A Giant Upset

Oh... my... God. OH MY GOD. I'm not even sure that diehard Giants fans thought that this was possible. Defeat the mighty Tom Brady and fellow Pats after a perfect regular season and decisive play-off wins? To have thawed out enough from the Packers' game two weekends ago to even be able to PLAY in balmy Phoenix?? Un-BE-lievable.

This is the first time I've actually been in a city at Super Bowl time whose team is actually IN the game. I met Stacy and a bunch of her friends at The Pinch, a friendly and fun Irish pub down in the Village, for the game. The bar exploded when the Giants were the first team to put points on the board. We were subdued for a bit with Brady's first touchdown pass. None of us could believe it was still only 7-3 at half time. (Heck, it was still 7-3 at the end of the third quarter!!)

The flip-flopping score in the fourth quarter just about caused heart attacks throughout the pub. I remember muttering to Stacy when the Pats went up 14 - 10 that there were still almost three minutes left in the game and anything could still happen. And happen it did!! With only 35 seconds left on the clock, Eli Manning made a clean pass to Plaxico Burress (love that name) for the winning touchdown. Many of the Pats fans immediately threw their coats on and left the bar, but the rest of us were jumping up and down, high-fiving, hugging and losing our voices from cheering so much.

It was such fun making my way from the bar back to the subway to head home because by this time, people had spilled out onto the streets from all sorts of bars and restaurants and everyone high-fived me as I made my way to the 4th Street stop. The atmosphere on the subways is usually somewhat subdued with no one really ever looking at anyone else or making conversation. But tonight, the carefully arranged expressions of disinterest were nowhere to be seen. The A train was a bubbly place of euphoric celebration.

I am just disappointed that I'll be on a flight heading west on Tuesday when the victory parade is meant to happen.

And finally, a Super Bowl blog entry wouldn't be complete without some sort of commentary on the commercials....

Best commercial this year? Well, I wouldn't be a true citizen of Steeler Nation (see previous post) if I didn't say it was the one with Ben singing "If you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain..." I mean, COME ON. The guy is BOUND to make a Super Bowl appearance one way or another.