We journalists tend by nature to be observers rather than activists. But back in 1968, when I was still a college student, I wrote the only protest letter of my life.

After sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos had made international headlines with their black power salutes from the Olympic podium in Mexico City, Avery Brundage, the right-wing American who was at the time the head of the International Olympic Committee, ordered their expulsion from the Olympic village and suspension from the U.S. team. I wrote Brundage decrying his decision, insisting that the two men had represented our country with great dignity on and off the track and that their protest embodied America's finest free-speech traditions.

Now, 40 years later, I remain a fervent believer in free speech. But I confess, as the issue threatens to once again provoke an Olympic controversy—this time at the 2008 Games this August in Beijing—my view is a little more nuanced.


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Though there were no mega-events this past weekend, I was practicing for vacation. So I did my best couch potato work in months. What I saw and heard left me wondering about many things.

*When are we going to hear Roger Clemens say, "Oh, you mean that party?"

*After showing a moving documentary about the great heavyweight champion Joe Louis, was HBO just a little bit embarrassed to follow it Saturday night with that slog of a heavyweight championship bout. Wladimir Klitschko could have gone 100 rounds in the ring with this paluka, Sultan Ibragimov, without incurring any damage, but he still wasn't willing to take any risks.

*Virtually every NBA contender—Los Angeles, San Antonio, Dallas, Phoenix, Houston, New Orleans and Cleveland—made moves before the trading deadline, most of them big and dramatic, to boost their playoffs prospects. Could the big winner be a team that stood pat? Detroit made no moves and also the biggest impression over the past weekend, blowing out a hot Phoenix team that, despite several wins with Shaq at center, is still struggling to integrate the big guy into its offense. Detroit is likely to pass Boston for the #1 seed in the East and they can only hope to avoid LeBron James, who singlehandedly knocked the Pistons out of the playoffs last year.

*Why bother? The Boston Bruins, a solid, middling team in the NHL, have gone something like 8-1-1 in their last 10 road games, but the team is barely over .500 for the season at home in the Fleet Center. While making the playoffs is obviously paramount, playing for position in the NHL is a waste of effort; unlike home-field or home-court, home ice advantage is pretty much a non-factor in the NHL in both the regular season and the Stanley Cup playoffs.

*That Tiger Woods can play. Might he be the most dominant athlete in any sport ever?

*What would Memphis' record and national ranking be if it played in a first-rank conference like the ACC or SEC rather than C-USA? Sure, they've met some decent out-of-conference teams in Connecticut, USC, Gonzaga and Oklahoma, but the Tigers' conference schedule provides too many nights off. Memphis still figures to rate a #1 seed despite losing its unbeaten mark to Tennessee, but you will not win your March Madness pool if you back Memphis reaching the Final Four.

*How gruesome can it get? The Oscars gave us a taste Sunday night, celebrating a bunch of violent films. But the worst of the weekend came Saturday—on the field in the English Premiership. The broken leg suffered by Arsenal star Eduardo da Silva ranks with the Joe Theisman injury years ago for on-field horrors. The more difficult question—one the NHL and NFL must wrestle with too—is how to treat a player whose penalty, deliberate or inadvertent, knocks a player out of the lineup, in da Silva's case possibly for as long as a year. It is hard to imagine that the Brazilian-born player, whose heroics helped Croatia knock England out of the European Championships this year, will ever regain the quickness or mobility that has made him on of Europe's rising stars.

*How about this for turnabout? Cornell lost to Princeton 2-1 in hockey over the weekend and is in fifth place in the ECAC standings, three spots behind the Tigers. At the same time, Cornell's basketball team is 10-0 in the Ivy League—Princeton is buried in seventh—and has virtually clinched a berth in the NCAA tournament. Either of these results would be a remarkable departure from both schools' athletic histories, but I can't recall a single season when Cornell finished both behind Princeton in hockey and ahead of Princeton in basketball.

Nobody would ever have thought that Bobby Knight was the kind of man who would go gentle into that good night. But two weeks ago, while the sports world was still dissecting the extraordinary Super Bowl upset and awaiting the Clemens congressional circus, Knight just slipped away. On Monday he announced that he was resigning as Texas Tech's basketball coach, departing with 902 wins in his career, ranking him first all-time among Division I coaches.

