank the Man upstairs that the game of football was invented, we vacuum the couch and cover it with uncomfortable see-through plastic, and we wait. 

The ground hog will eventually see or not see his shadow, we’ll buy over-priced candy in a heart-shaped box, a bunny will leave things on our doorstep besides bunny droppings, baseball will heat up, grills will work hard, we’ll celebrate our independence, and ONCE again, our team will be 0-0 with a chance of winning it all.

Coach from the Couch—unlike Motel 6, turning out the lights.