18-1 Patriots. Belichick walking off the field with :01 left. Manning's throw. Tyree's catch. Fourth and 13. Biggest upset ever? Those rascally '72 Dolphins. There's so much to discuss concerning the Super Bowl and I'm ready to delve in.

New England is the Better Team
In my recent memory of college and professional sports history, I cannot recall a time when I've looked back at the Championship game and couldn't say "The team that won was not the better team", moreover, the best overall team in the league. The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals and this year's New York Giants are certainly the exception.

The '03 Wild Card Florida Marlins defeated the heavily favored Yankees in the World Series. And the '01 Diamondbacks did the same. New England beat the powerful St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. Denver beat Green Bay in Super bowl XXXII. In 2006 the Miami Heat upset the Dallas Mavericks to win the NBA Championship, and two years prior the Pistons upset the Lakers. 2006 also saw the underdog Florida Gators take down the mighty Buckeyes of Ohio State, and LSU beat Oklahoma in 2003. In Men's Basketball, the Gators were the highest seed in the Final Four, even though they were seeded only as a 3, and won the National Championship.

Had the number 8 seed Edmonton Oilers beaten the Carolina Hurricanes to win the Stanley Cup in 2006 (they lost in 7 games), I would have had almost no choice but to acknowledge them as the best team in the NHL, even though their regular season record was only 41-28-13. Carolina won 52 games, the Red Wings, who lost to Edmonton in the first round, won 58.

The list goes on and on and on. But the point of all this rambling is that the better team did not win on Sunday.

I wrote in December that the Patriots are the best team ever... Even if they lose, and I stand firm in that belief. When I'm asked in 10 years who the best NFL team in history was, I'll say the '07 Patriots. If they played the Giants 10 times, they might beat them 8. I give credit to the Giants for playing a hell of a game and beating the best team ever, but New York, despite Sunday's results, was not the best team from the 2007 NFL season.

I Rooted for the Pats Because They Deserved It
Ordinarily, barring an actual rooting interest in a title game such as my favorite team playing in it, I like to root for the underdog. But I wanted the Patriots to win not because I like them, but because they played like the best team all season long and it would have put a nice cap on the season. I wanted to see them go undefeated. I would so love for a team to someday go 19-0 so that those pompous '72 Dolphins would shut up (Ok, so the Patriots are pompous and arrogant too, but they're the lesser of two evils for me right now). I also rarely, if ever, root for any New York team (You New Yorkers really do have a way of making Chicago feel like the "Second City"). So yeah, I'm disappointed today. Nobody will ever agree with me that the '07 Pats are the best team of all times, and everybody will tell me I'm crazy because they didn't win the Super Bowl. I think the rest of the world is just closed-minded. Listen, there have been other teams that have gone 18-1, 17-2, 16-3, and so on. They are in the discussion for best team, too. It doesn't matter when your one loss came, in my opinion, as the 1998 Minnesota Vikings are also on my list of greatest NFL teams ever and they lost in the NFC Championship.


Any classy sports hero is in attendance to congratulate
the athletes who break their records. Not these clowns.

The Patriots had one loss, and it was unfortunate for them it came in the Super Bowl. But looking at this season and seeing who they played and how they won was incredible. The 1972 Dolphins only played two games all season long against teams who finished with a winning record. The Patriots beat the Cowboys in Dallas. They beat the Colts in Indianapolis. They beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh. And they absolutely destroyed two really good teams, the Jaguars and Chargers, at home in the playoffs. Heck, they even beat the eventual Super Bowl Champion Giants in the regular season. They had the best offense in NFL history, (arguably, by the time his career is over) the best QB in NFL history, and the second best WR in NFL history, not to mention one of the top five coaches in NFL history. That's my case and I'm sticking to it.

Belichick Gives More Reasons to Hate Him
Nobody outside of New England likes Bill Belichick. From his ridiculous answers to questions at press conferences, to his Spygate scandal, to his hideous wardrobe, he's an easy guy to dislike. Here's two more reasons: His arrogance propelled him to go for it on 4th and 13 rather than kick a 49-yard field goal in the 3rd quarter. That field goal, had Stephen Gostkowski made it, would have ended up sending the Super Bowl into overtime for the first time in history. The Patriots were accused on many occasions of running up the score by going for easy fourth and one's all season long, but they did so when they were well ahead and late in the game. This play made little sense. No weather, no wind, and a decent kicker. Should have been a no-brainer.

But that's not all. Belichick walked off the field with one second left in the game, and in his post-game interview with the media, never congratulated the New York Giants on a tremendous victory. Bill Belichick is a sore loser.

The Play that Needs a Nickname
If you watched the game you know exactly what I'm talking about. Manning does his best Harry Houdini impression and escapes the grasp of two Patriot rushers, then rifles a jump ball down to David Tyree who makes a spectacular catch while falling backwards, trapping the ball between his wrists, fingers, and helmet. Nobody ever heard of Tyree before this game, but moments after scoring his first touchdown of the season, he arguably outdoes Lynn Swann for the best catch in a Super Bowl, thus cementing his name in history. Swann's catch was surely more acrobatic and athletic, but Tyree's was a brilliant combination of luck, balance, and more importantly, clutch. Hard to imagine anybody making a better, clutch catch, ever.


Tyree's catch was better, and more clutch, than this one.

Franco Hariss didn't make a great play; he was merely in the right place at the right time for the "Immaculate Reception." Dwight Clark made "The Catch" in the NFC Championship game, not the Super Bowl. I've heard a few suggestions for what this play might go down in history as being called, but haven't liked one enough to make it official just yet. Maybe some readers will leave suggestions as comments to this blog.


I'm not impressed with Manning's playoff run.

Eli Manning is Still Just Average
Eli Manning played four great games in the playoffs and fared well in the Super Bowl, winning the MVP. I can understand why Eli was given the award; it's because the real MVP of the game, the Giant's pass rush, was just too broad, and the best player from that unit, Justin Tuck, just wouldn't have been quite as "sexy" of a pick as Manning. Here's the thing though. Before anybody starts touting Manning as an upper echelon quarterback just for winning the Super Bowl, just remember that the four good playoff games he played is a small sample size in comparison to the fact that he's played three full seasons as a starter and hasn't had a quarterback rating higher than 77.0, hasn't thrown more than 24 touchdowns in a season, and hasn't had fewer than 18 interceptions in a season. I'm no fool. Winning a Super Bowl MVP isn't going to distract me from the fact that he's still Eli Manning and still hasn't played a full season worthy of taking him with the first overall pick in the draft.