Thoughts on SuperBowl XLII

Leading up to this year's Superbowl, I found myself caring a lot less about the so-called "Big Game" than I have in the past. It's kind of weird because I remember all throughout high school and college, the Superbowl was such a huge deal for me and my friends. Especially last year when the Bears were involved, the hype could not have been any bigger for one game.

But this season, I mostly stopped paying attention to football once it became obvious that the Bears weren't going to be a factor. Even though the media kept hyping up all the storylines - Patriots quest for 19-0, Brett Favre's resurgence, Jessica Simpson distracting the Cowboys, Patriots cheating behind the scenes, the continuing Colts vs. Patriots rivalry, etc., I couldn't help but feel a bit bored by it all.

Maybe "bored" isn't the right word, but "uninspired" seems to describe my feeling pretty well. Something about the atmosphere and background leading up to the Superbowl was completely uninspiring to me, and I couldn't quite figure out exactly why I felt that way.

The thing is, as much as I dislike how ESPN tries to manufacture off-the-field stories, I guess the fact that they do, highlights what sports is all about to the me as a fan. As I have written about in the past, the biggest reason I follow sports is because I love watching the storylines that go along with the games. I mean, the highlights are great and all, and nothing compares to the excitement of watching a great game in person. But ultimately, sports to me is one giant reality show that trumps anything Mark Burnett or MTV's producers could ever put together.

William Shakespeare once wrote, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players". Though he was referring to actors and comparing a scripted play to life in general, I find this quote to be particularly applicable to the world of sports. Whether it's on a basketball court, a baseball diamond, or a football field, these are all but "stages" for the "players" to entertain the audience with their unscripted dramas.

Few people will make the effort to go watch a movie or a play purely to see a talented actor or actress. It's certainly nice to see an Oscar-worthy performance as compared to Keanu Reeves - but usually, most of us are drawn to the plot of a story much more so than the skills of those who act it out.

In the same way, sports is about much more than high-flying dunks, spectacular touchdown catches, and points on a scoreboard. It's about the people who make those feats possible and what makes them special. Not just the athletes themselves, but the coaches, the organizations, and of course the fans as well. When we watch a game, we're not just rooting for a random logo on a jersey, but who's wearing that jersey and what it stands for.

Having said all of that, it brings me back to my point of feeling uninspired by the Superbowl this year. Although there was no shortage of subplots in the 2007-08 NFL season (many of which I listed above), none of these stories really took hold of my attention this year. No matter how supposedly "unique" or "intriguing" it was made out to be by the media, I just couldn't bring myself to care about any of the storylines, one way or another.

Giants players predicting a victory despite long odds? Been there, done that. Randy Moss with off-the-field troubles? He's been having incidents probably since he was in his mother's womb. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are winners? Like we didn't already know that from their 3 championships this decade. Even the pursuit of 19-0 didn't seem all that special - maybe it's never been done in the NFL, but there's been plenty of monster teams in the history of sports, and plenty of "David and Goliath" matchups like the Pats vs. Giants this year.

I don't know, something about it all just seemed so contrived, old, tired, and I actually started to feel a little disillusioned about the way sports was heading in my mind. Maybe I finally reached the point where I had watched so much sports over the years, that I thought I'd seen it all. It certainly seemed like ESPN was recycling the same formula over and over, and I'd seen every possible ending to every possible storyline.

As I thought about how the Superbowl might unfold, words to the Bon Jovi song kept playing in my mind: "it's all the same... only the names will change". Another year, another Superbowl, another champion to be added to the list in the NFL's history books. It's like watching a movie when you feel like you've already seen the same story 100 times before. How can anyone get excited for that?

And for about 3 1/2 quarters of football on Sunday, not much happened in the game to change my mind. There were some impressive plays made by the Giants defense, but overall, sloppy offense by both teams led to very little scoring from either side. Not much to get excited about if you were a Giants or Patriots fan, let alone a casual observer like me. When the clock started to wind down in the 4th quarter, Brady threw a TD pass to Moss to put them ahead, and as Randy was doing his "swim move" celebration (not sure I understand that one), I think we all figured that would be the final chapter of Superbowl XLII and New England's historic 19-0 season. Boring, to say the least.

