Thoughts About The Super Bowl

Now that I have had time to clear my mind about what happened in the Superbowl, let me throw out a few comments:

1. This was the most exciting Super Bowl in a long long time. The excitement was magnified by the Patriots’ attempt to go undefeated. There are not many sporting events where I can feel my heart pounding at the end, but I felt it at the end of this game.
2. Eli Manning: he certainly has played well from week 17 on, after several years of inconsistency. He deserved to be the Super Bowl MVP, but I’m not ready to put him into the category of elite quarterback just yet. It takes more than five games of consistency to prove that you are now consistent.
3. Eli Manning’s escape and pass to David Tyree on 3rd down and 5 with 1:15 left in the game was the greatest play I have ever seen in a Super Bowl. ESPN’s Mike and Mike agree with me, so I know they’re correct!
4. Bill Belichick leaves the field one second early: classless, graceless, unprofessional and entirely in character for him. But on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 doesn’t get me upset and 10 sends me into a screaming fury, I would rate this a 1 or 2.
5. Boris Cheek: yes, Boris Cheek. You know, the guy wearing number 41 in the striped shirt. Oh, you didn’t notice him, did you? I didn’t either, until the next night when he was interviewed by ESPN’s Rebecca Lobo while he was attending his daughter Joy’s basketball game (she plays for Duke). It was a very touching moment, to hear his thoughts about the game. Normally, we only hear about referees when they screw up, but here was one referee discussing the highlight of his career. The basketball game’s play by play announcer, Eric Collins, referred to him as refereeing royalty. (Have I metioned that I like Eric Collins? Oh yeah, I did...)
   
6. NY Giants Chase Blackburn didn’t get off the field before the snap, leading to a crucial penalty against NY for 12 men on the field. I thought it was a correct call, because in my mind, rules involving lines must be strictly enforced. If you have to be on one side of the line, then you have to be on that side of the line, not one inch on the other side. This is different than other judgment calls involving contact, like pass interference, where different people can look at the play and come to different conclusions. However, the Super Bowl announcers, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman got into an extended debate on this topic; Aikman eventually invoked the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to support his point, and I think (although I’m not really sure) that Wittgenstein agrees with me.