UPDATE: A number of readers have taken issue with my unkind post on Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's ongoing battle with the NFL over "Spygate". They insist I am not nearly unkind enough. I didn't give Specter enough credit (or perhaps more accurately discredit him enough) when I suggested that his actions were apparently motivated by lingering distress over the loss of his Philadelphia Eagles to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX.

 "Just follow the money," readers counseled me, citing that famous "Deep Throat" Watergate mantra. And the money would suggest that nothing as trivial as fan sentiment is behind Specter's campaign. Both Comcast and the Blank Rome law firm, where Comcast is a major client, top the list of Specter's major contributors. And Comcast, of course, has been warring with the NFL over the league's NFL network and the cable company's desire to charge a premium for fans to watch it.

The enemy of my friends is my enemy is another very familiar congressional mantra. So by softening up the football league with charges of wrongdoing and sullying its upright reputation, Specter is doing yeoman work on behalf of his biggest benefactors. Nothing sentimental about it at all. Business as usual in Washington.

Apparently Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter is not a NASCAR fan or doesn't have a favorite driver as a constituent. Otherwise, Specter might not be satisfied with the stiff penalties assessed on driver Carl Edwards and his racing team following his victory in Las Vegas earlier this month. After a post-race inspection determined that his car was missing its oil cap, a boon to the car's thrust, Edwards was docked a whopping 100 points in the standings, knocking him all the way from the top spot to seventh place, and his crew chief was suspended for six races--but NASCAR officials refrained from commenting on rivals' suspicions that the incident may represent deliberate cheating.

Specter, however, is still hammering away at the NFL for its "Spygate" investigation of the New England Patriots--and apparently to some effect. The NFL is reportedly near a deal--one repeatedly urged by the GOP senator--that would enable the league to hear Matt Walsh's story. Walsh is the former New England Patriots employe who, according to published reports, has hinted that he holds damaging material that might propel the scandal to another level. What Specter has failed to do, though, is to establish any justification for his involvement in this matter. The recent congressional baseball hearings at least concerned a public health issue and the Mitchell Report was essentially a response to prior congressional committee hearings. If Specter is genuinely concerned with serious matters of integrity in the NFL, he should be spearheading an investigation into something more critical like the league's handling of concussions and other brain injuries.

But Specter's motivation appears to stem solely from his continuing distress with the Patriots' victory over the senator's beloved Philadelphia Eagles back in Super Bowl XXXIX. He has repeatedly implied that the Patriots seemed to know what plays the Eagles were going to run in the second half, though the Eagles scored 14 of their 21 points in that half and quarterback Donovan McNabb passed for 357 yards in the game, including 189 in the second half. My recollection of the Philly failure has more to do with porous pass protection, which had McNabb sucking wind late in the game and the fact that the Eagles wasted precious time in the game's waning minutes getting plays in from the sidelines.

None of that makes me any less anxious to hear what Walsh has to say. But the Pats' brass has said that Walsh, who worked on the team's videotape crew and later in its scouting department, was fired in 2003 after he had secretly audiotaped a meeting with Scott Pioli during which the Pats exec was criticizing Walsh's job performance. If the Pats can document that transgression, then Walsh not only has to show that the Patriots' videotape operation exceeded what the team has already copped to and been penalized for, but he would have the added burden of having to prove that he was not taping on his own initiative without the team's knowledge..

Walsh apparently requires immunity from the NFL before he cooperates because he has materials that the Patriots may regard as stolen property. Regardless of any legal protections he receives, Walsh, who has been working as an assistant golf pro in Hawaii, has already been reminded that NFL ball is a contact sport. Today's Boston Globe has an exhaustive front-page feature on Walsh's life, which had some former associates portraying him as a bitter and vindictive man who inflated his role and responsibilities with the Patriots. It also reported that Walsh was booted off his college golf team for boobytrapping his bed with steel blades in the belief that his roommate might be using it for romantic endeavors. In addition, the Globe reports that Walsh's PGA membership was suspended late last year for failure to progress with required educational courses.

Walsh's character may be less of an issue once the NFL goes to the videotape and sees what's on it. Regardless, Specter's sanctimony is hard to stomach. No senator who played a prominent role in the Clarence Thomas hearings for the Supreme Court--let's check out that videotape--should get away with seizing the ethical high ground.

