Sport's Defining Moments 8: Super Bowl Sunday
When it comes to the defining moments in global sport, I had to think long and hard about whether or not to include anything from "the American sports". World Series, my arse, we say. America is not the World, as Morrissey once sang. But are they the insular ones? Well, yes, yes, they are, but we Brits would be wrong to think that the four team sports they traditionally build their culture around have no currency elsewhere.
Basketball is truly one of the biggest sports all over the world, especially in the rest of Europe, likewise ice hockey is particularly big in Eastern Europe, baseball in South and Central America and Japan, and it's only American Football that, in terms of international teams and high class leagues, remains North American. They did try pretty hard with NFL Europe (remember the London Monarchs?) but it was always second-rate and ended up folding.
Yet, it's the Super Bowl I'm choosing, because the Super Bowl is something a bit special, easily the most globally recognisable US sporting event, one of the biggest in the world. It's been on my radar pretty much since I can remember - the first I registered properly was not Super Bowl XX (The Chicago Bears of Walter Payton and William 'The Fridge' Perry), but Super Bowl XXI, in 1987, won by the New York Giants. The reason it won my interest, bizarrely, was that the Jasper Carrott Show was on a Saturday night and he used to have Loudon Wainwright III on every week to sing a topical song - this was my first sight of the peculiar gurning jolly Wainwright Snr and he sang a song with the refrain "Tomorrow's Super Bowl Sunday"... I can't find any evidence of it anywhere but it did happen and I'll always remember it.
For the next 20 years, I followed the Super Bowl, even if I only occasionally followed the rest of the NFL Season - those were the years of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, then of the Buffalo Bills repeatedly losing, then the Dallas Cowboys and the Broncos. Only rarely did I stay up to watch - I remember doing so in 2001 to watch the Giants lose to the Baltimore Ravens, led by Ray Lewis, one of the greatest and most controversial players in the NFL. The Giants quarterback, Kerry Collins, was meant to be a feelgood, back from the brink story, but he was not up to it and it was painful.
After that, a dominant force emerged under coach Bill Belichick - the New England Patriots, based near Boston, won three Super Bowls and looked like dominating for years.
In the 2007-08 season, particularly, they were unbeatable, making history by going 16-0 in the regular season, then getting through the play-offs to play my original favourites the New York Giants in the Super Bowl.
Now we get to why the Super Bowl perhaps engages the world far more than the NBA Finals, the World Series and the Stanley Cup Finals - they're all scrupulously fair 7-game series, where you can be totally confident that the best team will end up the winner, but it's a bit much for the casual fan, perhaps.
The Super Bowl is a one-off. The Giants in 2007-08 had rather wobbled through the season to the Super Bowl, that wasn't exactly an outstanding team, and the Patriots would probably have beaten them 6 games out of 7.
But in the one game they actually played, in Glendale, Arizona, something remarkable happened.
By this stage, I'd got into the NFL properly, with my acquisition of Sky Sports, it became a Sunday night regular. It wasn't that I found it all that involving, more that it was relaxing - I'd order a curry from Holy Cow, Balham, look at my work for the week to come, and have the two successive NFL games on, almost in the background.
So, I was prepped on the story - the controversial hard-ass coach Belichick, his golden boy quarterback Tom Brady, the talented but irritating wide receiver Randy Moss, and the Giants, with fewer stars, quarterback Eli Manning, the younger of a pair of brothers, his older brother Peyton considered the far superior talent. The Patriots just had to win to be enshrined as the greatest single-season team in NFL history and, indelibly, the team of the era.
It could have been a damp squib, but it wasn't. The Patriots were clearly nervous and off their game, particularly Moss and Brady, but I remember the less celebrated receiver Wes Welker being superb - he's been my favourite player since.
Few points were scored but finally it looked like the Patriots would draw away to their inevitable triumph when a Moss touchdown put them 14-10 ahead with just a couple of minutes to go.
