I wrote this column in hopes that the typing would help thaw out my frozen fingers. Yesterday, I spent six hours standing outside in near freezing weather with a mob of people jostling me so that I could get a glimpse of the Patriots from 500 feet away. Like many of you, I waited all morning for a half-hour-long celebration, and it was worth every frigid minute.
I may have lost feeling in my fingers for life, but this is Boston: championship rallies don’t happen every day of the week. When I was little, every year that a local team was in the playoffs I’d beg my mother to let me skip school and go to the championship parade. Every year, she’d say yes, knowing what her naîve daughter didn’t – championship parades don’t run through Boston.
This past Sunday, however, everything changed. The Patriots went up against the almighty Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. A 14-point underdog, the Patriots “shocked the world” as they walked away from the game with the Vince Lombardi trophy firmly grasped in their hands.
I’m not sure if you all remember this, but last week in this very column I assured you that the New England Patriots would defeat the St. Louis Rams. Despite my promises, however, I was still a nervous wreck watching the Super Bowl. There is that part of me that just expects the worse. I was waiting for a costly Patriots turnover or a missed field goal that would put the Rams in control of the game.
It didn’t happen.
The Patriots controlled the game. Their defense dominated “the best show on turf.” At the end of the game, the league had to scrap all the Championship Rams memorabilia and scrape Marshall Faulk’s name off the MVP trophy.
Three days later, I’m still not over the initial euphoria of victory. I have watched every football show imaginable since the big win. I have watched Adam Vinatieri’s kick at least a hundred times, and it’s still exciting. The ball clears the uprights and suddenly a new generation of sports fans gets to experience the thrill of a championship. Vinatieri will be stopping by the Letterman show tonight to chat about the kick that changed New England.
All of us not alive in the ’70s have watched Bobby Orr’s goal and Carlton Fisk’s homerun and heard the stories about these legendary moments. Now, the 2002 Patriots have provided us with moments for our generation. Years later, we can look back upon the most improbable Super Bowl victory ever and tell our kids about that legendary game.
Vinatieri’s kick is just one moment that we’ll be able to take from the victory. We can reminisce about watching the youngest quarterback to ever win a Superbowl, Most Valuable Player Tom Brady, maintain his composure in a critical fourth-quarter march up the field. We can look back at the phenomenal defensive effort by Ty Law, Otis Smith, Lawyer Milloy and every other member of the unstoppable unit. We can think about the uncanny ability of the coaches to make the right call. We can tell people how a team that didn’t receive any respect went out on the field and earned it. And most of all, we can look back at a team of players who chose to be announced in Super Bowl XXXVI collectively, like the cohesive unit they were, rather than as individuals out for themselves.
The people lining the streets of Boston for the parade yesterday came for a variety of reasons. They wanted to cheer on the team that provided so much excitement this entire football season and they wanted to thank them for being a real team that anyone could look up to and respect. I will admit that a major motivating factor for my friends and I was the possibility of stealing an up-close view of Tom Brady. This parade was bigger than just a cute quarterback though. This parade was a chance for me and everyone else to go and be a part of something special. It was our chance to see what it feels like to be the winner, to get the big prize.
Don’t get me wrong: standing outside long enough to lose the feeling in your feet isn’t my idea of a good time. But the Patriots this year were just so amazing and the Superbowl was just so great that I’d stand and freeze any day to cheer my team on.
And there is one thing I can tell you without a doubt: Queen’s “We are the Champions” has never sounded so good.
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