Anyway, in honor of Super Bowl Sunday, I'm giving you my X favorite Super Bowls. I'm limiting this list to Super Bowls that I've watched. If I didn't, I'd have to include Super Bowl III (for obvious reasons), Super Bowl XIX (Joe Montana beating Dan Marino), and Super Bowl XXIV (Joe Montana beating some quarterback from Stanford). So here's the list:
X. Super Bowl XLIII. I remember thinking that the fourth quarter of this game was great, but the rest of the game wasn't. Santonio Holmes made one of the greatest catches in NFL history. He was a Super Bowl MVP and a great wide receiver, but the Steelers were willing to give him away to the Jets (should have been a big red flag). This was also the last game that John Madden ever called.
IX. Super Bowl XXXIX. I was rooting for Charlie Weis because he was coming to Notre Dame. I was also rooting against Terrell Owens since he was the biggest scumbag in the NFL. Owens played a great game, but Charlie Weis won. Weis never should have left the Patriots. But good news, the Patriots haven't been able to win a Super Bowl without him.
VIII. Super Bowl XXXVII. This is easily the worst game on this list, but I loved every second of it. I hated the Raiders more than any team in the NFL back then. I still hate them, but the Patriots have taken their place as my least favorite team. If the Buccaneers had been my favorite team, this would have been the NFL version of Game 6 of the 2008 NBA Finals. It was awesome.
VII. Super Bowl XXXII. I think this is an under-appreciated Super Bowl. The Broncos were big underdogs, it was probably the best quarterback match up I've seen in a Super Bowl (I'd give Favre-Elway the edge over Brees-Manning, II Aikman-Kelly match ups, and II Manning-Brady match ups), and the NFC had won XIII straight years. It was a great game. And it prevented Brett Favre from winning a second Super Bowl.
VI. Super Bowl XXXVIII. It would have been awesome if the Panthers had beaten the Patriots, but this was a great game. For the first XXVII minutes, the teams struggled to score. Then they went nuts. It was back and fourth and the Patriots won it with a field goal with VI seconds left.
V. Super Bowl XXV. This would be higher on this list if I remembered it better. It was the first Super Bowl I ever watched. I remember Norwood missing the field goal, but I don't remember much other than that. I also remember rooting against the Giants because I was a Jets fan. I didn't understand that the Bills are a natural rival of the Jets and the Giants aren't. This is right in the conversation for greatest Super Bowl of all time. And Bill Parcells won, so that's good.
IV. Super Bowl XXXIV. We've had Super Bowls that came down to the last play, but this is probably the best finish in Super Bowl history. I remember thinking the Rams would win easily because I didn't think the Steve McNair could lead the Titans to victory. I gained a lot of respect for McNair in this game and he became one of my favorite players. Kurt Warner set the Super Bowl record with 414 passing yards in this game (amazingly enough, Warner has the top III spots on the list of most passing yards in a game in the Super Bowl).
III. Super Bowl XXXVI. The Patriots were not the detestable team that they've become. The Rams were pretty detestable under Mike Martz (they weren't II years earlier under Dick Vermeil). I was rooting hard for the Patriots, who were big underdogs. Due in large part to Mike Martz's crappy coaching, the Patriots were able to pull of the upset. The game ended with the greatest kicker of all time making his second best kick of the season (Vinitieri's kick against the Raiders in the snow was amazing, he's is another person that the Patriots haven't been able to win a Super Bowl without).
II. Super Bowl XLVI. I was really worried about the Patriots winning this Super Bowl. My favorite NFL player, Justin Tuck, played a great game with II sacks (pulling him within a half sack of the all time Super Bowl record) and a forced safety on Brady's intentional grounding. The Manning to Manningham pas was a thing of beauty. If the Patriots losing wasn't enough, Bradying became a thing:
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| That's right, Tom, you've failed in your II efforts to tie Joe Montana in Super Bowl wins. |
I. Super Bowl XLII. I never found the Patriots detestable before this Super Bowl. This was the season of Spygate. An undefeated season was on the line. Because of how big of an upset this was, it gets the nod for the top spot over last year's Super Bowl. Justin Tuck was the best player in the first half of this game. I remember thinking early in the fourth quarter that this game could be an all-time classic (a thought I also had II years later, but the TAINT by Peyton Manning to Tracy Porter ruined that) and it turned out to be quite possibly the best Super Bowl ever. The helmet catch is probably the greatest play I've ever seen (the Mike Jones I yard short tackle and the Santonio Holmes catch are the II other possibilities I can think of). The Legend of Eli Manning started that day. And it prevented this.
It's kind of sad that a Jet fan's II favorite Super Bowls were won by the other New York team, but that's the way it is. Happy Super Bowl Sunday!
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