Now, time for a digression of sorts. I do like American football but I do have issues with it. It's too orchestrated, players are not versatile enough, it's too much on the quarterback and the coach, most players never even touch the ball, there are too few wildly unexpected magical moments of unexpected genius ... that kind of thing. The bump and bash is thrilling and chilling (and profoundly damaging), the sheer extraordinary athleticism and low error count is incredible, but (as I did between cricket and baseball) if we compare Tom Brady and, say, Jonny Wilkinson... both orchestrate the game, both make plays for team mates, both throw long passes with extraordinary power and timing - occasionally, if caught, a quarterback will take a big hit (though his team mates do everything in their power to prevent this) occasionally he makes a little, surprise run, which usually ends up with him sliding to the floor to avoid contact. But add to that, for Wilkinson, being the hardest tackler in the game, throwing himself into rucks, kicking everything from hand, kicking everything from the ground, making runs which actually end with being tackled hard - a great fly half has to be skilled in about six different American football positions.
Anyway, why digress now? Because, this time, a minute or so before the end of Super Bowl XLII, there really was a moment of unlikely, unchoreographable magic, which, in itself, made history, shocked America, and stopped the Patriots in their tracks when they looked like developing into a Man Utd-esque all-dominant franchise (which the NFL, with its draft system, goes out of its way to avoid).
The Giants were 3rd and 5, 44 yards from the Patriots goal line - too far even for a field goal (which wouldn't have been enough anyway). Manning, who'd had a so-so game, received the ball and came under severe pressure - if he'd been sacked, several yards behind the line of scrimmage with just one down remaining, that would almost certainly have been game over. Three Patriots defensive players leapt at him, grabbed at him. 99 times out of 100 he'd have gone down, but he wriggled out of it, found a tiny pocket of space and (with whatever plan he had for that play out of the window) hurled it downfield into the midst of the Patriots defense. Just one Giant stood there, the relatively unsung David Tyree, who competed directly against the Patriots' Rodney Harrison to catch it - somehow Tyree grabbed it, pressed it against his helmet and held onto it as he hit the ground. Suddenly the Giants had a chance, and a couple of plays later, Manning found Plaxico Burress in the endzone for the winning score.
Here is the play, as bizarre as I've described it.
The Giants would get the better of the Patriots in pretty similar circumstances 4 years later, and despite Brady's continuing excellence, and the fact that they make the post-season without fail, the Patriots have not won a Super Bowl since. This was a moment that changed the course of NFL history, lived up to the best that the game can offer.
Since then, the NFL is making efforts to expand to the UK, with more and more games a season being played at Wembley Stadium. Does the UK, indeed the world, now have a big enough appetite for the gridiron? It's definitely my favourite of the American sports. It's also the one which really takes their very best athletes. Perhaps it never will become a truly global sport, but it has at least had a fair few global sporting moments.
Basketball is truly one of the biggest sports all over the world, especially in the rest of Europe, likewise ice hockey is particularly big in Eastern Europe, baseball in South and Central America and Japan, and it's only American Football that, in terms of international teams and high class leagues, remains North American. They did try pretty hard with NFL Europe (remember the London Monarchs?) but it was always second-rate and ended up folding.
Yet, it's the Super Bowl I'm choosing, because the Super Bowl is something a bit special, easily the most globally recognisable US sporting event, one of the biggest in the world. It's been on my radar pretty much since I can remember - the first I registered properly was not Super Bowl XX (The Chicago Bears of Walter Payton and William 'The Fridge' Perry), but Super Bowl XXI, in 1987, won by the New York Giants. The reason it won my interest, bizarrely, was that the Jasper Carrott Show was on a Saturday night and he used to have Loudon Wainwright III on every week to sing a topical song - this was my first sight of the peculiar gurning jolly Wainwright Snr and he sang a song with the refrain "Tomorrow's Super Bowl Sunday"... I can't find any evidence of it anywhere but it did happen and I'll always remember it.
For the next 20 years, I followed the Super Bowl, even if I only occasionally followed the rest of the NFL Season - those were the years of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, then of the Buffalo Bills repeatedly losing, then the Dallas Cowboys and the Broncos. Only rarely did I stay up to watch - I remember doing so in 2001 to watch the Giants lose to the Baltimore Ravens, led by Ray Lewis, one of the greatest and most controversial players in the NFL. The Giants quarterback, Kerry Collins, was meant to be a feelgood, back from the brink story, but he was not up to it and it was painful.
After that, a dominant force emerged under coach Bill Belichick - the New England Patriots, based near Boston, won three Super Bowls and looked like dominating for years.
In the 2007-08 season, particularly, they were unbeatable, making history by going 16-0 in the regular season, then getting through the play-offs to play my original favourites the New York Giants in the Super Bowl.
