Not Quite Perfect

Two Sundays ago in Arizona, the New England Patriots took on the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII, and the Pats were the fourteen-point favorites to win. The game was a rematch of the final game of the regular season, when the Pats pulled off a narrow but historic 38-35 win and sealed the envelope on their perfect 16-0 season. Two months later, New England was coming into the Super Bowl still with a perfect record, and all signs pointed towards them becoming the first team since the ’72 Dolphins to sweep an entire season as well as all three postseason games. They would also be the first to go undefeated since the regular season was extended from 14 games to 16 in 1978. The first-season pairing of quarterback Tom Brady and receiver Randy Moss seemed unstoppable and the Patriot’s momentum was as strong as coal-fired train engine, and every single person watching the game had perfection on their mind. It really was the biggest game in the history of American football, if not sports in general, and aside from the 1983 series finale of M*A*S*H, it was the most watched TV event ever. In a single word, it was epic for sure, and this coming from someone who doesn’t give two shits about football in the first place; I just like to see history.

The fact that this was the 42^nd annual Super Bowl as opposed to any other is not to be hastily overlooked. In his book A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams proclaims that 42 is “the Answer to the Ultimate Questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” as it is a composite number and also a sphenic, pentadecagonal, catalan, meandric, open-meandric, harshad, and self number as well. It is also the perfect score at the US and International Math Olympiads, and the combined total of all the dots on a pair of six-sided dice. There are 42 perfect squares formed by the grid on a regulation sized board in the game of Go, 42 eyes on the face cards in a standard deck of cards, 42 holes in the game Connect Four, and 42 territories in the game of Risk. All canines have 42 teeth, there are 42 lines per page in the Gutenberg Bible, 42 gallons per US barrel of oil, and (according to Wikipedia) there are 42 landlocked countries in the world. Baseball great Jackie Robinson wore the number 42, which has since been retired by all Major League teams, Napoleon graduated 42^nd in his class at the Military School of Paris, and Elvis Pressley was 42 when he died; so was his father.

The game began with the Giants calling tails and thus winning the coin toss, and then recording the longest opening drive in Super Bowl history with a 16-play, 77-yard, 10 minute push with four third-down conversions. As strong as their opening drive was, though, the Giants had to settle for a 32-yard field goal, only to be topped by the Pats in the second with a one-yard touchdown, bringing the score at halftime to 7-3, New England. There was no scoring at all in the third, and then the low-score, ho-hum-at-best game finally gave way to what was quite possibly the greatest forth quarter in the history of the sport. With eleven minutes to go in the game, Eli Manning through a 5-yard touchdown pass to David Tyree, and the Giants regained the lead until eight minutes later, when Brady threw a 6-yard pass to Moss and the Pats were back on top 13-10, with an extra point for Stephen Gostkowski’s kick. With less than two minutes left in the game, it looked as though the Pats were on their way to making history when Manning through a 32-yard completion to Tyree, who kept the ball pinned between his helmet and fingertips as he fell to the ground. The Giants ended the 12-play, 83-yard drive with Manning throwing a 13 yard pass to Plaxico Burress, who caught the ball in the end zone and brought the score to 17-14 with 35 seconds to go. The Pats again had possession, with less than a minute to go, but the Giants didn’t allow them to gain a single yard, and with one second to go in the game the Giants retook possession as players, media and fans all crowded the field as though the game was officially over, which, in a sense, it was. The field was then cleared just long enough for Manning to kneel the ball, and with that the New England Patriots became the first undefeated team to lose the Super Bowl since the 1942 Chicago Bears.

Following this biggest upset in football history, the ring-bearing Giants held their victory celebration two days later, the same day as Mardi Gras. “Fat Tuesday,” as it is also commonly known, was also the same day as “Super Tuesday,” with primaries or caucuses being held in 24 states across the country (including the home states of both the Patriots and the Giants, regardless of whether you consider their “home” state New York or New Jersey) to determine who will get the nomination in each of the two major parties for the upcoming Presidential Election. Going into what was quite possibly the biggest day in American Politics thus far, prompting many to instead call it “Tsunami Tuesday,” as the outcome would no doubt change the face of the political landscape forever, there were top running candidates on both sides of the aisle that even the greatest character developing screenwriter in the world couldn’t imagine in his most wildest dreams.

