And this’ll be the end of football talk for a while, but it goes out on a good note. My boy Eli Manning has a trophy and a new Cadillac Escalade hybrid and a fancy ring that mark him as a fully realized, all-growds-up Winner, and Tom Brady is off to skulk home like George W Bush returning to Crawford before he sells the ranch and retires to Connecticut to finish out his days playing Connect 4 like Hurley in a mental hospital. What the fuck? My metaphors are all mixed up… all I meant to say is Tom Brady has been deflated and watching him float around the room in the off-season will be a delight I’ll spare the non-football-interested among my friends and readers from watching me gloat over. Brady is a Loser, and when Randy Moss and Assante Samuel refuse to re-sign to the Patriots next year, he will be lucky to find himself in the playoffs. His close run at perfection closes without a cap, and next year he can enjoy 7-9 and a slow slide into the whatever happened to…? pile.

The Giants won that game for one reason, and it was making Tom Brady play like a terrified Loser. He looked scared every time he had the ball, and there was no chance that he would deliver. He put together a semi-competent drive at the end that was instantly rendered irrelevant by the fire in Eli Manning’s eyes and the power of his arm, and then he was left to cry on the shoulder of his supermodel girlfriend, before she leaves him for a real man.

Chuck Klosterman wrote an article about the Patriots in the off-week for ESPN. He argues in it that the ‘85 Bears would be humbled by a quick-strike offense that Brady and Bellichick would improvise on the fly. What was so interesting to me, as a Bears fan, was seeing how untrue that was. The Giants won by playing football in the spirit of the ‘85 Bears, and it is easy to see why that is still a winning formula, especially against a team as quarterback-defined as New England has been. They succeed because Brady is cool and untouchable and hard to pressure, etc, but look at the way he played on Sunday night. He lost because the Giants made him afraid to have the ball in his hands. They hit him hard and pressured him relentlessly, and he started making terrible throws because of it. All it took was a wink from Michael Strahan and Brady crapped the ball out to mid-field or the sideline, anywhere but the hands of a receiver. Because if he held onto it, he knew that he might well die, and even a man with flinty blue eyes and a jawline like an action hero does not want to be brutalized on a field over and over again during the most-watched live sporting event in American history. They scared him into playing bad football, and the end result was victory for New York.

And now I’m done with them. Fuck Eli Manning, and fuck the New York Giants. I have used you and now that New England has been destroyed and you have been crowned champions, we are no longer allies. Next season I will root against the Giants in most games against most opponents, except for Minnesota and Green Bay. I gave them my devotion for an off-season, and I will fear them next year, but I am a Bears fan, and can ill-afford another NFC loyalty.

That’s enough on football. Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, which is another major sporting event. I can participate in this one, as Democrats Abroad members actually have 21 delegates to dole out, and voting is open tomorrow and Wednesday. I’ll spare you any more nonsense about this particular horse race, but I am confident that my horse will win, place, and show all the way to the Presidency of the United States of America. It is a good time to favor the underdog. Nothing is certain in life, or sports, or politics. Eli Manning proved that, but more importantly, so did Tom Brady.