Eli Your Heart Out

Editors Note: I’m sure you all remember our prolific sports correspondent, broadandpattison, from our half-assed football-food contest. First, we apologize for not following through on the contest, but with broad rallying Northern Virginia Democrats and our guiding spirit, The Birds, not inspiring us, the contest dwindled just like Aker’s foot. Hopefully for the next football season, when our readership quadruples, we can try it again. Here is the official ES Super Bowl round-up.

In anticipation of disappointing Super Bowl commercials and an even more miserable match-up……broadandpattison returns.

Before I go into my rant, let me just say this as a disclaimer: the New York Giants deserve to be in the Super Bowl. They played better than any other NFC playoff team down the stretch, simple as that. So what was their recipe? Answer: not sucking. While the national media and other football “experts” continue to praise Eli Manning, the fact of the matter is that he isn’t great, he just stopped sucking. Are our standards for a Super Bowl QB (and #1 draft pick) now simply, not throwing interceptions? That’s it? Really?

Read on for more expert analysis and broad’s checklist on SB parties’ food dos and don’ts

These playoffs, Eli is completing 62% of his passes for 599 yards and 4 touchdowns and 0 interceptions. Obviously, much of the Giants success is based on Eli not turning the ball over, but this is far from remarkable. Rather, I think it just means he hasn’t sucked. These already moderate numbers become even less impressive when you figure one of those games was in beautiful Tampa Bay and the other against Dallas’ excuse for a secondary.

Combine Eli “not sucking” with a good enough defense, and in the NFC, that’s about all it takes, folks: for your team to “not suck.”

Speaking of not sucking, let’s talk food for Sunday. The real attraction of the game watching.

Here are broadandpattison’s lists of whether your SB party makes the ES grade.

Top 5 Signs you have an acceptable array of Super Bowl Food:

5. There is a backup box of napkins

4. Someone asks “which dipping sauce goes with what?”

3. There is beer located in at least 5 different parts of the room, including a hidden, back-up case

2. The plates are large, but the food is small (wings, chicken fingers, nachos, etc). This ensures the mantra
“you can always have one more”

1. When you first make your way to the table of food, you have to pause for a second because there are
too many options for you to know where to start.

Top 5 Signs you are ill-prepared to feed your Super Bowl Party:

5. Someone asks “is this all the buffalo sauce we have?”

4. The words “wine” and “cooler” come up

3. The ratio of fried food to not fried food is anything less than 3:1

2. You have not undone your belt by the end of the first quarter, and unbuttoned your pants by halftime

1. Green is the dominating color among your food

Enjoy the game folks – and if you’re like me and trying to decide which team is the lesser of the two evils – root for Brady and Manning to go down early and for Matt Cassell and Jared Lorenzen (and his belly) to duke it out.

The Pick: 15 wings, half a plate of nachos, 3 slices of pizza, and 12 beers. (I mean, Pats 34, Giants 20)

Still pissed off with Boston and New York? Watch this: Cheaters