The underdog has its day, just like in 1783

Well how about that, football fans! That was an exciting Super Bowl. Aren't you glad you woke up just in time for the big finish?

The game itself wasn't very thrilling for the first three quarters, with only one touchdown and a lousy field goal to show for the hundreds of millions of dollars the advertisers spent on their commercials. Then the fourth quarter begins and at that point the producers at FOX must have said something about it to the coaches. They probably said “listen guys, this is the Super Bowl here and we're losing a lot of money because you aren't scoring a lot of touchdowns the way we expected you to when we bought the rights to broadcast this game.” Then they probably threatened to withhold the players' paychecks. I know that doesn't seem right, but look at it from the television network's perspective. If the game didn't get better real quick everybody at home is going to start flipping through the channels to see if something better is on. Then there wouldn't be anyone still around to watch “House” afterwards.

Well it worked, didn't it? Just when you thought the New England Patriots were going slip out of there with the trophy and whatever bonus prize they would have received for completing a perfect undefeated season, the New York Giants had something different in mind.

By the way, does anyone else think the Super Bowl trophy looks like a football impaled on the Washington Monument? That's probably intentional because they had that thing before the game where they read the Declaration of Independence.

It explains why they did that because the Declaration of Independence didn't have anything to do with football. It was about breaking away from the British and saying we want to be our own country now. That led to the Revolutionary War because the British said “no, you can't do that you have to pay taxes and maintain the English accent.” We won the war and kicked the Brits out. We got rid of the accent, but we've still got taxes now don't we? I guess you've got to compromise sometimes.

What's interesting is the United States colonies weren't even supposed to win that war, just like the Giants were the big underdogs in the Super Bowl. I don't know if it would be entirely accurate to say Great Britain was undefeated in all the wars they fought up until that point in history but they had won pretty many. They had a reputation for winning, like the Patriots.

As we found out last night, history repeats itself. The underdog won and the Giants are the champions. I won't tell you what the final score was in case you recorded the game because you just knew you'd have too much to drink and pass out before half time. It was a smart idea to think ahead to set the TIVO and find a designated driver to take you home from your boss's Super Bowl party.

But on the football side of things, the Giants and the Patriots will probably be sworn enemies from now on because of this game. That's the downside of having a Super Bowl every year. Somebody's not going to like the outcome. That doesn't mean it has to be that way forever, though. Look at the United States and the British now. We're good friends, aren't we? Maybe the Giants and Patriots will eventually become allies. They could help each other out with advice on draft picks and exchange playbooks.

It's interesting how the outcome of the game all tied together with the little Declaration of Independence routine before the game. You might not like what FOX has to say about politics, and their new business channel is a ratings. failure But FOX should be applauded for the kind of outside the box thinking we were a witness to last night. It wouldn't have worked if they'd tried to use the tired old David vs. Goliath analogy employed by so many sporting events. If you paid attention in Sunday school, you realize Goliath was the giant, not the underdog. I could see some of the other networks -- especially NBC -- trying go that route, but it wouldn't have made any sense at all.