What a way to wrap up a crazy year in football, eh? No matter who you rooted for, Sunday’s Super Bowl lived up to the hype of being everything you heard about for the last two weeks.

Here at the Lanthorn, yours truly was the only person on the staff to correctly select the New York Giants as the champs.

Not that I was particularly unique in doing that, but that’s nothing compared to how they actually won the best Super Bowl since their last match up in 2008.

You’re a fan of defense? Then you must have loved the Giants’ defense. For a unit that has its holes, they found a way to make enough plays to stop the Patriots. At this point in the season, you can’t expect a defense to shut someone down completely – nor can you expect an offense to be unstoppable.

There just has to be enough plays made. Justin Tuck pressured Tom Brady into the biggest two-point mistake of his career, and the Patriots’ secondary, which bent in the first half, finally broke in the second half.

For a unit that was statistically one of the worst in the NFL, they played extremely well early on. All Eli Manning had were dump offs to his tight ends, and outside the lucky touchdown pass to Victor Cruz, the Giants’ main weapons were silent.

Credit Mario Manningham’s second-half catch of the day. Criticize Wes Welker for pulling out the stone hands on his fourth quarter drop that gave the Giants their final chance as well.

If you’re a Patriots’ fan, is there a worse punch to the gut than getting beaten by Manning and the Giants in the final minute again? Seriously, if you look at New England’s playoff successes, they’re awe-inspiring, but if you look at the failures – losing to the Giants twice and the epic slaughtering in ’85 by the Bears – it’s pretty ugly.

No matter how they did it, you’ve got to give credit to the Giants. This team has proved once again that sports aren’t about season-long success, it’s about who’s hot at the right time. They were the team of destiny, and Sunday’s win solidifies that.

Holy Halftime

Really, I actually enjoyed it. After last year’s debacle with the Black Eyed Peas, it could only get better. Somehow a 40- or 50- or 60-year-old Madonna made that happen. Even if she almost bit it once and never once sang an actual song, she put on a good show.

It lacked wardrobe malfunction, which I feel like we all hope for now, just to see the national outrage. I’m not mad that it lacked that, the more clothing Madonna was wearing, the better.
Don’t know why Cee Lo Green was there. Actually, I do, his show “The Voice” was on right after.
Stay classy, NBC.

I actually liked seeing the two biggest clowns in music right now getting in on the act. LMFAO may look like they blindly selected their wardrobe from a trunk that belonged to Poison, but they brought some fun to the show, even though to looked like they were singing into microphones that weren’t even turned on.

As for Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., well, was that really necessary? I’m sure Nicki probably got her “50k for a verse,” and M.I.A. got to flip the bird to America because she’s crazy, so good for them.
Unfortunately, I don’t even have a joke for that, and I really, really wish I did.

Commercial Failure

I wish they were better because the commercials are always fun. Even if they’re bad, like they were last night, they’ll at least invoke some sort of emotion and some of the ones last night didn’t even do that.
Doritos had a nice one with the baby in the slingshot, and until Mark Cuban popped up at the end, Sketchers had me with their dog racing spot.

The E-Trade baby has gotten more stale than the tortilla chips I ate, and what is with Coke and M&M bringing back the polar bears and talking candy? I know, those were huge money makers at one point, but that was 1999. People were worried about the end of the world the following year when those were popular.

I trashed the recycled ones, but seeing Matthew Broderick and Honda redo one of the top five most awesome movies of all time in Ferris Bueller’s Day off was probably my favorite.
Commercials aside, my favorite non-football game part of the night was the post game. Not the trophy ceremony, not the post game shows, but Tom Brady’s wife Gisele Bunchen’s post game comments: “My husband cannot [bleeping] throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time.”
On that note, we’ll see you in a few months, NFL.

sports@lanthorn.com