My sports teams are better than your sports teams. It's not anybody's fault, simply the byproduct of living in Massachusetts and going to college in Miami. Timing is everything, as is being in the right place at the right time.
From my senior year of high school through my senior year of college, I thought I had seen it all. Chronologically, it goes something like this [starting at the beginning of the millennium]: Miami Hurricanes win college baseball title, Miami Hurricanes football goes 13-0 and wins national champioship, New England Patriots win Super Bowl over highly favored St. Louis Rams, Miami football loses national championship to Ohio State in overtime on pass interference call, Patriots win second Super Bowl against Panthers, Boston Red Sox lose ALCS Game 7 to New York Yankees on Aaron 'Fuckin' Boone's walk-off home run, Patriots win third Super Bowl against Phili Eagles, Red Sox win first World Series in 86 years, on an 8-game win streak, after being down 4-3 in the 9th inning to the Yankees, Game 4 of the ALCS, trailing 3-0 in the series and on the verge of being swept out of the playoffs.
It was quite a run.
Throw in the Giants snapping the Patriots perfect season in '07 on a David Tyree miracle catch, the 2008 Champion Boston Celtics beating their rival, the LA Lakers, for their NBA-record 17th title, the 2011 Boston Bruins winning the Stanley Cup, and there is a legitimate case to made that I've experienced the emotional gambit as a sports fan.
And that doesn't include putting a friendly wager on things. (shuddering at the thought)
As this year's Super Bowl approached, I felt different. The two weeks of media hype gave every outlet every chance to exaggerate every angle. During the time spent avoiding the aforementioned, I focused on my own observations collected throughout the season and wrote an unbiased column for this website. I picked against my own team using logic, but still anticipated a close game and hoped for the best.
Then I thought about all the people I knew who had more than money invested in it. There was my college roommate: the biggest Giants fan I've ever met, who had flown around the country following the team to all their away games throughout the playoffs. He was as the Super Bowl with his family, who have had Giants season tickets passed down through generations. I thought of a great friend, father, and Patriots fan, stricken with Cancer who, through a surprise town fundraiser, received tickets for his family to go down to Indianapolis to forget about real life for a few days. And of course, I thought about my degenerate friends, whose double or nothing bet on the game would decide whether or not one of them got the others initials tattooed on their lower back for a male 'tramp stamp'. True Story*.
On the day of the Super Bowl, there was a full slate of games on TV to keep me preoccupied. The Celtics beat the Grizzlies 98-80, the Bruins beat the Capitals 4-1, and the Miami Hurricanes college basketball team beat Duke, at Cameron Indoor Stadium, in overtime, 78-74 for their first time ever.
That's when I knew the Patriots were done. I've never had a perfect day in the sporting world.
A Tom Brady safety started a game full of unbelichickian mental mistakes. Couple that with a dropped pass by Wes Welker and a caught ball by Mario Manningham, both contrasting in their difficulty, and that was the big game. Despite the outcome, legitimate arguments could be made that both teams were incredibly lucky to be there.
My friends and I have said, "it's not like you're playing in the Super Bowl" to dilute someone's bravado regarding their amateur sporting achievements . But instead, in referring to games, we should say, "It's not a matter of life and death." Sports are full of lessons because they're a microcosm of life rather than life itself. If you don't believe that to be true, perhaps you should try getting one.
*Since the Giants won the Super Bowl, despite having a worse regular season record, no one got tattooed. Sucks, I know.
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