Superbole

Enough with the Super Bowl hyperbole. Sunday's game was not the best game in NFL history, nor was it the biggest upset in all of sports.

But because of our short memories and closed-minded need to categorize everyone and everything, I heard such claims from the media today.

Now I'm not quite the historian for Super Bowls as I think I am with NCAA basketball tournaments the last 25 years or so, but off the top of my head, even the exciting finish might not have been the most thrilling in Super Bowl history. Right now I'm thinking about Joe Montana's late drive against the Bengals in 1989, and more recently, New England's Adam Vinatieri won Super Bowls with field goals, one a game-ender (2002) and the other with nine seconds left (2004).

And now that the season is over, here is my NFL offseason wish list:

+ Chris Berman and Stu Scott are on the next plane that crashes.
+ Emmitt Smith works on his English, starting with "Hand Hand Finger Thumb."
+ New York fans at work shut up about Brady, Belichick and 18-1. Just one day of it has made me nearly suicidal.
+ The Browns keep Derek Anderson, and if they have to deal somebody, make it unproven Brady Quinn, perhaps in exchange for a first-rounder on defense. As it stands now, Cleveland does not have a first-round pick.
+ ESPN gets over itself and the New York-Boston angle from yesterday's Super Bowl. Had the exact same game taken place between, say, Detroit and Houston, folks would not be dropping the Best-Super Bowl-Ever tag.
+ Fans and media alike realize that Tony Romo is merely a good quarterback, but not the next Brett Favre.
+ Favre comes back and takes the Packers to the Super Bowl, where he hoists the Lombardi Trophy and then retires the next day.

Chancre-gate?

Everyone has an opinion on Brady's ankle, but how come no one's talking about that obscene growth on Belichick's lip?

MORE SUPER NOTES: On ESPN Game Day, I was pleasantly surprised to hear some refreshing honesty from analyst Ron Jaworksi. The fellas were talking about the controversy surrounding the Patriots' videotaping habits.

Jaworski said, basically, anything you can do to get an edge, do it. Kind of like counting cards, his backup quarterback with the Rams in the 1970s studied the opponents' play-calling in one particular game. Midway through the second quarter, the backup finally figured out a call or a formation, and knew a blitz was coming, so he threw a red towel on the ground and Jaworski picked up on it as the Rams' offense broke the huddle. Sure enough, Jaws audibled at the line, found a wide open receiver over the middle of the field and the play went for a touchdown.

Stealing signs like that seems low-budget compared to today's thievery possibilities, but for 30+ years ago, that was probably as high-tech for its time as videotaping other teams' tendencies seems today.

And after Jaws told that story, Steve Young, another former quarterback and probably the smartest and most articulate of all NFL analysts right now, disagreed but the pair had to cut to a commercial. Would have been nice to see that argument play out.

KRAUDED HOUSE: ESPN's little kid reporter, Jason Krause, usually annoys with that worthless "Takin' It To The House" segment, but his Super Bowl Media Day piece was excellent. He asked one player for some tips with the ladies, mistook Giants' backup QB Jared Lorenzen, aka The Hefty Lefty, for an offensive lineman and got kudos on his jacket from Tom Brady. Well done, kid. Now just fix that lisp in the offseason and perhaps you'll be able to turn those tips into real romance one day.

Thoughts On The NFL Postseason

My all-time favorite, the New York Giants, just finished off a nice upset win at Dallas.

OK, the Browns are my favorite and I could take or leave the Giants -- who lost twice to Dallas during the regular season -- either way. But here are some reflections:

+ Don't buy the dumb sportswriters' cliche about how "it's hard to beat the same team three times in one year." You know what? No it's not. There's a pretty good reason why you beat them the first two times: YOU'RE BETTER THAN THEM! I think it's even more difficult to beat a team that has beaten you twice already.

But the Giants are playing hot football right now, and as is shown in many sports over the years, a streaky team can often beat the supposed better team, even on the road and especially in the playoffs.

+ Road teams are 4-4 in the playoffs right now, including both games on Sunday.

+ I can't wait to hear again and again all offseason that Tony Romo went to Mexico to have hot hotel sex with Jessica Simpson for a couple of days during the Cowboys' postseason bye week. "Coach, you sure that wasn't a distraction?" Yo, pencilneck, do you know why it was a distraction? Because you couldn't stop making it one. Now get back up to the press room and load up again on the pasta buffet.

It absolutely kills me that the media relentlessly questions things that are a result of their own doing. I don't care at all who Romo is dating. If he was married to a non-celebrity, and slipped out of Dallas for a few days, it would not have been a story. The story had nothing to do with football, the Cowboys or even Tony Romo. Sportswriters made it a story because it was Jessica Simpson. Even the surliest of scribes have become gossip hounds.

+ Did anyone see when Romo overthrew Terrell Owens in the red zone late in the first half? And of course Owens made a small gesture because he's 8 years old in terms of dealing with his emotions? Did anyone notice Romo not react at either of Owens' drops of easy catches during the game? After each, the camera zoomed in tight on Owens, flashing that million-dollar smile as if to say, "I should have caught that, but I still look good."

+ When league officials say the sport is for the fans, ask them why they schedule the AFC Championship game for 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday. Or why they moved one of the Saturday afternoon games to Saturday nights -- on wild card and divisional weekends -- in recent years. For maximum ad dollars, or because the fans wanted it that way?

+ Chargers at Patriots looks boring; the Patriots should win that one. But Giants at Packers will be a good game. The Packers played 55 minutes of outstanding football on Saturday, and the Giants are 9-1 on the road this season, and they're extremely confident. It would be a nice story for Eli Manning to get to the Super Bowl when big bro Peyton seemingly had a far better chance this year, but it will be an even better story when everybody's hero Brett Favre leads the Packers back to it. Green Bay wins a close one.