Ten miles away from my seat in Section 216 on Sunday, tucked in a drawer in my apartment, were 22 tickets (pictured) to a potential Jan. 22 NFC championship game bewteen the Redskins and Giants at the Meadowlands.

Face value: $2,950. Street value: $6,500 or so. Not that there was a lot riding on this game or anything.

No real loss, though. The Giants will simply credit our account for next year's tickets. If all season-ticket holders chose that option instead of immediate refund by check, the Giants will be holding $10 million in 2006 season-ticket money six months in advance.

Thoughts on Panthers 23, Giants 0:

• My first-ever NFL playoff game, my first-ever "towel game." All attendees got one, and they looked really cool during the raucous opening kickoff — though it felt pretty gay to actually twirl it around. When Jake Delhomme was sacked to end the Panthers' first drive, the stadium was up for grabs, and I looked forward to three hours of rockin' and rollin'. That excitement lasted about three minutes.

• If this were a baseball game, the Panthers would have scored eight runs on 16 hits and made no errors. The Giants would have been shut out on two hits and committed three errors. Have you attended one of those nightmares, where the crowd doesn't make a sound after the fourth inning? That was my afternoon.

• By the third quarter, the white towels had a few alternate uses. We wiped our runny noses with them, waved them like French militia; and we rolled them into penis shapes and pretended to ejaculate into the hair of the woman sitting in front of us. Because that's what you do when you spent $105 to get kicked in the nuts.

• I didn't see a single Panthers fan till after the game. That's when you know you have no national following, when you don't even have fans in New York, a city with more transplants than any. Have you people down there heard of airplanes? Did you know there was a playoff game in a fairly popular tourist destination?

Thoughts on the Giants' Season:

• Vegas' over/under on Giants wins this season was 7, so, overall, so ya gotta be pleased going 11-5 and winning the NFC East. But...

• This was a generally healthy season, and that's a situation you have to take advantage of. I know about the injuries to linebackers and offensive lineman, but just ask the Eagles, Packers and Jets what it's like to lose quarterbacks, running backs and receivers. And...

• They were, at one point, the NFC's best team. That moment came in Seattle, in a game they clearly deserved to win, 192 false-start penalties notwithstanding. To come back from Jay Feely's missed kicks, to grab back the momentum again and again in overtime, was impressive. Then...

• Eli Manning regressed instead of progressed. Since Seattle, he threw for four touchdowns and 10 interceptions (game-by-game stats). In the first six games, four of 'em New York victories, Manning threw for 12 touchdowns and only four picks. With 24 NFL starts and four years of SEC football under his belt, the kid talk is over. Next year we start evaluating whether he was worth a No. 1 pick. And, sure, he's shown signs that he can be. But then he shows up for press conferences dressed like a 10th grader who forgot his comb on picture day 1988, and you wonder.

• Tiki Barber for the Hall of Fame? My gut says no — this was only his second Pro Bowl season — but check this: He's currently 20th all-time, and could easily wind up in the top 10 ever, in yards from scrimmage (leaderboard). He's got 528 career receptions, and I count only three running backs with more than 600 (leaderboard). And he's only 1,214 rushing yards shy of 10,000, though that number doesn't mean nearly as much as it used to. Corey Dillon has 10,000 yards and a Super Bowl ring, but the only way he's getting into Canton is with a ticket.

• Home 2006 opponents: Dallas, Washington and Philly, of course. The Bears, which could be a hot ticket. Indy, which is a guaran-fucking-teed prime-time game, because of Manning vs. Manning. The Bucs and Saints, whom nobody gives a shit about, except to see Simms' son play at Giants Stadium. And the Texans, which will be the lowest-priced Giants tickets on eBay ever.

Other NFL Thoughts:

• How 'bout our NFC final four of Seattle, Chicago, Carolina and Washington? Last time we had a foursome that sexy, Rue McClanahan was struttin' her AARP ass all over Miami. Last year at this time, Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick and Daunte Culpepper were all still alive and shooting for their first rings. Now we got Rex Grossman shooting for his. Great.

• If you wagered heavy on the Bengals on Sunday, how many minutes after Carson Palmer's first-quarter injury did you pull a Kevin Brown and break your hand punching a wall? No fucking way were you winning that bet.

• Mike Patrick, Joe Theismann and Paul Maguire were at their absolute worst on Saturday, and that's hard to do. Another 100 mentions about how they had access to a player earlier in the week. Another 100 superlatives for average plays. I grew to love 'em from an unintentional comedy standpoint, but when the games count, like the Redskins-Bucs game did, I hated them with the power of 1,000 suns. This quote from Maguire put a capper on the trio's utterly disastrous body of work: "Chris Simms just threw that ball as well as anyone in the history of the game."