Eli Manning won a super bowl MVP?

And yet hell did not freeze over.

I'm still somewhat in shock and very happy (as a Giants fan) over the result of the super bowl last night. So here are my thoughts on the outcome.

1) In the regular season, the Giants lost to Dallas twice, Green Bay and New England. They proceded to beat each of those teams in the playoffs. I don't feel like figuring it out, but I suspect no team has ever beaten 3 teams in the playoffs that they lost to earlier in the season.

2) The Giants regular season was about as mediocre as you can get. They lost 6 games, 4 to very good teams (see #1 above), and to Minnesota and Washington, which were average teams. They beat every bad team they played, but their best win was probably the other game against Washington. This is about as perfectly as you define an ok team, lose to those better than you, beat those worse than you.

3) And my last point about the Giants regular season is that they lost 6 games, tied for the most of any super bowl winner. The 49ers lost 6 in XXIII (1988 season). Also, the Raiders lost 5 games when they won in XV, but that was a year of freakish parity as 3 teams finished 12-4, and 6 finished 11-5 (5 from the AFC). And the Patriots lost 5 when they beat the Rams in their first super bowl win. And the Steelers lost 5 when they won 2 years ago.

4) I really hate sports fans/sports media members who love to proclaim championship success as the first and last measure of a player's greatness. Before Peyton won the super bowl last year, all we heard was how he was a decent QB incapable of winning in the playoffs. Then he wins and he's a champion, able to handle the pressure. Excuse me, but as a player he is the same before and after that game. He did not suddenly learn how to play football. Similarly, people who were ready to crown the Patriots the greatest team of all time are now saying that the teams will go down as good, but nothing great. As much as I hate to say it, this Patriots team is still great, one of the best I've seen in my time as a football fan (which admitedly only stretches to the late 80s). I guarantee that if we had some magical power to switch the 2 Giants-Pats games (Giants win the regular season by 3, Patriots win the Super Bowl by 3) then people would continue to argue that the Patriots may be the best ever. The real result (18-1 with a 3 point loss to the Giants) and the imagionary results (18-1 with a 3 points loss to the Giants) are not really that different, but the perception is huge.

Now on to more frivolous things ...

5) I was very impressed with crowd at the game, many more fans of one of the competing teams than we usually see at the super bowl.

6) Very few of the commercials were memorable. And even those were not too funny. Are companies trying to be more conservative or are they hiring less creative people?

7) I attribute at least part of the Giants victory yesterday to my conscious effort to drink beer from NY (Brooklyn brewery to be exact).

8) David Tyree went from a nobody to one of the most popular people in NY in the span of 1 quarter.

9) Plaxico Burress got ripped for his prediction of a 23-17 Giants victory. First by the media for prediction a Giants win, and if the media doesn't want players making these kinds of predictions, stop sticking microphones in their faces for 2 weeks. And secondly from Tom Brady who sounded shocked and amused at the notion of his fantastic offense only scoring 17. I doubt he's as amused after scoring 14.

10) Now that football is over (the Pro Bowl is not football), I can better concentrate my efforts on hockey, college basketball and baseball (2 weeks until pitchers and catchers).

11) All 4 super bowls that the Belichek era Patriots have been to were decided by exactly 3 points.