I know the Giants are supposed to lose on Sunday. Everybody knows that losing still gives them a shot at the No. 1 pick in the draft if the Raiders beat the Chiefs, something that actually could happen unless the Raiders take another dive. But at this point with the Raiders, let’s face it, how would you be able to tell whether they were taking a dive or not?
But I want the Giants to beat the Cowboys. I want them to beat the Cowboys even though it will make all the Draft People go crazy, not just Giants fans but Jets fans, too, all those who think Fernando Mendoza is going to be their next quarterbacking savior and … wait for it … the Next Namath at long last!
I want this to be the kind of day for the Giants that goes with the night they had against the Eagles at MetLife Stadium, back when they tricked us into believing that the season was still full of possibilities, just because of the way Jaxson Dart hot-wired the place on that Thursday night. I want this to be the kind of day for Giants fans — and against the Cowboys — that makes their fans believe, truly, that next season might finally be better.
There are a lot of reasons for wanting it to go like that with Giants vs. Cowboys. Mostly, though, I want this season to end on a high note for John Mara, who has had the longest and toughest season of his life, especially since we’ve known for months that he’s been battling cancer. No one, not his father nor his mother or even the grandfather who started it all back in 1925, has ever loved the Giants more than John has. I have known this for a long time because I have known the guy a long time, all the way back to Boston College when he roomed with one of my best friends.
I would love for Dart to have one more big day, absolutely, because the kid has been such big fun. But I am hopeful that John can have one, too, maybe as a way of getting next season started right now, a season that will be better for him in all ways. No one wants to ring out the old more than he does.
As bad as things have gotten for the Giants over the past several years, and with all the bad football decisions that have been made since the last Super Bowl victory over the Patriots, it is always worth remembering that the Maras have been Giants football for 100 years, even after the Tisch family became partners with them. The only thing comparable to this in the history of American sports is the Halas-McCaskey ownership of the Chicago Bears.
There was Tim Mara, who started it all on a shoestring, and then passed the team down to his sons, Wellington and Jack. Jack’s son was also named Tim Mara, and was John’s first cousin. And even though John Mara became a lawyer after B.C., the Giants truly have been his whole life, all the way back to his first real memories of glory days at Yankee Stadium when he was a boy. And later, when he was in college, we always knew where John was on Sundays in the fall, whether the Giants were playing home or away.
His father was a gentleman for all times in New York sports. One of the most beautiful and emotional big city days I can remember was his funeral at St. Patrick’s, the son of the legal bookmaker his old man had been getting a sendoff like that, with all the trimmings.
I was with an older cop outside on the steps when it was over and he said he’d volunteered to be at St. Pat’s that day.
“I grew up with the Giants like Mr. Mara did,” he said.
And, oh my Lord, John’s mother Ann was one of the truly delightful characters I have ever encountered in this business, the grand dame of New York sports, really, until the Super Sunday when she tragically died after a slip on the ice while getting the Sunday papers. I used to call her on the phone sometimes around big Giants games — certainly those playoff games against the Packers — and have her tell me all over again about the days when Vince Lombardi slept on hers and Wellington’s couch.
She always called him “Vinny.”
I will always remember her on the podium that night in Glendale, Ariz., after the Giants beat the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII and kept them from being 19-0 that year. She acted like she was one of Seven Blocks of Granite and not Vinny when she saw someone reaching for the microphone before John Mara could get his hands on it.
That was the moment right before John talked about “the greatest moment in the history of this franchise.”
Have there been awful times for the Giants, just over the past two seasons? We all know there have been, and nobody I know — and certainly not somebody who grew up a Giants fans in upstate New York the way I did — took any pleasure in seeing the Giants become part of the NFL’s underclass. But no one has taken it all harder than John Mara has. He’s a Mara, after all. Part of that line. The son of Wellington Mara, who used to answer even the angriest mail from Giants fans by hand.
So, yeah, I would love this to be a good ending on Sunday not just for John, and his family, but for all the Giants fans who have gone the distance. After all the dreary, losing Sundays of these past two seasons, it would be a terrific thing to have MetLife be full of Giants noise on the last Sunday of this regular season and not noise from those annoying Cowboy fans descending on the stadium again from New York and New Jersey and Connecticut. It would be a terrific thing to see the Giants put one on them, no matter who the Cowboys run out there, put one on the Cowboys the way they did last Sunday in Vegas against the pathetic Raiders, who probably will curl up into the fetal position against the Chiefs so they can draft Mendoza in April.
The Giants have already fired a head coach this season and a defensive coordinator and might yet fire their general manager, Joe Schoen, even as Schoen is doing everything behind the scenes to run for office except finally hire skywriters of his own to fly above MetLife. There’s never been a Giants-Jets season that looked and felt any worse than this one.
The Giants aren’t a good bet to win this game, by any means. It’s just nice to think that Dart, who is the future, could light things up one final time before this season becomes next season, and make his fans believe the future is finally bright again.
Nice to think it’s the Giants being the ones to ring out the old with a big day in Jersey, right before they do everything they can to bring back the good old days.
ABOUT THAT ENDING IN THE SUGAR BOWL, A LITTLE DEFENSE FOR THE KNICKS & MAYE IS THE MVP …
There are a lot of really lousy neighborhoods in sports, but there is none lousier than the transfer portal.
And just in college basketball, John Calipari is right:
You get to transfer one time and not have to sit out.
You try it again and you can take the next year off to focus on your studies.
Just kidding on the last part.
Every time Indiana scored another touchdown against Alabama, I imagined Lane Kiffin watching and already wondering when there might be a job opening for him in Tuscaloosa.
That game Mississippi won over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl was one of the best bowl games I’ve seen in a long time, and not just because of the stakes.
Even if those last few seconds should have been sound-tracked with Benny Hill’s old theme music.
By the way?
I know Georgia was trying to win the game at the end, and keep their hopes for a national title alive.
But by throwing that incompletion on third-and-goal and stopping the clock, they gave Trinidad Chambliss, the Ole Miss quarterback, 40 more precious seconds to take his team down the field for the field goal that ultimately won the game.
If Georgia runs the ball, even if it doesn’t score, the Bulldogs could have kicked the short field goal to tie with around 20 seconds left.
The worst-case scenario would have been overtime, unless their kicker missed the chip shot.
Worse-case scenario?
That was Chambliss on that last drive, highlighted by that dream 40-yard completion to De’Zhaun Stribling.
At this point, Mike Brown talking about how little defense his team plays didn’t exactly qualify as breaking news.
I think I can carve out some time for Ravens vs. Steelers on Sunday night.
Dan Lanning was the latest to say something I’ve been saying for a while, about how the college football tournament needs to end on Jan. 1.
I get confused: Is Mendoza really supposed to be the Jets new savior as QB 1, or is it supposed to be Arch Manning in a year?
One more thing about Alabama:
I’m frankly waiting for the Crimson Tide to be the latest team to blame things on Joe Biden.
I promise to get to “Alex vs. A-Rod,” that documentary about you-know-who, right after I finish rereading “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.”
Love Matthew Stafford and the way he’s playing in the late innings.
But he can’t be MVP this season because Drake Maye is.
Can the Rangers play all their games outdoors?
The Yankees and Mets are aware that it’s supposed to be the “hot” stove season, correct?
