When I was 10 years old, I experienced the Giants' improbable run to Super Bowl XXXV. Unfortunately, I was too young to fully appreciate the moment. If your team recently has played for a championship, you know exactly what I mean. Real fans savor every second of a magical season, like a chain smoker deeply inhaling every puff of his last cigarette before going on an intercontinental flight and looking like he might not exhale until he makes it through security.
Playing in a Super Bowl is rare and fleeting - you never know when you'll be there again, so you clutch on to every moment with everything you have. Just not when you're 10 years old. In my ingenuous mind, the G-Men had just destroyed the mighty Vikings in the NFC Championship and completely shut down their record-breaking offense. They were the best, most indestructible team in the NFL.
Although I don't remember all of the intricacies of that season the way I wish I could, I can vividly recall the Super Bowl game. We watched it at the house of a family friend - and, naturally, fellow Giants fan - who owned the first big-screen TV I had ever seen, one of those 60-inch, 500-pound, pre-HD mammoths which were solely responsible for the increase in hernias among men during the early 2000s. There were also sandwiches and chips aplenty as well as an impeccably arranged shrimp cocktail platter - a personal favorite. Needless to say, 10-year-old me was loving life before kickoff on Super Bowl Sunday and looking forward to watching the Giants play in it every year thereafter.
The game itself was ugly. The Giants were completely mauled by a significantly better Baltimore team and lost 34-7. That Ravens defense - led by Ray Lewis at the peak of his insanity - was one of the most dominating of all-time and made the Giants look like they didn't belong on the same field. Of course I was upset that we didn't win, but when the game ended, the reaction of the older, more experienced fans in my viewing party still confused me. Why were they lamenting an opportunity lost? Why were they already reminiscing about our inconceivable playoff run like a group of guys reliving their drunken exploits from the night before upon waking up in the morning?
"We'll be back next year!" I yelled as bits of shrimp spewed out of my mouth.
"No we won't," my dad retorted.
It was that simple. We wouldn't be back next year. If you have watched the NFL for long enough, you know these things. It is a cyclical league, and that one providential season does not come around often. In the NFL there are so many injuries, so many players changing teams in free agency and so many regulations created to ensure parity - like a hard salary cap - that even good fortune is gone in the blink of an eye.
Consider this: The Steelers have won the most Super Bowls in NFL history with six, while the Cowboys and 49ers are tied in second with five apiece. Compare that to baseball, where the Yankees have won 27 World Series rings, or basketball, where the Celtics have 17 banners and the Lakers are just one behind them. Granted, the Super Bowl hasn't been around for as long as those other titles, but the disparity is evident nevertheless. But that disparity is why people love the NFL, why fans come back year in and year out no matter what happened the season before. You just never know what any given game or season could bring. It's the firm foundation upon which the NFL is built.
Everyone is up in arms lately about the rise of the league's recent bottom-dwellers - your Raiders, Redskins, Bills, Lions, Browns and 49ers - to the tops of their divisions. But while others clamor that the NFL has been turned upside-down, I have been musing that it's just another turn of the ever-rotating cycle. If you suck for long enough, you eventually will stockpile enough high draft picks to field a competitive team. That's just how the NFL is designed.
Only the truly special teams - the teams with the rare combination of great coaching, ownership and quarterback play - can sustain those successful seasons. It's the constant theme running between all NFL dynasties from the old Cowboys, Packers, 49ers and Steelers teams to the more recent reigns of the Patriots and Colts. And even those teams operate on the same fluctuating cycle; it just takes a little bit longer to turn.
Why should I be surprised that all of these recently crappy teams which have landed top-five draft picks every year for the last decade are finally fielding competitive teams? That's how it should be, and I hope that the fans of these teams aren't wasting their time being surprised, either. I hope they are relishing every moment of their season to its fullest, truly appreciating every unlikely upset victory or comeback win. Because while a handful of these teams will most likely falter as the season progresses, for one lucky franchise, this could be that special year. The year it all comes together and everything clicks.
You just never know.
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