Eighteen and one. It looks even better spelled out. I didn't post last night because I had to do some serious celebrating. And I didn't post earlier today because I was suffering from a hangover. I was wondering, too, what quote I would use to lament the Patriots fall from glory at the finish line. Over the course of this season, I have been making frequent references to Gerald Ford's first speech to the American people after taking the oath of office, telling every one that the long national nightmare was over. Instead, I think we'll go with Jackie Gleason: "How sweet it is!"

I still don't like the Giants, and I don't think I ever will. But this was just an unbelievable moment. After all the records, all the attention, all the hype and all the disgustingly classless behavior on the part of the coach, the players and the fans, it's all come to nothing.

Brady has the regular season records that Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw didn't get. And now he's added one more mark that the two of them can never touch. He's no longer perfect in the Super Bowl. Sure, the offensive line let him down but Bradshaw took his fair share of hits and still managed to make the plays that had to be made. Montana took the field needing to drive his team 92 yards in the two minute offense down by four, and he did it. Brady just wasn't good enough yesterday.

I just can't say enough about Matt Light's performance. My friend from Maine called him the most overrated lineman in football. I don't think that's fair, I would only put him in the top five. I think Marcus McNeil from San Diego is more overrated, for example. But his performance conjured many happy memories of Max Lane being abused by Reggie White. Too bad Strahan was on the other side of the formation, otherwise the symmetry would have been perfect with the 92 jersey number and the shellshocked Pats o-lineman.

The best part, however, of this Super Bowl is that it presents tantalizing signs of not being the end of the beginning to steal a phrase from Churchill, but the beginning of the end. I know I've said this more than a few times to this point, but age has to catch up to these Patriots soon. Vrabel did come back in a big way this season, but he can't have much gas left in the tank at his age. Bruschi and Seau aren't getting any younger or quicker. Harrison might have to get back on the HGH.

Yeah, they have San Francisco's first round pick. But they aren't going to be in the same position as far as the salary cap economics are concerned. Moss is a free agent, and they have to answer some tough questions. He's coming off a great season, but without the contract year incentive to perform, will he be as hungry next year or will some of the character issues reappear? Stallworth is also a free agent, and will he be as eager to return to a team where he was overshadowed by Moss and Wes Welker?

That's all I can say right now, so I'll leave you with this video, letting Roy Orbison speak for me.

The sports world just keeps getting more depressing, doesn't it? The Patriots are now 18-0 and only Eli Manning, Tom Coughlin and a very inconsistent Giants team stand in the way of perfection. And so, barring some sort of unforeseen catastrophe, it seems like 19-0 is more real than it was even as recently as the third quarter of the NFC Championship Game this Sunday.

I don't see the Giants being deeper, appreciably healthier or much better than they were in Week 17. Yeah, Sam Madison and Sean O'Hara are back, but Aaron Ross has a bad shoulder and who knows exactly how healthy Rich Seubert will be coming off his knee injury against Green Bay. In Week 17, they may have played the Pats very well for three and a half quarters, but that was in Giants Stadium. In Arizona, weather won't be much of a factor, unless, of course, Al Gore's global warming triggers that ice age between now and the Super Bowl. But if that happens we'll probably have bigger problems than whether or not the Patriots go undefeated.

On last Sunday's game with the Chargers, I have to commend the San Diego secondary for playing much better than I thought they could. Fat lot of good it did them, however, when the offense stalled out inside the ten three times and had to settle for field goals. With LaDanian Tomlinson unable to play, I thought the Chargers could have done a little more damage to the Patriots running the ball, so I suppose I owe some sort of apology to the Geritol set currently playing linebacker in New England.

That said, I noticed a disturbing trend in Sunday's game. Whenever I saw Mike Vrabel taking a shot at Philip Rivers, he never seemed to be hitting him above the waist. I had never really thought of him as a particularly dirty player, but I guess I just never noticed what with Harrison playing in the vicinity and outshining all other cheap shot artists.

Over the last two days, I have spent a few minutes here and there trying to imagine scenarios in which the Giants could pull off the unthinkable. It's very tempting, given how close they were in Week 17 and how well they've played in the playoffs, beating Dallas and Green Bay on the road, both of whom had defeated the Giants soundly in the regular season. However, sooner or later, all good things come to an end. And this time, it's almost assuredly the Giants impressive run to end the season and make it to Phoenix.