Now we get to why the Super Bowl perhaps engages the world far more than the NBA Finals, the World Series and the Stanley Cup Finals - they're all scrupulously fair 7-game series, where you can be totally confident that the best team will end up the winner, but it's a bit much for the casual fan, perhaps.
The Super Bowl is a one-off. The Giants in 2007-08 had rather wobbled through the season to the Super Bowl, that wasn't exactly an outstanding team, and the Patriots would probably have beaten them 6 games out of 7.
But in the one game they actually played, in Glendale, Arizona, something remarkable happened.
By this stage, I'd got into the NFL properly, with my acquisition of Sky Sports, it became a Sunday night regular. It wasn't that I found it all that involving, more that it was relaxing - I'd order a curry from Holy Cow, Balham, look at my work for the week to come, and have the two successive NFL games on, almost in the background.
So, I was prepped on the story - the controversial hard-ass coach Belichick, his golden boy quarterback Tom Brady, the talented but irritating wide receiver Randy Moss, and the Giants, with fewer stars, quarterback Eli Manning, the younger of a pair of brothers, his older brother Peyton considered the far superior talent. The Patriots just had to win to be enshrined as the greatest single-season team in NFL history and, indelibly, the team of the era.
It could have been a damp squib, but it wasn't. The Patriots were clearly nervous and off their game, particularly Moss and Brady, but I remember the less celebrated receiver Wes Welker being superb - he's been my favourite player since.
Few points were scored but finally it looked like the Patriots would draw away to their inevitable triumph when a Moss touchdown put them 14-10 ahead with just a couple of minutes to go.
Now, time for a digression of sorts. I do like American football but I do have issues with it. It's too orchestrated, players are not versatile enough, it's too much on the quarterback and the coach, most players never even touch the ball, there are too few wildly unexpected magical moments of unexpected genius ... that kind of thing. The bump and bash is thrilling and chilling (and profoundly damaging), the sheer extraordinary athleticism and low error count is incredible, but (as I did between cricket and baseball) if we compare Tom Brady and, say, Jonny Wilkinson... both orchestrate the game, both make plays for team mates, both throw long passes with extraordinary power and timing - occasionally, if caught, a quarterback will take a big hit (though his team mates do everything in their power to prevent this) occasionally he makes a little, surprise run, which usually ends up with him sliding to the floor to avoid contact. But add to that, for Wilkinson, being the hardest tackler in the game, throwing himself into rucks, kicking everything from hand, kicking everything from the ground, making runs which actually end with being tackled hard - a great fly half has to be skilled in about six different American football positions.
Anyway, why digress now? Because, this time, a minute or so before the end of Super Bowl XLII, there really was a moment of unlikely, unchoreographable magic, which, in itself, made history, shocked America, and stopped the Patriots in their tracks when they looked like developing into a Man Utd-esque all-dominant franchise (which the NFL, with its draft system, goes out of its way to avoid).
The Giants were 3rd and 5, 44 yards from the Patriots goal line - too far even for a field goal (which wouldn't have been enough anyway). Manning, who'd had a so-so game, received the ball and came under severe pressure - if he'd been sacked, several yards behind the line of scrimmage with just one down remaining, that would almost certainly have been game over. Three Patriots defensive players leapt at him, grabbed at him. 99 times out of 100 he'd have gone down, but he wriggled out of it, found a tiny pocket of space and (with whatever plan he had for that play out of the window) hurled it downfield into the midst of the Patriots defense. Just one Giant stood there, the relatively unsung David Tyree, who competed directly against the Patriots' Rodney Harrison to catch it - somehow Tyree grabbed it, pressed it against his helmet and held onto it as he hit the ground. Suddenly the Giants had a chance, and a couple of plays later, Manning found Plaxico Burress in the endzone for the winning score.
Here is the play, as bizarre as I've described it.
The Giants would get the better of the Patriots in pretty similar circumstances 4 years later, and despite Brady's continuing excellence, and the fact that they make the post-season without fail, the Patriots have not won a Super Bowl since. This was a moment that changed the course of NFL history, lived up to the best that the game can offer.
Since then, the NFL is making efforts to expand to the UK, with more and more games a season being played at Wembley Stadium. Does the UK, indeed the world, now have a big enough appetite for the gridiron? It's definitely my favourite of the American sports. It's also the one which really takes their very best athletes. Perhaps it never will become a truly global sport, but it has at least had a fair few global sporting moments.
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