Civility in the Suburbs (Update)
Today’s Boston Globe has a gracious editorial on the Giants’ amazing victory last evening.
Viewers around the world last night got an opportunity to watch good, tough football. The New York Giants, by their gritty defensive play and clutch offensive performance on the final drive, elevated themselves above another great football team, the 2007 New England Patriots.
And the Globe offers an interesting take on the relative civility of the rivalry:
Nor was there any of the nasty New York-Boston talk that tarnishes the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. Perhaps the locations of the two home fields – in East Rutherford, N.J., and Foxborough, Mass. – explains this civility.
How about building the new house of Ruth in Rutherford?
Update:
And this New Yorker revels in Bostonian paranoia (to heck with “civility”):
They were always about history, these 2007-08 Patriots. Most points in history. Most touchdowns in history. First 18-0 team in history. But when it was all over, Bill Belichick’s History Boys were a failure. They did not accomplish their goal. They lost the Super Bowl. They blew a lead in the final minute.
Now there will be no more talk about “greatest ever.” No making fun of Mercury Morris and the still-one-and-only undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins. No more comparisons to the dynasties of Green Bay, Chicago, Pittsburgh, or San Francisco. The muscle-flexing 18-1 Patriots don’t even go down as the best New England team of all time.
“Tonight doesn’t take away from anything we have done over the course of the season,” Tom Brady said late Sunday.
Yes, it does. Take all your pinball victories (remember those long-ago days of 52-7 and 56-10?) and lock them away. The Patriots shredded the NFL record book (and the league rulebook, if you believe Senator Arlen Specter), but they did not accomplish their goal. They did not win the Super Bowl. By their own standards of excellence, this season is a failure – same as 2005, when they were eliminated by the Broncos, and 2006, when the Colts bounced them in the AFC Championship.
For those shamefully disposed to Schadenfreude, read more.
The Rutherford Bombers? Sorry, Fr. Imbelli, that lacks the alliterative cachet of the “Bronx Bombers.” :)
As to the Giants-Pats, I’m a Giants’ fan so I’m glad they won, but the Pats have nothing to hang their heads in shame about. They’re an excellent team, and it was a great game all around.
One trembles at the similarity with the gladiators and football games. The savagery of the blows of each play and spectators clamoring for blood. Yet when Burress caught the touchdown pass all of shook the living room while we stood and roared in ecstasy. Other people I know put their fists through walls and some threw furniture across the room. The thrill of victory verses the agony of defeat. We have always needed our games.
http://thegiantsyear.blogspot.com/
“Other people I know put their fists through walls and some threw furniture across the room.”
Non-Catholics, of course. ;)
I am a great believer in civility. But extending it to Yankees fans is taking a good idea too far.