Having to root for the Giants is going to be a bit problematic for me. It's not quite so difficult to root for the Yankees, since they are the direct rival of the Red Sox and with the historic tradition of excellence and class, they stand head and shoulders over the Sox. There is no link like that between the Giants and the Patriots. Just because Giants fans are a small margin above Jets and Patriots fans with respect to comporting themselves like reasonable facsimiles of human beings, doesn't mean the Giants are worthy of much respect.

I suppose it comes down to one thing which will make it easier for me to root for the Giants. Every minute of this playoff run must be a mortal agony for Tiki Barber. Funny how we haven't heard much from him lately (although maybe we have, I don't watch the Today Show because it's too early and a waste of air time) since Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin are apparently proving themselves under pressure for the first time.

Interesting, isn't it? That Tiki Barber retires prematurely (in what seemed like his one shot at the Hall of Fame, retiring with some sort of mystique to offset his perceived fumbling problem), bashes Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning in his silly little memoir and on the air, and after an up and down season the Giants pull it all together and beat three teams on the road (two of whom were more talented than the G-men on paper). Would that I were the sort of person to believe in a coincidence. It's also kind of funny that the Giants knocked Tiki's twin out of the playoffs in the process. Don't look know, but it's a good thing someone woke Bill Simmons up to get him to milk the Ewing Theory for one more column.

Before I wrap this post up, I have a couple of things that I want to have out there if the Giants pull off the second biggest upset in Super Bowl history. The 1983 Washington Redskins broke the single season team scoring mark (granted, they didn't have the individual records Brady and Moss set this season). They smashed their way through the NFC playoffs en route to a rematch with the LA Raiders, whom they beat in Week 5, on the road by two points. The Raiders won that Super Bowl in a rout.

And way back in 2001, an unheralded team with a quarterback who hadn't proved himself yet (remember Bledsoe led the Pats on as many TD drives as Brady did in that playoff run) came into the Super Bowl as a massive underdog to a team that had beaten them in the regular season. The 2001 Rams not only beat the Pats in the regular season, but they had beaten them in Foxboro. So they had all the more confidence going into the Superdome for that memorable clash. Coincidentally, that was probably the last really memorable upset in the NFL playoffs, except maybe Tampa beating Philly in the NFC championship game the next year.

In case you're wondering, here's what I watched to cheer up after this disastrous football weekend. I watched Grizzly Man on Animal Planet. It's just as funny as it's always been, but here's a youtube clip of Timothy Treadwell whining and swearing at a fox who stole his hat. Good times. By the way, it's probably not safe for work, so earmuffs.

I must apologize for not posting in the last few days. I've been feeling a little depressed, what with Notre Dame collapsing against Georgia Tech and the Red Sox temporarily returning to form after the sweep at the hands of the Yankees. I had been looking forward to this evening and the beginning of the NFL regular season, but then I guess I'm too much of an optimist for my own good.

First, I must confess, I now spend about 2 minutes a day looking forward to a time when America can experience an important event in the realm of popular culture without the immortal John Cougar Mellencamp. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe his music did somehow improve as though by magic because his politics are acceptable to a large enough segment of the populace. Perhaps I ought to give up my reluctance to discuss political issues in this blog and embrace an anti Bush stand in this space.

I don't know if I heard things properly, between the waste of time that was the concert and the disappointment I felt as they unfurled the Indianapolis Colts World Champions banner. But I could swear that I caught the strains of "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who. Now I enjoy the song as much as the next person, I just think people ought to choose songs more carefully. It will serve the Colts right if the song jinxes their campaign to defend that championship.

Tonight has also made it clear that I have to spend more time and more space ripping the NBC studio show for its dreadful NFL coverage. Even tonight, with an understrength booth and a show mercifully shortened for the affront against good taste that was the concert, the show managed to fall short of mediocrity by a wide margin. It seems like every personality and every segment the producers add takes things away from the table with an almost mystical capability to make bad worse.

Keith Olberman is now back into sports broadcasting in a very small way. He has adapted his Worst Person in the World segment from his show no one watches on MSNBC to the context of the NFL. So every time we tune in to the NFL on NBC we will be subjected to Keith Olberman's version of the Worst Person in the NFL. I guess it could be worse, we could have the "Cris Collinsworth Introspective on How to Bear up Under the Strain of Being the World's Biggest Douche" segment.

