See You in August. Er, April. OK, fine, the Combine.

The actual MVP of the Super Bowl

A few thoughts from what we just witnessed:
- What would be more poetic now: Justin Tuck raising Tom Brady's son as his own, or Justin Tuck dating Gisele?

- In case you forgot: Eli Manning, from struggling to read to Super Bowl-winning mama's boy.

- Remember a few years ago when people made a big deal about Danica Patrick because...uh....well...um.... Well, tonight we saw ultimate validation that any sportswriter who wasted our time hyping up someone who's never won anything should be ashamed to have done so. For a long time, we were told that Patrick had the talent to compete with men (as though you need a lot of athleticism to sit in a car and turn left endlessly), and that she wanted to be accepted as a driver, not as a female driver. Well, how's that working out? By my count, she's made more commercials about her "beaver" (1) than she's won races (0). So why don't we all move on and talk about her when she's actually relevant. Or when she gets buried next to Barbaro, who might as well have died on September 11th.

- And that's a good segue into this: everything you need to know about mainstream American culture was depressingly reinforced when FOX took five minutes before the Super Bowl to show us NFL luminaries reciting the Declaration of Independence alongside old men in wigs. That's what this country wants? Contrived, gimmicky jingoism that has absolutely nothing to do with a game? The ethos of our nation is the Super Bowl? We consider it to be a contemporary embodiment of our values just as the Declaration of Independence was a mission statement for this emerging nation hundreds of years ago? Come on. The only thing that could have made it worse while also being even more FOX-like would have been if Mitt Romney and John McCain had been holding hands with Peyton Manning, or if an image of Barack Obama in a turban had "accidentally" been slipped into the montage. But of course, you know that there were lots of drunk people who cheered.

And why was Tony Dungy talking about equality? He proudly hates gay people. That's so America!

- Given that Eli Manning just won a Super Bowl in which Tom Brady was also playing, is there any greater reminder that to succeed in football, you probably want to have a great defensive line? It's been true in college for years, and it won the Giants an NFL championship tonight. I really can't find any other way to account for how New York just beat the Patriots.

- The next time that the NFL wants to have someone like Tom Petty perform at halftime of the Super Bowl, it should save itself some money and just broadcast 20 minutes of dead air. I would have preferred that. I now feel like I'm 45 years old. What will next year bring? Air Supply?

- You all now owe it to the NBA to pay attention.

UPDATE: I forgot one point I wanted to make. Bill Belichick leaving the field early was on some Pistons-storm-off-the-court-against-the-Bulls-in-1991 bullshit. That's just immature and petulant. I like it when he does stuff like recklessly throwing his arms around someone for two seconds before running away, or grudgingly shaking hands as he turns in another direction. That stuff passes as a crude, unintentionally hilarious hallmark of his personality. But storming off the field early, even if he did speak with Tom Coughlin, just seems bush league.