The New York Football Giants & Me: A Hate Story
When the New York Giants beat the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Sunday, it was a tough blow for a lot of people. The sports press was looking forward to a Patriots-Green Bay Super Bowl matchup and all the “Grizzled Old Gunslinger QB in His Last Roundup vs. Superstar Wunderkind QB at the Height of His Powers” stories that would write themselves. Then they could spend less time in Arizona working and more time at press events schmoozing D-list celebrities and hitting the free buffet. The NFL and Fox certainly were counting on the dump trucks filled with money they would’ve made off a Pats-Packers ratings bonanza. John Madden was eagerly looking forward to being the pivotman in a Tom Brady-Brett Favre Lemon Party. (Corporate sponsored, of course.) The Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy already had one of his legendary “Wisconsin has cheese/ We have chowder” pieces in his WordPerfect file. Much to the disappointment of those guys, Packers fans everywhere, and I imagine most football fans, the Giants had to come along and spoil the party. Too bad for them.
Not for me, though. I’m ecstatic. But not because I’m Giants fan. On the contrary. I’m thrilled the Pats are playing the G-Men because I loathe the bastards. Hate them with every subatomic particle in my being. And I always have. And the chance to watch the Patriots humiliate them in front of the entire human race will be the perfect ending to The Perfect Season.
It’s hard to know exactly how or when I became a Giants hater. It’s like trying to remember when you first started to love your mother or breathe air or be fascinated by boobs. I just sort of always felt this way. When I was a little kid and half the Patriots games would be blacked out because they never sold out, it was always the Giants who would forced down our Sunday afternoon throats. When I’d thumb through the Sears Christmas catalogue dreaming of filling my room with kickass Patriots bed spreads, posters and wall clocks and going to school in wicked pissah Patriots winter coats, the footnote at the bottom of the page was always the same: “Available in Cowboys, Steelers, 49ers and Giants only.”
One of my most vivid, and fondest, memories from my football-obsessed teen years was the “Miracle at the Meadowlands.” The Giants were seconds away from pulling off a stunning 17-12 against Philly. They had to run one more play to kill the clock and ice the win. Of course this was a long time ago and the kneel down hadn’t yet been invented (the knee itself wasn’t discovered at that time and the kneel down was developed several years after that), so Giants QB Joe Pisarcik handed off to FB Larry Csonka to run out the clock. (Yes, that Larry Csonka, who would later make a career out of being a nuisance to animals on OLN and resenting the Patriots success.) Csonka promptly fumbled the ball, which was picked up by the Eagles Herm Edwards (yes, that Herm Edwards who would later make a career out of coaching football and speaking gibberish) who ran it in untouched for the winning score.
I was delirious. I sat there in my corduroys and Blues Brothers t-shirt and watched it all unfold. The sound of the Eagles bench cheering could be heard over the silent Giant Stadium crowd. The look on Giants coach John McVays face was the same look Matt Damon has in “Rounders” when Teddy KGB flips over the pocket Aces; like he’ll never be able to make sense of how he got screwed so badly. Meanwhile I was rolling on my mom’s living room rug, giggling like a mental patient. The Giants finished in last place, McVay was fired, and all was right with the world.
It doesn’t help that the networks and the NFL force feed them to our part of the country. Every time the Patriots aren’t on because they have a prime time game or a bye week, the TV schedule isn’t even worth checking. You know no matter what other game is being played, we’ll get the Giants game. The Colts could be playing a team made up of the ‘85 Bears mixed with the Lingerie Bowl All Stars and Fox will be showing us the Giants-Falcons game.
It’s been the same story my entire life. You ask why you’ve got to watch the same boring team every week and you get a history lesson about how, before the Patriots joined the NFL, the Giants were New England’s team and there are plenty of people who still like them from back in those days. Terrific. But the NFL-AFL merger happened in the late 60's, so is there any chance of us turning the page? There are still people around who lived through the Great Depression, but we’re not all re-using tin foil.
And a lot of those old time Giants fans passed this trait along to their kids, like a genetic disorder. My friend Kenny is a Giants fan, something he inherited from his dad. Two of the worst nights I ever had as a sports fan were Super Bowls XXI and XXV, which I watched with him as the Giants won. The first was miserable because it made a legend out of Phil Simms, whose booing at the hands of Giants fans when he was drafted in the first round in 1979 was one of the joys of my life. The second was especially painful because of Scott Norwood’s missed kick at the end, though it did introduce me to the odd little coach on the Giants sidelines with the messy clothes and the towering football intellect, and I was forever hooked.
The Giants have managed to do the impossible. Whether they were winning a Super Bowl or losing 12 games in a season (2003 for example), they’ve somehow always remained thoroughly unlikeable. A list their all time best players is a roll call of misanthropic criminals (Lawrence Taylor), the terminally bland (Simms), buffoons (Jeremy Shockey), fraudulent record-setters (Michael Strahan) and self-promoting egotists (Tiki Barber). The current edition is quarterbacked by Eli Manning, a pampered rich kid, an NFL QB’s kid and de facto No. 1 pick who never had to earn a roster spot, never had to fight for a job, never had to do anything except pull the silver spoon out of his mouth and strap his helmet on. Yet he’s being treated like the underdog in this game merely because he’s the runt of the Manning litter, the Fredo to Peyton’s Michael.
Tom Brady meanwhile has been handed nothing and had to fight for everything to become the best there ever was in the game. And on Feb. 3rd, when he leads the Patriots against the loathsome Giants, most people will be disappointed, but not me. For me the 2007 Patriots season will end the only way it should: Perfectly.