In the GOP, there was the one-term Massachusetts Governor and Mormon extremist Willard “The Devil” Romney, who goes by his less-than-appealing middle name, Mitt, and who uncomfortably reminds me of Rich Tarrant. There was also the Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who plays a mean electric bass and whose speeches remind me of Kevin Spacy's monologue in American Beauty, and the Constitution-preaching Senator from Texas Ron Paul who I think shares more than just the initials, physical resemblance and home state of our dear old friend, Ross Perot.

These three contenders, of course, were all going up against the sudden Republican frontrunner John McCain, the 70-something POW Senator from Arizona whose campaign floundered early in the race and was written off as dead long before the first vote was cast in Iowa. Hollywood actor and the former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson had already conceded, as well as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani--who, throughout 2007, I would have bet top dollar on being the Republican nominee. By and by, the entire 2008 GOP race seemed like little more than a bad season of Survivor, with each contestant hungry only for that million dollar prize and 15 minutes of fame, and a quick shot at being on TV.

On the other side of the aisle, only two Democrats were left in a race that would very likely ship its winner off to Washington in 2009. New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton (whose husband, Bill, was the 42^nd President) was leading a tight race with the first-term Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who was 42 years old when he first ran for the Senate and first came into the spotlight of national politics. John Edwards, the former trial lawyer, one-term North Carolina Senator and 2004 candidate for Vice President, dropped out of contention following a poor showing in his home state of South Carolina a week prior, creating a two-way, neck-and-neck race into Super Tuesday between a black man and a white woman; the times, as they say, are a’ changing.

Up to this point, Obama had won in Iowa, then Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada, Obama again in South Carolina, and then Clinton in Florida. But since Florida had moved their primary date ahead of Super Tuesday-- in an apparent attempt at having their vote “count,” and also to draw into the state as much of the candidates’ campaign funds as possible--the Democratic Party had stripped them of all their delegates, which virtually nullified Clinton’s 50-33 victory over Obama. Also, even though she technically won in Nevada, she walked away with only 12 delegates to Obama’s 13, yet she still still held a slight lead over the junior senator from Illinois thanks namely to her last-ditch and teary-eyed victory in New Hampshire back in January.

When Tsunami Tuesday was over and done with, Obama took home victories in 13 states to Clinton’s 8, further strengthening his already-solid momentum (his January reportings for supporter donations topped $32 Million—over a million dollars a day!—whereas Hillary “donated” $5 Million to her own campaign out of her own pocket). Even though the former First Lady won the delegate-heavy states of California (204) and New York (139), Obama’s win in 5 additional “small states” let him walk away from this massively historical day with 847 delegates to her 834, yet Cold Hearted Hillary still held a slight lead in what has become the tightest primary race in modern history, and the greatest sporting event since Super Bowl 42…

As for the Republicans, John McCain took 9 states to Romney’s 7 and Huckabee’s 5, but because the Vietnam War hero claimed all the big states and most of the “medium” ones as well, he walked out of Tuesday with 511 delegates to The Devil’s 176 and Huck’s 147, respectively, as well as a commanding lead in the GOP race. Not only did this all but solidify McCain’s nomination at the Republican Convention, but it also firmly pissed off many a Conservative voter who feels that Johnny McC is far too moderate to represent their party in Washington, with many openly admitting that they would sooner vote for Obama than McCain. So it goes, and go it shall.

In the days following The Tsunami, The Devil officially walked away from the race, saying that if he stayed in any longer, it would only make things easier for both Obama and Hillary, and that he couldn’t let his campaign “be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.” He then went on to say that either of the Democratic candidates would likely turn America into “the France of the 21^st Century,” and on Valentines Day, he publicly endorsed John McCain--sounds like somebody wants to be somebody else’s running mate, eh? As for the Obama/Hillary race, the man from Hawaii has surged out of Super Tuesday to pick up wins in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington and Maine, and the entire Potomac Triple Crown of Maryland, Virginia and DC. Not only do these wins represent a perfect seven-of-seven run over Hillary since The Tsunami, but also the official lead in the race with 1253 delegates to Hillary's 1211, which, of course, is a difference of 42 delegates. Onward now to Wisconsin and Hawaii on the 19th, and then Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont on March 4. Onward, indeed.