All Knight offered by way of explanation was that he was tired of bad refereeing. That was most assuredly part of it. He has been tired of refereeing for most of his career, and Knight has always been far less tolerant of the flaws of other folks than he has been of his own. One might also suspect that, at 67 and after 42 years as a head coach, he was just plain tired, even more so because he had been relegated to the basketball hinterlands with a second-rank team in the essentially football town of Lubbock. And perhaps Knight reasoned that by turning the reins over to his son, Pat, in midseason, he gave his kid the best shot at retaining the job. Knight is certainly not one to trust institutional assurances.

If we can set aside questions of behavior and temperament for a minute, then Knight was, to my mind, the best college basketball coach ever. His teams didn't rival those of other coaching immortals like John Wooden and Dean Smith when it came to pure talent, but he got more than anybody out of what he had. His Indiana University squads in the mid-'70s were coaching clinics. The '75 version fell just short of the Final Four when its leading scorer, Scottie May, was injured during the tourney, but the '76 team went all the way to glory, the last Division I men's college basketball team to finish its season undefeated.

Make no mistake: these teams didn't lack talent. Indiana sent six guys to the pros off those teams—May, a sweet-shooting forward, center Kent Benson, a pair of ball-hawking guards in Quinn Buckner and Bobby Wilkerson, and two more forwards, Tom Abernathy and John Laskowski. But unlike the UCLA or North Carolina players whose talents in college had been kept under wraps and who blossomed in the pros, the stars on Knight's best teams pretty much peaked in Bloomington. While several went on to have long, productive NBA careers, none became a dominant pro until Isiah Thomas became the leader of the Detroit Pistons' championship teams. It wasn't until Thomas transferred from Chicago to Bloomington in the early 1980s that Knight had a genuine superstar to build around (though Larry Bird had made an abbreviated stop a few years before). Few of the basketball elite were willing to subject themselves to the exacting standards that Knight demanded of his players on and off the court.

To the extent that Knight's tale rises to the level of tragedy—and I'm not really sure it does—it is because he was incapable of meeting the high standards he demanded of others. And he refused to take responsibility for his failures of temperament, casting blame scattershot and pointing fingers at pretty much everyone but himself. It was sad, even pathetic, to see a man of such talent and breadth cast himself as the eternal victim—of idiot bureaucrats, of incompetent refs and of unscrupulous reporters. Indiana finally cut him adrift as a hopeless recidivist before the 2000 season, but in truth that decision wasn't made until Knight's program had slipped to the point where it was first-round fodder in the tournament and no longer a threat to add to his three national titles.

The 2006 hiring of Kelvin Sampson as basketball coach made it clear that high standards were never the paramount issue at Indiana U. Winning was and is. Sampson left the University of Oklahoma under a cloud after recruiting violations, and he started at Indiana with a personal one-year ban on contacting recruits. Now, two years later, Sampson has—surprise, surprise—reportedly committed a series of major recruiting violations, virtually reprising his Oklahoma transgressions and compounding those, according to the NCAA's report, by giving "false or misleading information" to investigators. Indiana's athletic director risked a Pinocchio moment if he pronounced himself shocked by the accusations, so he settled for "profoundly disappointed" and said there would be no "rush to judgment," ignoring the fact that there was precious little judgment used in the first place when Indiana hired Sampson.

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The NBA will never regain its former prominence in the vast panorama of American sports. But after a long period when it seemed there was nothing but bad news emanating from the league--off-court misbehavior, on-court fracases, a gambling scandal and, with the memory of Michael Jordan hovering above, a shrinkage of star power and a tedium in the play--the NBA has staged something of a mini-revival. And coming out of the All-Star break (and an entertaining All-Star game), the NBA can look forward to what appears to be the most compelling season since MJ hung 'em up (at least that second time he hung em up with the Bulls).

It has been a long time since there has been the movement of so many stars--Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to the Celtics, Shaquille O'Neal to the Suns, Pau Gasol to the Lakers and, in all probability, Jason Kidd to the Dallas. And it has created a wide open playoff scenario with at least a half dozen legitimate contenders for the title and another handful of teams considered to have an outside shot. The Western Conference playoffs loom lethal with no team, regardless of finish, able to contemplate a breather, even in the opening round.