We fans are a fickle and forgetful bunch. It was only a few years ago that many of us were pleading with Brett Favre to hang 'em up. We fervently hoped that after a pair of seasons in which he was foundering—he threw more interceptions (47) than touchdown passes (38), and his completion percentage in 2006 was the lowest of his career—he would spare us more embarrassing, over-the-hill performances that might further tarnish his illustrious career.

He didn't listen, and we are all grateful for that. Now, at 38 years old, it's time for Brett to go. Favre may not have gotten his fondest wish, the rare Elway exit in which a superstar goes out on top, but this past season he came close—closer than he or anyone else had reason to expect. Despite playing with a bunch of no-name receivers, Favre put up his best passing numbers in years, including the highest completion percentage (66.5) of his 16 years in Green Bay.


READ THE FULL COLUMN HERE

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:

At the airport, preparing for the long plane ride out to Phoenix (with a layover in frigid Chicago) I loaded up on the local New York papers as well as sports magazines to get up to speed on the media’s narratives for Super Bowl week. Media Day was Tuesday where the main story appeared to be a reporter in a wedding dress proposing to Tom Brady, Eli Manning and even a few second-stringers. Surprisingly, the Giants were not even the lead story in the New York tabloids--The New York Post and New York Daily News both featured the Mets blockbuster trade for Twins ace Johan Santana. Talk about a tough media town.  You can it even make the front page when you go the Super Bowl.

After reading all the New York papers and national magazines on the plane, then reading and watching the local coverage in Arizona, eight primary narratives emerged:

• Can the Patriots go 19-0?
• Is Tom Brady’s ankle OK?
• Tom Brady as all-around stud
• Are the Giants talking too much about winning the game?
• The coming of age of Eli Manning
• The enigma that is Bill Belichick
• Tom Coughlin’s transformation from Taciturn Terror to Teddy Bear
• The Giants road win streak of 10-0   
  

• The Cost – tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, events
• TV Ratings – expectations are for a ratings bonanza for Fox
• Parties – the celebrities are arriving and the paparazzi are out in full-force

You could tell when when the New York Post starting calling Patriots quarterback Tom Brady a "girlie-man." You could tell when Mike Celizic vented on MSNBC.com about Boston's lame nickname, "Beantown," the fact that Sinatra never wrote a song about the city and likened Boston to cities like Cleveland, Minneapolis and Sacramento. "Compared to New York, it really is inferior," he wrote. You could tell when the old-timers in New York began trotting out the '50s Yankees and even started counting championships won by the Dodgers and Giants, two teams that fled the city a half century ago, as part of the cumulative proof of New York's unsurpassed and enduring sports legacy.

You could tell that, finally, we here in Boston have New York and its sports fans exactly where we have always dreamed of having them: Celtic green with envy. They desperately envy us our teams--our Patriots, Red Sox and Celtics. That they protest so much is, of course, only proof of how much they care and covet. So I willingly grant New York its championship heritage. It boasts 48 world championships in baseball, football, basketball and hockey compared to Boston's 31 titles, though it is worth noting that those are spread over eight teams not to mention the last century. The most relevant count, though, is championships in the 21st Century: If--hell, make that when--the Patriots win Sunday, that count will stand at Boston 6, New York 0. 

For years, Red Sox fans chanted "Yankees Suck!", a rather pathetic cry in the wilderness because they so obviously didn't. Even worse, Yankees fans didn't really care about our Red Sox, dismissing the team and the town as unworthy of a genuine rivalry. And they were right. But now it's not just the Yankees, but each and every one of their New York teams--the Yankees and Mets, the Jets and Giants, the Knicks, the Rangers, even the Red Bulls--is looking up at ours. And the city's fans can't stomach it. When the New York Post printed "10 reasons to hate Pats", the first one on the list was "So we can give hating the Red Sox the winter off." Just like Sacramento, huh?

You can tell how much all of New York City--with its great sports history, its extraordinary restaurants and its vibrant, cultural scene--just wants to start chanting, from the Battery to the Bronx: "Boston sucks!"

NEWSWEEK Contributor Robert Cox files this report from the Super Bowl:
 

...I will be totally stoked to be in Arizona for the big game.

Early tomorrow morning I board a plane bound for Sky Harbor Airport and a week of fun and sun in the Grand Canyon State where Tom Brady and his juggernaut New England Patriots offense is expected to smash open another gaping hole--this one in the New York Giants secondary. We’ll see. The Giants are on a roll, playing like the old Parcells teams over the past month, and if they gave a darn about meeting expectations their season would have ended in Florida three weeks ago.