Tonight, Keith Olberman pronounced himself the Worst Person in the NFL. Interestingly, I had considered using that as a joke because I assumed that he would pronounce some other deserving tool as the worst person in the NFL. I was going to dismiss the notion out of hand because Olberman really isn't in the NFL. He is only tangentially connected to the NFL. Apparently his ego didn't see it that way.

I think it would be nice if some concerned soul in Olberman's inner circle could take ten or so seconds to point one salient fact to the anchor. Just as Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco, Keith Olberman left whatever small glimmer of relevance and legitimacy he had behind when he left ESPN. Maybe Keith is so insulated in his own ego that he hasn't noticed that his subsequent career ventures haven't exactly been unbridled successes, or even bridled successes (if such a thing exists).

I don't want to give the impression that I am one of the legion of tools who rhapsodize about the Olberman-Patrick era of Sportscenter the way Donovan sang about Atlantis. I'll leave that to Bill Simmons and his disciples. I thought they were adequate, very average. They told me what the out of town scores were, but I could have done without the affected, cynical ennui repartee they used to charm the masses. Maybe if I were the sort of person who cared more about the personalities behind the curtain, I would have gone into mourning, but that's just not who I am.

I might be wrong in this, it's not something that I cared enough about to research. But I blame the Olberman-Patrick era of Sportscenter for the abomination that was the Aaron Sorkin show Sportsnight. Even though the world was crying out for a vision of what a sports highlight show produced by hipsters for hipsters, I think the world would not be a better place if it were still on the air. Nor would much have been lost if it had never seen the light of day.

All that on the NFL on NBC, and we haven't even mentioned Tiki Barber's latest cloying, attention seeking cry for help. As I may have mentioned, I don't like Tiki Barber. Nor do I like Tom Coughlin. As much as I like seeing Coughlin criticized, I don't like to see ungrateful frauds reposition themselves via revisionist history.

It seems almost universally conceded that Tom Coughlin is not a very cool guy. Most people don't like playing football for him. However, there is a substantial body of empirical evidence to show that he had a profound effect for the better on Tiki Barber's career. Before Coughlin came to the Giants, Tiki was an inveterate fumbler. It was his trade mark.

Under Coughlin's reign of terror, whatever else might have happened, Tiki fumbled quite a bit less than he did previously. I don't know how much of that was directly due to Coughlin's intervention, but it doesn't seem like a simple coincidence. No matter how you look at it, Tiki was not mentioned as any kind of Hall of Fame candidate in the Jim Fassel era. It was only in the Coughlin era that Tiki blossomed into a very, very, very marginal candidate for the Hall of Fame.

We all could have done without Tiki Barber's memoirs. We all could have done without Tiki Barber bashing Tom Coughlin for triggering his early retirement. FOr my part, I have believed that Tiki's retirement was a calculated ploy. Not just a career change to the lucrative and far less physically demanding world of the TV journalist, but his only shot at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

His numbers were good, but not really great. His early fumble troubles were always going to haunt him. He never really excelled in the postseason. The only way he'd get in to Canton is if he had a mystique attached to his name, like Lynn Swann with his amazing postseason performances trumping subpar regular season numbers or Gayle Sayers with his impressive highlights and lamentable injury history killing a promising career. So walking away before his perceived time was the only way for Tiki to become a Hall of Famer. Too bad for him this negative notoriety is murdering that slim chance as we speak.

In other news, a game was played and, alas, the Colts won. So much for the Saints as a Super Bowl contender. I was impressed by their run last year. I never thought they could duplicate it, though. First, their schedule is a lot harder. And they had a lot of breaks go their way, and I don't see it happening a second time. The blocked punt TD against Atlanta in their Monday Night home opener last year was a big catalyst for the magic season. That atmosphere will not be replicated, though.

I stil hate Peyton Manning. I do applaud Sprint. In their new commercial series, they have stumbled on something I believed to be as rare as a Jurassic Era remnant still walking the earth - Peyton Manning's mind. Between the Manning omnipresence in every commercial under the sun and the teethmarks John Mellencamp will leave on this reincarnated fame he enjoys when it too disappears, I foresee dark times for Sedition in Red Sox Nation.