The trades have also revived the two most storied franchises in the league, Boston and L.A.. And while Garnett has long been recognized among the game's elite, the Celtics' reemergence (with the best record in the league at All-Star break) has given him a showcase that he never had in a dozen standout seasons in Minnesota and, if he can stay healthy, one that will establish him in the NBA's all-time pantheon. Two of the recent trades, the aging and gimpy O'Neal, and the aging Kidd to Dallas, represent daring moves by franchises that have been perennial contenders in recent years, but clearly felt they were still destined to fall short. O'Neal potentially gives the running Suns a monster in the middle when the games turn halfcourt in the playoffs and Kidd, if motivated and healthy, should resolve the Mavericks' problem of talented, but erratic play at its point.

In the more good news for the NBA, LeBron James simply defies belief as he grows his game, doing what seemed impossible when he entered the league as a teenager--not only living up to the boundless hype, but actually exceeding it. He is even better this season--amazingly, he is still just 23 years old--than he was last when he single-handedly carried the Cavs all the way to the NBA Finals. And it's hard to blame him for thinking that if one of these major talents that has popped up on the open market would find his way to Cleveland, James might nab one of those championship rings.

Sure it's not perfect, the league could use a franchise in New York rather than the laughingstock that is now the New York Knicks. And the Bulls, a team that seemed to be rebuilding with a talented array of youngsters, has regressed so much this season that once untouchables like Ben Gordon suddenly find themselves on the trading block. Moreover, it's hard to explain the seemingly eternal imbalance between conferences, but there is no doubt that the West remains dominant. The West is a plus 48 in the wins column against the Least and right now Houston would be odd team out of the playoffs despite a 32-20 record. That would be the fourth best record in the East, where, at least now, a 23-30 mark would still claim a playoff berth.

The Western dominance is even more remarkable when you consider--also remarkable--that the Celtics are now 16-0 against the Westerns. That unblemished record will be put to a test, starting tonight in Denver, when the Celtics play five games against the West in seven nights, including four teams with winning records. Boston might have the advantage of Garnett returning to the lineup after missing nine games with an abdominal strain.

Assuming his full recovery at some point, it could be one of those injuries that proves a blessing in disguise. It not only gives the 31-year-old Garnett, one of the most intense, all-out competitors in the league a rest, but necessity helped the Celtics discover that they may be more than the sum of their superstar threesome, Garnett, Allen and Paul Pierce.

The Celtics have gone 7-2 with Garnett sidelined and got major contributions from Rajon Rondo at the point and James Posey, Leon Powe and Glenn "Big Baby" Davis off the bench, the latter two who weren't even expected to be in the team's rotation. The added depth should help the Celtics revival story down the stretch. For those ready to catch up with the NBA now, the must-see game on this Celtics trip comes Friday night--a national broadcast on ESPN--against Phoenix with Shaq possibly in the Suns lineup.

Congressional approval ratings are appallingly low--ranging from 18 to 33 percent in a variety of news media polls this year--and trail even the paltry support President Bush retains. And those who got a glimpse of Congress in action Wednesday in the Roger Clemens hearing might be surprised to discover they are that high.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform can cite a legitimate public health interest to justify its scrutiny of the issue of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. Moreover, the Mitchell Report stemmed from the committee's original 2005 hearings on baseball and its subsequent scolding of Major League Baseball leadership to get its house in order.

But the hearing, much like anything Congress touches, quickly degenerated into a succession of partisan skirmishes where truth was the least important matter on the agenda. The Republicans seemed intent on bolstering Clemens as a self-proclaimed patriot (though pitching for the American team in the 2006 World Baseball Classic hardly constitutes heroic service to America) and  "a titan" of the game (a description that would also fit Pete Rose, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds). Some of their support for Clemens seemed downright delusional, like when Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina displayed four pictures from different stages of the pitcher's career and insisted, with the scientific precision of the human eye, that he looked the same size in all of them. Anybody who has followed Clemens's career knows he has undergone dramatic physical changes--you could actually see some of it in those photos--and the only real question is how--not whether--he bulked up.