I have to admit that last summer, when I accepted an invitation to attend the Super Bowl, it never occurred to me as a lifelong Giants fan that my team would actually be playing in the game. So it was with absolute and unmitigated joy that I watched spellbound as yet another Lawrence Tynes field goal try first sailed aimlessly into the frigid Wisconsin night and then just as quickly righted itself and veered towards the center of the uprights, sending the Giants on one more miraculous road trip.

Still I’m worried. All throughout their improbable play-off run, the Giants have been like my guilty little secret. Now the secret is out: The Giants are a very good football team.  No one among the legion of football analysts and talking heads on the cable sports networks gave the Giants the slightest chance to win the NFC Championship. Even the most loyal of Giants fans would be lying if they told you they expected the Giants to be playing this weekend. They were picked to lose in Tampa Bay, lose in Dallas and lose in Green Bay. At each stop I’ve wondered, “Could it be that the Giants could somehow put together a streak and be there when I get to Glendale?”--and then pushed that thought right out of my mind as being utterly absurd. And yet, here we are.

The cherry on top was being offered the opportunity to contribute to Mark Starr’s blog over the next few days here at Newsweek.com. As the President of the Media Bloggers Association, I've been working with the folks at Newsweek for several months developing The Ruckus, a political blog covering the Presidential campaign.  Since I was going anyway, I offered to contribute to Newsweek.com's coverage of the big game and to my great pleasure they agreed. Mark is an experienced reporter who has been covering major sporting events for years so I am not even going to pretend I am “covering” the Super Bowl the way a guy like Mark can. What I can do is share my experiences with the overall spectacle of the Super Bowl from a fan’s perspective. I am going to do my best to get around town, attend various events, talk to fans and--if possible--current and former players as well as some of the other myriad celebrities and overall interesting folks who attend an event like the Super Bowl.

This will be my fourth--and third with the Giants. I was at Pasadena when the Giants won their first championship behind Phil Simms. I was in San Diego when John Elway led the Broncos in a huge upset over Brett Favre’s Packers. And, sadly, I was in Tampa when the Giants had their heads handed to them by Ray Lewis and the Baltimore Ravens. At those Super Bowls I met people like Warren Moon, Marv Levy, Chris Berman, Marty Schottenheimer, Chris O’Donnell (the actor), Denny Hastert (the then-Speaker of the House), John Fox, Sean Peyton, Bart Starr, Lester Hayes, Merlin Olson, Daryl Strawberry and many others. There are so many interesting people at this game that it is less like a sporting event and more like some psychedelic "happening" from the Summer of Love - even some of the bands performing are the same.

You just never know who you are going to bump into during a week like this and I plan on being ready so I’ve got my Nikon D-80 camera, my Apple Powerbook, iPhone and a letter from Newsweek saying I really am covering the Super Bowl for them. Cool!

More importantly, I’ve got my official NFC Champions Locker Room Hat, my Giants flag for the car and, since it can get cold at night in the desert, my blue and red Giants flannel pajamas which always bring good luck for the G-Men.  Next stop, Phoenix baby! Super Bowl XLII here I come.

There's no doubt that there is a significant point-spread factor in the growing conviction that New York is going to make a game of it Sunday against New England and quite possibly pull of a giant upset. During the first half of the season, the Pats were every bit as perfect against the spread as they were against the opposition. But over the second half of the regular season, it was a slightly different story. The Pats still won all the games, but they had to come from behind four separate times in the fourth quarter and the team covered the spread just twice. Moreover, it has failed to cover in either of the two playoff games. Despite that iffy performance for bettors of late, the Pats, a team that eked out a three-point victory over the Giants last month, have once again been established as a huge favorite--12 points in Super Bowl XLII.

It is the psychology of those recent point-spread shortfalls that has fed the notion that the Pats could be ripe for the picking. Never mind that the second-half spreads were seriously inflated by unsophisticated bettors leaping on the Patriots bandwagon. The betting result has pretty much obscured what the Pats accomplished in their two playoff games. They defeated two very good and very hot teams, Jacksonville and San Diego, in totally different fashion--one with a precision--indeed record-breaking--short passing game, the other with a smashmouth running attack. And though the Pats were challenged early in each game by strong performances by young quarterbacks, neither victory seemed in doubt by the fourth quarter and the Pats won both games by comfortable, two-score margins. Yet somehow the failure to cover made those victories seem disappointing rather than dominant or daunting.

