18-1!

Great article from the main page on Page 2, explaining how most of us outside of New England are feeling:

WE ARE ALL GIANTS

In this glorious moment, when words seem so inadequate to express the joy all non-frontrunning sports fans feel, the first thing that comes to mind is this: We are all Giants. We are all New Yorkers, just as surely as JFK declared himself to be a Berliner in 1963. How can we not feel profound brotherhood with Eli Manning, with Tom Coughlin and all the others to whom we owe both the sight of little Billy Belichick sprinting off the field in an ungracious, you-took-my-Legos huff and our collective freedom from the Boston Globe's "19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots?"

...

February 3, 2008, marks the ushering in of a new age that seems so far from the promise of another historic day, Feb. 2, 2008 [the Patriots still undefeated, Tom Brady still upright], and a somewhat historic season, 2007-08, which we thought might conclude with a New England title and Belichick publishing "The Passive-Aggressive Manager's Handbook to Grumpy, Self-Serious Perfection in Football and Life." The first decade of the new century instead reminds us that games are worth playing, that odds primarily exist to enrich bookies, that America's preeminent advertising platform can still deliver a compelling sports experience and that Boston fans can now add 18-1* to Bill Buckner and Bucky F'n Dent.

In their ruthless professionalism and obsession with offensive metrics, in their ends-justify-any-means subterfuge and Only-Sing-When-You're-Winning single-mindedness, the Patriots embodied the most disturbing, dehumanizing aspect of modern athletics: Transforming play into work. In the long term, this attitude is untenable, because football is really nothing more than a complicated version of 5-year-olds chasing a soccer ball around a park, falling into each other and having a good time. It is the gap-toothed smile of Michael Strahan, crusty Coughlin enjoying a Gatorade bath. Joylessness, even under the pretext of competitiveness or dressed up in an extra-colorful Patriots hoodie, is never a force that can make sports worth watching or caring about. That is why today we are all Giants.

--Patrick Hruby