I don't know if the GOP was carrying water for the President, who apparently regards Clemens, a fellow Texan, as something of a baseball buddy from Bush's days running the Texas Rangers. Or whether it was just payback for autographed baseballs and photos that he might have bestowed on committee members during three days of pre-hearing  lobbying. More likely they just saw him as a classic red-stater that their constituency might applaud, at least when pitted against a blue-stater like Brian McNamee, a New York City ethnic and exactly the kind of threat to the fabric of this nation that might never make it to our shores if the congressional GOP had their way with immigration law.

McNamee is certainly a sad sack of a fellow, a wannabe and a fetch-it. But as contemptible as he may be, casting him as a "drug dealer" and the prime villain in this matter when he was servicing his multi-millionaire clients at their behest, is fatuous. Then again some of these folks would prefer to blame the secretaries at Enron for typing up fraudulent documents than the executives who orchestrated the conspiracy. There were certainly no harsh indictments from committee members for Andy Petttitte's dad, who was revealed in Pettitte's deposition as his son's source for HGH on the second occasion the pitcher tried it.

The committee has now posted documents--depositions and affidavits--on its Website and they certainly shed light on the matter. Reading Pettitte's statement as well as that of Chuck Knoblauch, the other players fingered by McNamee, is painful going, as their testimony is cloaked in what appears to be genuine shame. But emotion aside, they tell fairly simple stories that confirm that McNamee was telling the truth about them. Pettitte, of course, goes further, saying that Clemens told him he was using HGH. Not the kind of shocker you "misremembered", as Clemens insists Pettitte did.

Clemens has no shame, just bluster and sanctimony. But then again, neither did the committee that hosted him. Its performance sullied everyone involved, not least of all themselves. Committee chair Henry Waxman has now told the New York Times that he regrets holding the hearings and only did it because of Clemens' insistence on a public hearing. Frankly, It appears to be one in a succession of public miscalculations by the Clemens team. I can't imagine whom Clemens actually convinced with his tale or his twitchy tongue. I genuinely doubt it was even the committee members who appeared to be on his side.

At the end of the day-or at least four-plus hours that felt like a day-the most important person in the room for the congressional hearing on steroids in baseball yesterday wasn’t even in the room.

That, of course, was Andy Pettitte, the close friend and teammate of Roger Clemens with both the New York Yankees and Houston Astros. And Pettitte was about the only thing that Clemens, his accuser Brian McNamee, a former strength and conditioning coach for both men, and the congressional panel could all agree upon: they all believe he is a good and honorable man. (Apparently, Pettitte’s prompt confession that he cheated by taking human growth hormone trumps his having cheated in the first place.) After a maze of contradictions between Clemens and his former personal trainer, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings reduced the he said/he said imbroglio to the simplest of equations: “The person I believe the most is Mr. Pettitte.”

There have been, of late, no dearth of stunning scenes involving athletes and performance-enhancing drugs--from Barry Bonds being indicted to Marion Jones being sentenced to jail. But none were any more remarkable than the sight of Roger Clemens, a man who throughout his career has shown a limited capacity for humility, strolling around the corridors of Congress, beseeching its members, like any high-rent lobbyist, to believe his version of the truth: that he never took performance-enhancing drugs.

We can no longer be shocked by the notion that somebody might lie under oath to the Congressional committee investigating the use of steroids and other drugs in baseball. It almost certainly happened two years ago, the first go-around of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on this issue. But while we suspected one or more of the players testifying that day was lying, we couldn't be sure. (Ironically, the most damning testimony on that occasion was Mark McGwire's and he clearly told the truth: that he didn't want to talk about it.) But next Wednesday, when the Mitchell Report on drug use in baseball and Roger Clemens, the biggest star named in that report, take center stage before the committee, there will be--unless somebody changes his story--to say the least, contradictions. This is no longer a case of he said/he said. The wildly differing stories being offered by Clemens and his accuser, Brian McNamee, a former trainer who worked closely with Clemens, can't both be true.

It's like a Congressional version of the old TV game show "To Tell the Truth"--with prison the possible outcome for the one deemed the loser. McNamee has upped the ante by claiming he kept needles and other materials that he used to inject Clemens with illegal drugs in 2000 and 2001 when The Rocket pitched for the New York Yankees and McNamee worked for the ballclub. Clemens' defense against these materials, at least as suggested by his lawyers, is that they are phony evidence manufactured by McNamee, an indication of how desperate he is to pursue this vindictive scheme against Clemens. It is certainly evidence that McNamee is a snake, but that has never really been at issue. But if he manufactured this evidence, he is more than desperate, he is a total madman.