The other nervous-making factor, especially for Patriots fans, is that they, of course, remember: the Pats were the last Super Bowl team to come in as a double-digit underdog, 14 points to St. Louis in 2002, before the Super Bowl XXXVI upset that launched the New England dynasty. And the previous time before that, in 1998, defending champion Green Bay was a 12-point favorite before losing to John Elway's Denver Broncos 31-24.

Rather remarkably, this will be the 14th time in 42 Super Bowls--fully one-third of them--that there has been a double-digit favorite. The first four games, back before the contests were yet "Super" and were simply called the AFL-NFL World Championship Games, all featured double-digit spreads in favor of the long-established National Football League champ. In the first two, the Packers walloped the AFL's Kansas City and Oakland, by huge margins. But in the final two years before the two leagues merged, bettors failed to grasp that the AFL had caught up and maybe even surpassed the stodgier NFL. First Joe Namath's New York Jets stunned the Baltimore Colts, regarded as a juggernaut, 16-7. A year later Len Dawson and the Kansas City Chiefs kicked the Minnesota Vikings 23-7.

Despite those notable upsets, more double-digit favorites have won and covered the spread to boot than bombed in the Super Bowl. In those 13 Super Bowls with a spread of at least 10 points, the favorite boasts a 9-4 record in the games and is 7-5-1 against the spread.

As a New England Patriots fan, I am less than thrilled to see pictures of a gimpy Tom Brady in New York's West Village with a walking cast on his right foot. On the other hand, given how the Patriots shroud everything, particularly their injuries, in secrecy, it's hard to imagine that the teams would allow Brady to wander around enemy territory--schlepping a potted plant and navigating the stairs at the apartment house of his girlfriend, Giselle Bundchen--if the injury were truly serious and threatened his Super Bowl status. In that case, he would be behind close doors, off his foot with non-stop therapy at his disposal while Boston's finest physicians contemplated some kind of miracle surgical procedure a la the stitch job that allowed Curt Schilling to pitch--the famed "bloody sock" game--in the 2004 A.L. Championship against the Yankees.

About the only certainty regarding his injury is that all subsequent information on it will be at best dubious and more likely spurious. Still, inevitably, the saga of Brady's foot (and Bundchen) is far more interesting than the rest of the standard journalistic overkill to which we will be subjected for the next 12 days: the offensive lineman whose second cousin once removed is in Baghdad; the defensive back whose grandmother is, at 83, going for a college degree; the running back who dreamed of being a jock until he grew four inches and put on 40 pounds his freshman year of high school.

On the other hand, if Brady, who has started 124 consecutive games for the Patriots since Drew Bledsoe was injured in the second game of the 2001 season, is seriously injured and unable to go in Glendale on Feb. 3, it would result one of the most remarkable quarterback stories in Super Bowl history. Who could envision the circumstances in which the Super Bowl would be the first start for a quarterback since high school? That would be exactly the situation for Matt Cassel, who has thrown a grand total of 39 passes in three seasons as a backup to Brady. That meagre number happens to be six more passes than he threw in four years at USC, where he backed up a pair of Heisman Trophy winners, Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart.

Our few glimpses of Cassel here have not inspired great confidence. A tall, nimble quarterback, he looks more dangerous running the ball than passing it. He relieved Brady in an early-season romp over Miami, promptly threw an interception and didn't return to the game. His most memorable appearance was in relief of Brady in the final, meaningless game of the 2005 season. Cassel went 11 for 20 for 168 yards and two TDS, the last coming on the final play of the game to bring the Pats within a two-point conversion of tying the Dolphins. He then showed he could follow orders. The Pats clearly had no taste for the tie and overtime and Cassel's pass for the conversion went about 30 yards over the receiver's head. He then showed he could follow the company line, when he insisted that the pass had slipped.

Remarkably, the biggest game Cassell has ever played in to date was not even a football game. Back in 1994 his Northridge, California baseball team reached the finals of the Little League World Series--and lost to Maracaibo, Venezuela

An election year is a helpful reminder to sportswriters like me, busy decrying how college football picks a national champion. We should look at how we go about picking a president. Instead of watching another mismatch for the BCS Champonship, as sportswriters did, political reporters were busy last night trying to figure out if Hillary Clinton's glimmer of emotion was genuine--and if so, would it then help or hurt her. That may not make the BCS process any more palatable, but at least it puts it in perspective.

