The only thing better than having your team win a big game, is when the team you despise most loses. That happened for me this week when the Packers went down at home to Falcons. Green Bay has beaten my Chicago Bears 18 of 22 times since the dumb Falcons traded Favre to cheeseland for a draft pick. To celebrate, I ate a big ol' piece of chocolate mousse cake at halftime!

Regarding the Giants snapper, the Bears longsnapper, Patrick Mannelly, has his own web site and it's pretty good. Check out www.longsnapper.com

Paul-

Whether Bryant should have kicked again....

Whether Matt Allen should have spiked the ball...

Whether or not the Giant's defense should have given up such a big lead...........it doesn't excuse the fact that the New York Football Giants shouldn't have even been in the playoffs to begin with.

They were terrible this year.

I hated seeing Junkin say "I just cost 58 men a shot at the Super Bowl." They wouldn't have been there anyways.

That was a Super Bowl-caliber team that played the 49ers. Position by position, Collins, Barber, Toomer and Shockey can hang with any foursome. That's the absolute truth.

Only two teams gave up less points all year than the Giants.

Their record of 10-6 was seventh-best in the NFL. That's not sucking all year, and certainly not in today's NFL, where it's not the 49ers-Giants-Redskins-Cowboys and everyone else. (They won 10 straight and 13 out of 15 at one point.)

To count the Giants completely out of the Super Bowl in the same era of the NFL in which a Southern dome team wins at Lambeau and the Jets win 41-0 just weeks after losing to the Bears is absurd.

You're right, but the end of the year they were a Super Bowl-caliber team. The Jets are, too. Both teams just struggled too much early in the season (losing too many games to get a good playoff seed) to have good chances of making it through the playoffs by winning road games. Although, the Jets have a decent shot in the AFC.

I like the Giant's general manager's take. The refs did not blow a huge (19 or 24 pts.?) lead.

Junkin was merely one factor in a blown play that started with him but should have ended with the holder falling on the ball and calling time out or throwing the ball out of bounds.

As great as the Giants are, the simple fact is that a better-coached team with stronger leaders and personnel beat them on that given day.

No one hates the 49ers more than I do, and I don't really love the Giants (Go Texans and Saints!), but the Giants do not deserve to go further in the playoffs this year, and they certainly deserved to lose that ball game. Moreover, the 49ers willed that victory and deserve credit for winning the game.

Lastly, the Giants should fire their special teams coach who blew instilling within his crew some basic fundamentals about clock management. Long snaps occasionally get muffed, but those two geniuses in the backfield should have known what to do.