I am a writer of some literary pretensions as well as aspirations and know very well that today's recipe for success is intimate revelations—the more gruesome and salacious the better.

Sadly, my parents were very nice and loving people, and I have lived a life almost totally devoid of salace. For intimacy, I'm afraid you're going to have to make do with a medical update. I am, possibly even as you read this, lying on a slab in a Boston hospital undergoing an invasive procedure that is recommended as a preventive precaution for folks of a certain age.

I am not a stoic about colds or splinters, and so it has not surprised me—or my wife or anybody else to whom I've already kvetched—that this experience has not proved to be an exception. I did try to find some consolation, something beyond the possibility, of course, that it might save my life. About the only comforting notion I could come up with was the certainty that I will not be eating Jell-O again for another five years. After continually asking myself, "How bad can this be?" I concluded that, at least for me, it would pretty much be the equivalent of watching a Super Bowl XLII replay.

Actually, I am more of a stoic about Super Bowl losses, and Sunday's proved no exception. I brooded a little into Monday, but nothing too serious. It wasn't remotely as bad as 1976, when the referee Ben Dreith (I remember!) called a ridiculous roughing the passer penalty on "Sugar Bear" Hamilton against the Oakland Raiders on what would have been a game-ending play, costing the Patriots what I am certain would have been their first Super Bowl crown. My friend had to hold me back from kicking in the TV. (It was his TV, so he was motivated.) It certainly wasn't comparable to the Bucky Dent or Bill Buckner moments of Red Sox infamy, the latter of which cost me my dad's precious watch (and some plastering expenses) after I smashed a hole in the living room wall with my fist. This time there were no real goats, no horrendous gaffes, no egregious calls. Their guys just kicked our guys' butts—and made all the plays—in a fashion reminiscent of the Pats' Super Bowl upset of the Rams six years earlier.

In truth, I've found all the Patriots' Super Bowl losses relatively easy to take—and I've been tested three times now—even when my distress is compounded by a squandered shot at immortality and a champion that goes by the name New York (not to mention a quarterback that goes by the name Manning). Super Bowl defeats are, since we have been talking medical matters here, the equivalent of ripping off a Band-Aid—a flash of intense pain and then on with your life. World Series losses, by contrast, can be the equivalent of major surgery, and a bitter end to a seven-game series can scar for life.

Far worse when it comes to football fates is losing in the conference championship game, as the Pats did last year to the Indianapolis Colts. Then you are forced to endure two weeks of ceaseless hype about a bitter rival. After the Super Bowl everybody goes home, win or lose. Sure, New York gets a party, a parade and bragging rights (or, as is the case between our two cities, the reigning insult). But in Boston our heads and hearts are already drifting toward Ft. Myers, where pitchers and catchers report for spring training next week.

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My Perfect Super Bowl

I can claim a perfect record in Super Bowl XLII. My night was a true 100 percenter! Not only was i wrong about the result--there i had plenty of company--but i was wrong about every single aspect of the Giants' extraordinary 17-14 upset of the previously undefeated New England Patriots.

I said the Patriots would romp: no comment necessary.

I said the Patriots always owned the 4th quarter: it was that Giants who made the final seconds count.

I said the Giants could win only if they rushed the ball effectively: their rushing game was a non-factor.

I said the Giants couldn't win unless Eli Manning was sensational: he was perfectly serviceable, but nothing special through three quarters.

I said Eli would crumple in the 4th quarter: he was a standout, never more so than when he somehow eluded what appeared to be a sure sack and completed a critical pass to David Tyree.

I said the Giants' pass rush would not succeed in disrupting the Patriots: they harassed Brady relentlessly with an array of blitzes and turned him, at least for one night, into a perfectly ordinary quarterback--certainly not superior to Eli this night.

I said Tom Coughlin would never outcoach Bill Belichick: he did and Belichick will have to explain his bizarre decision not to attempt a 48-yard field goal that, in retrospect, could have been crucial.