Ohio State didn't embarrass itself, as it did last year. Still, LSU's 38-24 victory did bear a certain resemblance to Florida's in 2007 and revealed the Buckeyes as, most simply, overmatched by another quicker, more dynamic team from the SEC. Hey, I warned the BCS earlier this season that if it hoped to perpetuate its ludicrous system it had to find a way to downgrade the "Not-So-Big" Ten champion, almost always Ohio State these days. The BCS Championship game can't be the inevitable reward for a team that plows through a weak conference (especially toward the bottom) and beats up a few MAC teams for good measure. The inevitable result of this free pass to the Big Ten is a snooze of a title game. And while the game may not have been an embarassment, Ohio State is surely mortified that is is now 0-9 in bowl games against the SEC dating back to the 1978 Sugar Bowl. The Buckeyes have graciously spread it around, losing over that streak to seven different SEC teams. Could Vanderbilt be next?

I've got nothing against the Big Ten. Some of my best friends, including my wife, went to Big Ten schools and one of my favorite cousins, an Ohio State alum, even flew down to Arizona for the game. It's got some great academic institutions, which should mean a lot more in this world than the calibre of its football. But the calibre of its football has become decidedly second rank, certainly lagging behind the SEC and the Pac 10 and probably behind the Big 12 too. Ohio State's loss concluded a 3-5 bowl season for the Big Ten, which is actually an improvement over last year's dismal 2-5 effort. The SEC finished 7-2, the Pac 10 4-2 and the Big 12 5-3. If you check out the Big Ten message boards and websites, they're filled with excuses about the post-season failures, like how poor Michigan State finished eighth in the Big Ten and drew Boston College, runner-up in the ACC. But nobody seems anxious to discount Purdue's bowl victory over mid-major Central Michigan.

This second successive BCS championship and Ohio State dud was compounded by a whole slate of disappointing BCS bowl games, including two routs (USC over Illinois and Georgia over Hawaii) and two other games that were entertaining, but hardly compelling (Kansas over Virginia Tech and West Virginia over Oklahoma). USC, Georgia, West Virginia, Missouri and Kansas fans are left wondering why their two loss seasons (and in Kansas' case, a single loss to powerful Missouri) aren't equal to LSU's claim to the national title. AP voters missed a good chance to signal their disdain for the system when they voted LSU number one.

But a more important message may have been sent by University of Georgia president Michael Adams. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that Adams, who chairs the NCAA executive committee, has written a letter to NCAA president Myles Brand throwing his support behind an eight-game January playoff, starting with the four major bowls--Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Rose--as quarterfinals. Adams says his decision to support a playoff didn't stem from disappointment with Georgia's post-season fate--they wound up ranked number two in the A.P. poll--but rather from the string of disappointing games that reflected badly on the process. "I'm just convinced that [the BCS system is] not working and that it's not going to work and it's fundamentally flawed," he told the AJC.

That's something every sportswriter has been saying for years, but it should carry a lot more weight coming from the upper echelons of the NCAA. Meanwhile, as we await the fallout, we can go back to worrying about the Buckeyes showing up in the title game again next year. On that front, there is at least a little good news. Next season, in its third game, neatly tucked between those big home contests against Youngstown State, Ohio University and the Trojans of Troy University, Ohio State will make an excursion west to play the real Trojans, the University of Southern California. If Ohio State still gets to the BCS Championship next year, at least it will have earned the trip.

The New England Patriots have the weekend off, but nothing seems to slow the debate on the team's place or possible place in NFL history. Bill Belichick leapt one hurdle this week when he was named AP Coach of the Year, an undefeated regular season trumping both the "Videogate" fallout and the almost irresistible urge with this kind of award to bypass the Belichicks, Joe Torres, Phil Jacksons and give it to the coach who did the best job with a team that was expected to stink. (If that were a separate award, Green Bay's Mike McCarthy would have won over Tampa Bay's Jon Gruden and Cleveland's Romeo Crennel.)

