Anyone who has ever been in my office and has looked at my clock would know which team I am devoted to. Anyone who has looked at the place I put garbage in knows which team I am devoted to. Heck, my front license plate says it all: #1 Giants Fan. I'm probably not the #1 Giants fan in the world, but the Giants are my #1. My favorite sport is football and my favorite team are the Giants. The Colts are great and #2, but the Giants will always be #1.
Yesterday they defeated the Green Bay Packers in Green Bay in bitterly cold conditions. The Giants have set an NFL record for 10 consecutive road wins in one season. No one has done that before. The Wild Card route to the Super Bowl is the most difficult route and the Giants took it and won. One more game and they are better than 2 touchdown underdogs. For fans of the New York Giants that is just the way we want it.
The game last night had so many amazing stories in it.
The game conditions. It was amazingly cold and the players on both teams played amazingly well. All the players on both teams rose to the occasion and played like they were in a championship game.
These are storied franchises. Vince Lombardi grew up in New York and was an assistant coach for the Giants when the Packers hired him. They played two NFL Championship games in the early 1960's and the Packers won both on their way to some amazing glory while the Giants were on their way to a long period of being awful.
There was a story line about two quarterbacks who grew up in Mississippi.
Brett Favre is one of the great all time quarterbacks. He has played with strength, fortitude, and class during a long career. Professional sports teams have had some very poor ambassadors, but
Favre has always been a class act. Would he defy the cold and head to another Super Bowl?
The other quarterback from Mississippi, Eli Manning is still at the earlier days of his career. He has led the New York Giants into the post season three years in a row and was often seen as a failure. He, of course, has an older brother who, like Favre, is destined to be one of the all time greats. Eli plays the most difficult position on the football field, in a city with the world's largest press core, with an older brother and dad who had great careers. Would he rise to the level of a championship quarterback and actually beat his brother (time wise) to the Super Bowl?
Two coaches. Mike McCarthy has done an amazing job with the Packers. No one expected them to have a winning record this year. McCarthy got them to buy into his system, put good players in place, and won.
Tom Coughlin was doomed at the end of last year. He was going to be fired....except the New York Giants are a family run team and that family is loyal to its people. They kept him for one more year and he led them to the Super Bowl. An interesting side note is this. The players wanted him to stay. Most of the players were buying into his system. One player wasn't. That player is now discussing pantyhose on the Today Show.
One reporter said that an hour after the game the players on the Giants still had chattering teeth from the cold. But, in the end, when that final field goal went through, they were a bunch of proud guys.
And, they made their long suffering, oft cynical fans, a very happy group of people. They go to play New England in the Super Bowl. Win or lose, for a Giants fan, this was a great season.
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