I said a lot of other things that didn't turn out to be true either. Of course, had the Pats kept Manning in their grasp with less than a minute to go, none of that would be so painfully obvious. Still, perhaps I should have payed a little more attention to the kismet that was out there surrounding this surprising matchup. And a little more attention to history too.

The Patriots dynasty, one that may have ended tonight, began in the most unlikely fashion, with two straight losses to open the 2001 season. Nobody back then could have imagined that the Pats would rally to reach the Super Bowl and, behind a young, relatively inexperienced quarterback, upset the offensive juggernaut that was the St. Louis Rams. Does that sound remotely familiar?

This season the Giants lost their opening pair too. And they appeared headed for 0-3 and ignominy when they staged a comeback against the Redskins--and then were the lucky beneficiaries of a too-young quarterback and a too-old coach, as Washington failed to score in the final seconds with four cracks from the one-yard line. Having barely survived last season's disappointment, Couglin dodged the pink slip that was waiting for him; at 0-3 he would either have been sacked immediately or been a lame duck flapping his arms red-faced in frustration on the sideline.

Still, going into the final week of the regular season, the Giants were a playoff team, but hardly one that looked like anything more than a one-and-out entry. That's when Coughlin decided that rather than rest his starters for a game that meant nothing to the Giants' post-season standing, he would take a shot at knocking off the undefeated Pats. The Giants hit 'em with their best shot--or at least what appeared to be their best shot--and still came up short. Even worse, the naysayers could point to three starters injured in the game who would be sidelined for for the first playoff game--and all for nothing.

But football is strange game of emotions and chemistry. And clearly that game against New England turned out to mean something, not nothing. Apparently, even in defeat, there emerged a sense among the Giants that they could hold their own against  the NFL's best. And last night they proved it again--and, in the end, actually proved that hey could outplay the league's best.

The Giants upset will go down as one of big three in Super Bowl history, along with the Pats over the Rams six years ago and the Jets over the Colts way back in Super Bowl III. It was not pretty, but rather won with hard-nosed football that, with its intensity and last-second heroics, made for very high drama. And mercifully it managed to overshadow--at least for the evening--the "Spygate" story that haunts the Patriots and that will not die.

Maybe defeat will finally kill it. A U.S. senator may still wonder why the Patriots outplayed his Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX, but maybe now can return to the country's more urgent business.. An assistant golf pro in Hawaii, having enjoyed his Warholian 15 minutes by hinting he knows of evil doings by the Pats video crew, may now go back to tending greens. If the Patriots had to be brought down, they were leveled the way all fans preferred to see it--not by pompous legislators or posturing nobodies, but by a inspired team that was simply better on the day that counted.

The Patriots had an extraordinary season and, knowing their style, will make no excuses. But maybe the burden of chasing history finally took its toll. Or maybe their luck simply ran out. Patriots fans can certainly look back and say the team might have been better off going into the Super Bowl had it lost that one game, to the Ravens back in early December, that the team clearly deserved to lose. But now, at 18-1, their record-breaking accomplishments have been rendered relatively meaningless, fodder for the stats-meisters and, at best, a motivational tool for Belichick next season.

The Super Bowl is not always about which team is better, as the Pats' victory over "The Greatest Team on Turf" once attested. Now the Patriots have been on the other end. And beyond that, I witnessed a far greater miracle: it turns out Tom Coughlin can smile. Who knew? Certainly not me. I knew nothing tonight.

Blogger, NEWSWEEK Contributor and very happy Giants fan Robert Cox files from the Super Bowl: 

Bucky bleeping Dent... Aaron bleeping Boone...

And now David bleeping Tyree.  When the Giants needed it.  When his quarterback needed it—scrambling, clawing, tearing, willing his away from New England defenders —David Tyree made a catch that will be replayed in every Super Bowl highlight reel for as long as there are Super Bowls.  As number two on the depth chart behind high-wattage star receiver Plaxico Burress, Tyree does not see a lot of balls thrown his way.  He sure made them count tonight including the 32-yard mother-of-all-catches with Giants trailing 14-10, 75 seconds on the clock at the ball at the Giants at their own 44.

Sure Eli Manning, Plaxico Burress, Michael Strahan, and Antonio Pierce were the stars, but it will be that hand-to-helmet catch that's going to stick in the craw of the now 18-1 Pats and their legions in PatriotNation.

