I've Never Been So Happy To Be Wrong

24 hours after the upset to end all upsets, it still seems hard to believe: New York Giants 17, New England Patriots 14. 18-0, and then...18-1.

There were, of course, many factors that gave the Giants the win: excellent pass rush, timely catches, a consistent running game, and so on, but to me, the greatest factor in the upset was the Patriots' inability to control the ball offensively. All year, Tom Brady and company were able to beat their opponents any way possible; short passes, long passes, play action, and, towards the end of the season, running the ball. On Super Sunday, Laurence Maroney was non-existent, and the Giants defense shut down everyone on the Pats' receiving corps not named Wes Welker, who, if the Pats won, would certainly have received the MVP award.

One more point on the game: I didn't have the cahones to pick the Giants, even though I wanted to. All credit to Mike Ditka, who was the only member of ESPN's countdown show to pick New York, and, of course, John Smylie, who was even really close on the final score.

Now, to copy one of my favourite writers, Chris Zelkovich, here's my Good, Bad, and the Ugly from the coverage of Super Bowl XLII:

The Good:
- Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, the Fox commentators for the game, didn't mention the Pats pursuit of perfection until about the 5 minute mark in the 4th quarter. They left the empty rhetoric to the 4 hour pregame show and focused on the game itself. Great job.

- All the postgame coverage on both Fox and NFL network focused on the Giants' win, instead of the easier trap of directing their attention to the Pats' collapse. The game belongs to the winners, and the interviews should also.

- Curt Menefee, the host of Fox's pregame show, questioned Jimmy Johnson's opinion of Bill Belichick's tactics during the season, asking if the praise of Belichick was because of the friendship between the coaches. It's not often that a host will openly question the integrity of an expert on his panel. Good work.

The Bad:
- There were two significant issues with the clock in the first half, but only one of them was from the game itself. On the Giants' opening drive, 2 minutes were suddenly taken off the clock after the commercial break. Was there a time warp or something?

- In the postgame scrum, Marshall Faulk of NFL network told Giants coach Tom Coughlin that he liked Coughlin's term of "green zone". As Faulk said it, Deion Sanders beside him rolled his eyes so far back, he could have seen the inside of his skull. Wouldn't PrimeTime realize he's on camera there?

The Ugly:
- Okay, CTV, I get it, Dexter and Jericho are debuting this month. The 20-odd commercials for each only makes me want to watch it less. Next year, mix up the ads; your viewers aren't going anywhere.

- When Bill Belichick walked off the field with 1 second left in the game, not only did Chris Myers and the rest of the reporters covering Belichick's press conference ignore the issue, no one talked about it afterwards, either last night or today. When Randy Moss walked off in Minnesota, he was villified. What Belichick did was worse, since he's in charge of his team. It was a classless move by a classless man, and the media completely ignored it.