It seems obvious to me that if the Patriots run the table in the post-season and win their fourth Super Bowl in seven years, they are unquestionably the "greatest" team in NFL history. To my mind, that is slightly different than the "best" team--better than the Packers, Steelers, Cowboys or 49ers dynastic teams--but I could probably make a pretty good argument for that too. Still, I am amazed how some esteemed members of the football press are unwilling to give the Patriots their due, or in some cases, anything even approaching their due.

I caught up with the opinions of SI's veteran NFL guru Paul Zimmerman on New York's WFAN and was stunned when he suggested that the Patriots probably belonged in the all-time top 15 of NFL teams. Zimmerman's argument: count the Hall-of-Famers. The standard, Zimmerman suggested, was Vince Lombardi's great Green Bay teams in the 60s which has 10 players enshrined or the Chuck Noll Steelers had nine.

I grew up on the Packers and share Zimmerman's reverence for that team. But that was not only an era of fewer teams and fewer playoff games, but one in which the NFL was not yet fully integrated. Both of Green Bay's star running backs, Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor, were white; given that there is not a single white running back playing a prominent role in today's NFL, it is reasonable to suggest that the Packer duo might not be quite as dominant in a broader-based league. Moreover, there was no free agency. So the Green Bay and Pittsburgh stars stuck together. They benefited from the talent that surrounded them as well as from the attention that a dominant team attracts and the mythology that begins to surround it. Sure Herb Adderly was a great cornerback, but how much did it help that he played alongside four other Hall of Famers on that Packers defense? Would Jack Ham still have been the stud if he hadn't spent almost his whole career lining up next to Jack Lambert? Would we remember him today if, after five years in Pittsburgh, he had taken the money and run to squander his talents on those wretched Jets teams of the mid-70s. How much did it help wide receiver John Stallworth to have Lynn Swann wide on the other side? You can bet that today Stallworth would have bolted to be the number one receiver in another team's offense.

From their first title in Super Bowl IX to their fourth in Super Bowl XIV, almost half the Steelers roster--21 out of 48 players--remained intact. Only nine players, or about 15 percent of the current Patriots roster, was with the team when they won their first Super Bowl seven years ago. Clearly, it's harder for modern teams to flood the Hall of Fame. The greater 49ers of Bill Walsh boast only three Hall of Famers (with Jerry Rice still to come) and two of them, Joe Montana and Steve Young, played the same position. Denver's back-to-back Super Bowl champs sent only John Elway to the Hall of Fame.

For the record, that first Patriots champion had only two Hall of Fame locks--Tom Brady and Adam Vinatieri. The current aggregate has two more in Junior Seau and Randy Moss. But might not Ty Law have a better shot at the Hall if he had stuck with the Pats as their shutdown cornerback through these glory years rather than finished his career in relative obscurity first with the Jets and then in Kansas City? Doesn't the man who replaced him, Asante Samuel, have a far better chance for enshrinement if he stays with the powerhouse Patriots rather than, as is likely, leave next year for the highest bidder? And if Richard Seymour, already a five time All-Pro, gets to play his entire career alongside stalwarts like Vince Wilfork and Ty Warren?

The Hall of Fame criterion is sweet sentiment, but ultimate hooey. A team is not definied by a bunch of plaques in Canton, Ohio. The team, as Bill Parcells likes to say, is what its record says it is. And the Patriots record, at least for now, is unprecedented. And unlike the '72 Dolphins, which played a patsy schedule (not one playoff team during the regular season and only two teams with winning records, both 8-6), the Pats beat the two best teams in the league, Indy and Dallas, on the road, and four other playoff teams. They have a tough playoff road--likely Jacksonville or Pittsburgh, then Indy and finally Dallas or Green Bay. If they go all the way, 19-0 would mean the Patriots are the best team ever, and not simply a top 15 also-ran for the honor. In that case, I think Mr. Zimmerman would have to reassess.

Something smells rotten to me about the circumstances, in this final week of the NFL regular season, that have established the Tennessee Titans as 6-1/2-point favorites over the Indianapolis Colts playing at home in Indy and the Washington Redskins a whopping 9-1/2-point favorite over the best team in the NFC, the Dallas Cowboys.

Both are critical games, with Tennessee and Washington needing wins to reach the playoffs. And both teams under normal circumstancers would be underdogs. But the crircumstances turn out to be anything but normal. Colts coach Tony Dungy and Cowboys coach Wade Phillips have both indicated that they intend to play their starting quartergacks, Peyton Manning and Tony Romo, on a limited basis at most, preferring to rest them as well as other key starters for the upcoming playoffs.

