Big Win for Big Blue

The Giants win Super Bowl XLVI by a score of 21-17 with - deja vu all over again - Eli Manning leading a last minute touchdown drive to beat the Patriots.

Going into the game, I had no great emotional investment. I neither liked nor disliked either team enough to have a strong rooting interest. I just wanted a good, if not great, ballgame. On the surface, this game had all the elements of such a game. Two masterful Tom Brady-led drives at the end of the first half and beginning of the second half that gave the Pats a 17-9 lead, a terrific end of game 88 yard Manning-led drive that led to the winning TD with :57 left to play, and even a Brady hail mary heave that had you on the edge as the game ended.

Despite all of that, when it was all over, and perhaps it was that lack of emotional investment alluded to earlier, I was left with a sort of well-it's-over-now-bring-on-Spring-Training-baseball kind of feeling.

Also, when the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl is one that the defense let happen and the offense did not want to score, well it lends a kind of surreal feeling to the whole thing. The strategy on both sides for this bizarre happenstance can be defended - Bill Bellichick is a genius, after all - but something about it just doesn't sit right.

As for the other Super Bowl sideshows...

Madonna at halftime. Another aging rocker struts her stuff at the Super Bowl. Haven't we seen this before? Did you notice how she almost fell trying to mount one of those steps? Do we really need all this ridiculous spectacle and fireworks? If we really need a singer, how about bringing him/her/them out with a back-up band and a microphone and have him/her/them sing a few songs? Or, how about a dog and a frisbee?

Commercials. Twelve hours after the fact, I can remember the following: the cat killing dog for Doritos, the baby in the slingshot for Doritos again, the eTrade baby, "Wego" the dog for Bud Light, the Budweiser prohibition-is-over spots, the bulldog outracing the greyhounds for some kind of sneaker, the lady head-butting her husband over some kind of yogurt, the dog that worked out to lose weight for some kind of car, chimps in suits for CareerBuilder, and the Fiat commercial with some incredibly hot woman drinking some kind of foamy coffee drink. That's it. That's the list.

Oh, and one more note on commercials. Danica Patrick wants it both ways. She wants to be taken seriously as a major competitive athlete/driver and not be put down because she is a woman in a man's world, yet she continues to do commercials that tease us with the idea that if you go to the website, you just might get to see her naked. Which is it going to be, Danica?

Oh, and The Grandstander got his prediction wrong (see post of last Friday) and closes the NFL post-season with a 7-4 record. Not bad. However, in my pre-season write-up, where I listed about a dozen or so teams, one of whom would win the Super Bowl, the New York Giants were not included on that list. Not good.

Twelve days until pitchers & catchers report in Bradenton.