I (heart) Eli Manning

Remember my inspirational story about winning the football pool for the first time a few months back? Well, I haven’t won since. But, through some odd chance, I found myself in the running for the big year end pot (around $350), which goes to the person with the most total wins after 17 weeks (with the worst week being dropped).

I was two games behind the leader with one week to go, and I honestly did not like my chances. The person in the lead had more total wins than I did, so if we ended up tied he still would have won the grand prize. So I needed to finish three games better than him in a week to win it all. Not likely, right? But, as Chris Berman says, “that’s why they play the game.”

I’m watching the games on Sunday, and things were not going well for me, with Cleveland, Buffalo, St. Louis, Minnesota, Kansas City, and Carolina all losing. That’s six losses by 7 PM and I figure I’m dead meat, and probably would not finish in the top three at that rate. Then I start looking over everyone’s results during NFL Primetime and discover that everyone is having a bad week, especially the guy in the lead. In fact, heading into the final game, we’re tied. And wouldn’t you know it, we both picked different teams for the Sunday night game. I went with NY, he choose Dallas. Whoever won that game would win the whole magilla.

New York was a pretty obvious choice—both teams are pretty middling, but the Giants were at home and I had a feeling this would be a breakthrough game for Eli Manning. I remember a huge, Larry Bird-esque performance from Drew Bledsoe against the Dolphins in the final game of his rookie season, and I thought we would see the same thing.

Final score: Giants 28, Cowboys 24, and a winner is me. Oh hell yeah. I’m dirt poor so an extra couple hundred dollars isn’t something to sneeze at. Maybe I’ll buy an Eli Manning jersey.