But what happened in the moments that followed was simply incredible. It wasn't merely unexpected, it was probably the last thing I thought would happen at that moment. Just when I thought sports was becoming formulaic and overly predictable, the last few minutes of that game takes place, reminding me of how awesome sports can be sometimes, and why we waste so much of our lives to watch people running around on a field.

Of all people, Eli Manning leads his team on a game-winning touchdown drive against one of the (supposedly) greatest teams ever, and in the biggest game of his life no less. On the key play of the drive, he escapes the clutches of several pass rushers and launches a desperate throw towards David Tyree (certainly not his #1 option). And Tyree, someone you've never heard of unless you're really into NFL football, makes one of the most amazing catches of all time. A day later, I still can't believe he was able to trap the ball between his arm and his HELMET and hold onto it as he fell, all the while having Pro-Bowl safety Rodney Harrison draped on him. Everything about that play was ridiculous, crazy, and awesome.

It's been a while since a single play has caused me to spontaneously jump up and yell out of sheer exhiliration. The last time I can remember anything similar was in the 2005 Elite Eight game between Illinois and Arizona, when Deron Williams hit a game-tying 3 to bring the Illini back from 15 down in the 2nd half. In moments like those, you don't even think about what else is going on. All you know is that something completely insane just happened and you'll never experience something quite like it again.

In a way, this was more captivating than Deron's shot, because I'm not even a Giants fan (not saying it made me happier, just that it was a more thrilling moment). I actually happened to really dislike the Giants for the past few years, partly because of Eli and the whole draft/trade debacle with San Diego. And it's hard for me to root for New York in anything to begin with, especially when all you ever hear about is New York teams in the national media. Add onto that annoying personalities like Tom Coughlin, Plaxico Burress, and Jeremy Shockey, it doesn't make for a likable team. On top of that, Randy Moss has been my favorite NFL player since he was a rookie with the Vikings, so a part of me kind of hoped that he would win the championship, even if I wasn't actively rooting for it.

The odd thing is, not only did that sequence of events win the game and the NFL championship for the Giants, it also won me over and totally changed my opinion of that team and the story behind it. All of a sudden, I stopped seeing Eli as a pampered brat who lived off the family name, and dug his own hole by demanding to play in New York instead of San Diego. Instead, I kind of started to feel bad for the kid - overshadowed by his father and older brother his whole life, disrespected by just about everyone around him.

And Plaxico Burress, even though he's still a typical big-mouth wide receiver and probably always will be, I have to give him props for the fact that Tom Brady now looks like the idiot for their pre-game trash talk (see link). Even Coughlin seems to deserve some redemption for lightening up a little bit after Tiki Barber's smear campaign against him during the past year or two. The only guy on the team that I still despise is Shockey, and in a bit of poetic justice, he was never a real part of this championship. It's only fitting that no one is sorry that he missed the entire playoff run with his injury.

What I appreciate most about the whole thing is that this Giants victory wasn't your typical underdog/David vs. Goliath story. We've seen that story before in sports in the form of crazy upsets, and dare I say, it's kind of played out at this point. "Rooting for the underdog" has become such a cliche these days that sometimes, I almost end up feeling sorry for the favorites instead.

There will be many self-proclaimed analysts who choose to compare this game to Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson, or Villanova upsetting Georgetown, but as for me, I don't see it that way at all. This was one of those sports stories that you just can't categorize or compare to anything else. It was a crazy, unique series of events, but it didn't feel like a fluke that the Giants won. And as much as people villainized Belichick and the Patriots for cheating/trash talking/running up the score, it still seemed kind of silly to make this matchup into a "good vs. evil" thing. There were plenty of reasons to dislike both sides, just as each team had its redeeming qualities too. If you ask me, it's much more interesting to dissect a situation like that, than to simply break everything down into black and white terms.

In the end, I guess it just makes me happy to know that no matter how many games I may watch in my lifetime, or how many times it might seem like the same storylines repeated, that at least once in a while, something like the end of Superbowl XLII can still surprise and inspire me as a fan. The world of sports can definitely be a frustrating one at times, and as I get older it does seems to be getting worse for wear - but it's definitely nice to be reminded now and again of why I still watch.