Not only did the Patriots not win the Super Bowl and not complete their undefeated season but it of all teams it had to be the NEW YORK Giants dropping them just 39 seconds short of perfection.  It doesn't make up for it but for many New Yorkers the G-Men stealing the crown right out from under the self-anointed team of destiny takes a little bit of the sting out of the Red Sox's amazing comeback, down 3 games to none in the 2004 American League Championship Series, against the Yankees (OK, not really, that still sucked).

As for me, if I was on Cloud 9 after the Giants beat the Packers in Ice Bowl II then I must be on Cloud 10 now.

There's no point in rolling out the platitudes—a game for the ages, unforgettable, an instant classic—if you don't know what happened there's no point in my telling you here because anyone who cares about football was watching tonight.  As a long-time Giant fan I found myself watching the clock somewhere about the end of the first quarter, willing it to run out the quarter, the half, anything to shorten the game.  Incredibly, the clock made it all the way around to the fourth-quarter and with three minutes ago the Giants were hanging precariously to a 7-3 lead.

My seats in the Terrace level in the corner of the end zone was overpopulated with Patriot fans who broke into gleeful, greedy, vindicative, evil, rude, selfish, celebration (OK, they were just happy their team took the lead but hey, I'm a Giant fan).  They were absolutely certain it was all over.  A chant of "19-and-0...19-and-0...19-and-0" went up from the crowd.  The few Giants fans around me slumped in their seats.  Yet somehow the Giants rallied, give their fans the most exciting, riveting, frightening, joyous two minutes of football ever in the history of sports (OK, Super Bowl XLII was a really great game, but hey, I'm a Giant fan).

When the game finally ended I collapsed in my seat, exhausted and content, watching the scene of celebration unfold below me.  After the Giants received the Vince Lombardi Trophy and Eli Manning won the Cadillac MVP Award for Super Bowl XLII, I made my down to the field level seats and worked my to the railing above the ramp leading to the Giants locker room.  With all the jostling going on among delirious Giants fans it wasn't easy to hold my camera steady (but hey, I'm a Giant fan, not a professional photographer) but I did get some great shots of the Giants leaving the field in victory.

For a look at my complete set of photos from the Super Bowl click here (I will add captions on Monday).

Finally, as one of many who stood in awe and watched those two towers collapse, let me take a moment to note that three times since 9/11 a New York area team has had a chance to win a championship for the New York area.  The New York Yankees lost Game 7 of the 2001 World Series.  The New Jersey Nets were trounced by the Lakers in 2002 and lost to the San Antonio Spurs in 2003.  The Giants then become the first New York area team to win won for New York after the attack of the World Trade Center in 2001.  While that may not mean a lot of many people around the country it means a lot to New Yorkers, many of whom lost friends, families, co-workers and colleagues on that fateful September day. And now the Giants will get a victory parade in the Canyon of Heroes.  For that, thanks.

Blogger and NEWSWEEK Contributor Robert Cox continues to file from the Super Bowl:

 Blogger and NEWSWEEK Contributor Robert Cox continues to file from the Super Bowl:

After a long day running around the Phoenix metro area - checking in at the NFL Media Center, stopping by the ESPN Radio Set (Mike Tarico was interviewing Jerry Rice) and over the Biltmore Hotel looking for wherever it is Mike and the Mad Dog were broadcasting back to New York on WFAN (I never did find them)--I grabbed dinner at small bistro in Scottsdale and then headed over to the 944 Magazine party hosted by Paris Hilton. Some of the NFL's brightest young stars were on hand like Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings, Trent Edwards of the Buffalo Bills and Luis Castillo of the San Diego Chargers. Also there was Colt Brennan from the University of Hawaii. Apparently classes haven't started at UH so he is free to spend a week partying at the Super Bowl. 50 Cent was on hand, but I missed his grand entrance. He was scheduled to perform later that night at the party. Also on hand was Dennis Rodman, Jenny McCarthy, Larry Johnson, Kim Kardashian and many other celebrities that I did not recognize (but caused fans around me to swoon).

I stood outside on the Red Carpet for a while and jostled my way into position to take some photos which I've uploaded to my Super Bowl XLII Flickr account which is linked here.