And the response from NFL and its pundits seems to be that these teams are entitled to do whatever they want. It is apparently irrelevant that the game means a great deal to Cleveland, Minnesota and New Orleans. Having already gained a playoff bye and with this week's game meaning nothing to them, the conventional wisdom around the league suggests that Colts and the Cowboys not only can, but apparently should do whatever is required in this final game to bolster their post-season prospects. And if that means resting Manning and Romo or anybody else, so be it. By dint of their records, they are said to have earned that right.

Let's take the Colts game for example. I happen to believe the Colts are not at all indifferent to the outcome of Sunday's game. In fact, I think Dungy and his staff would actually prefer to have Tennessee win and to reach the playoffs. That result would most likely send Tennessee on to play the San Diego Chargers in the wild-card game the next weekend. And it's reasonable to assume that the Titans, with their rugged defense ranked 5th in the league, would give the Chargers high-powered attack a stiffer contest than the Browns, with their 31st-ranked defense, or at the very least inflict a pounding on them, softening them up for their next opponent. Which in all likelihood will be Indy. And that's how a loss to Tennessee might come full circule to bolster the Colts in the playoffs.

So the Colts would appear to be operating strictly out of self-interest by losing on Sunday. Yet self-interest can be carried only so far. The Colts couldn't possibly announce their intention to deliberately lose the game without the NFL coming down hard. All they can apparently do is field a lineup that is far more likely to lose the game and hope for the best, or in this case the worst.

Tony Dungy is the moral pillar of the NFL and wouldn't do anything that he didn't believe was countenanced by league rules. Moreover, I'm not sure I could formulate a rule that would adequately cover this situation. Still, my gut feeling says there is something wrong when Tenneessee can punch its playoff ticket by going through Jim Sorgi and the Colts rather than Peyton Manning and company. Frankly, it smells rotten to me.

How much bang for the buck can a watch company get when it uses New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning as the athletic embodiment of how "Unstoppable!" its watch is? Its a Saturday Night Live-worthy laugh line every time I hear it, but even more so when it's airing, as it did last night, during a Giants game. I don't think "stoppable" is quite sufficent as an antithesis to describe how Manning fared against the Washington Redskins Sunday night. If he wasn't stopping himself with weak-armed throws or foolish retreats in the pocket and into enemy arms, as he was much of the first half, then his teammates were lending a hand by dropping his occasionally accurate passes, as they did much of the second half. His final numbers were 18-52 for 168 yards, or about three yards per attempt. Hard to sell a watch, I know, with the catchword "Pathetic!"

You know it's a really bad game when Giants coach Tom Coughlin looks upset on the sidelines. Okay, so he always looks a man whose head is about to implode. But who can blame him? Coughlin has spent four seasons in New York watching Manning and waiting for him to demonstrate that he is an NFL quarterback of the first rank, let alone worthy of the very first pick in the draft. And it doesn't seem to be happening. Frankly, Eli doesn't seem to be improving at all and perhaps not even a quarterback of the second rank. Coughlin surely rues the day that Manning esentially forced himself on the Giants by refusing to play in San Diego. Who in his right mind would want to hand off to Ladainian Tomlinson in the lush climes of San Diego when you can put the ball in the belly of Brandon Jacobs in the windswept Meadowlands? In that ill-fated Giants deal, San Diego not only got quarterback Philip Rivers, who may not have convinced fans either, but appears to be at least Manning's equal, as well as some draft choices, one of which yielded Shawn Merriman, a consensus first-team All-Pro.

Most NFL insiders and Giants fans were surprised when Coughlin wasn't dumped after the team's late-season fold last year so there's certainly no guarantee that making the playoffs this season will mean he's back for 2008. But even at 9-5 in the medicore NFC, the Giants are no lock for the playoffs right now. With a winter's trip to Buffalo next week and then the Patriots due in town for the final weekend of the season, the Giants could have a classic Coughlin swoon and find themselves, at 9-7, in a maze of tiebreakers with the Vikings, Saints and Redskins that, quite frankly, this correspondent is unable to decipher.

The way the Giants competed last night, one has to consider the possibility that the team simply panicked at the prospect of doing too well, say 11-5, and keeping Coughlin around to scream at them for another whole year. However it turns out they finish, if the Giants do reach the playoffs, bet the ranch that it will be one game and out. Followed very shortly by their combustible coach.