FanNation - The Republic of Sport

  If any one image can summarize the maddening nail-biter of a championship playoff game that took place in Green Bay last night, it should be the ugly sidewise glance that Giants coach Tom Coughlin threw field goal kicker Lawrence Tynes after he had blown his second kick in a row, this one the ultimate game decider with seconds to go on the clock, throwing the contest into overtime with the score locked at 20-20.

Every picture tells a story, and this one glance bespoke the Odyssean journey of a team blown around the league the same way Ulysses was blown from country to country by the capricious sea god Neptune, having to fight its way out of every port in a desperate struggle of survival until the gods decided to reward their Herculean efforts with a calm passage home.

What makes this a truly American epic is that it takes place on the playing fields of a game (if you can stretch your mind to imagine football as being merely a "game") whose immediacy lies outside the comprehension of the rest of the world.  To the outside world football, with its arcane, paradoxical set of rules and rituals, will forever lie outside the understanding of peoples not born to it.  More than any other quality we possess it determines our unique authenticity as a race.

No mortal human can comprehend the mystical reasoning of the gods, and how they came to settle upon the gawky, nerdy Eli Manning, whose persona lies so far from what the popular conception of what a hero should be, to express their will.  This demonstrates how far we are from any understanding of the whims that motivate destiny, and why we count so much on our faith to guide us through the incomprehensible, tortuous maze of life.

Any artist or tactician knows that he is a mere utensil in the hands of higher guiding forces, and that's why true geniuses, who are usually perceived as eccentrics because, buffeted about by forces they can never hope to appreciate, behave so erratically and are never appreciated until after the fact of their accomplishments.

So it is with Giants head coach Tom Coughlin who, second-guessed and unanimously derided and condemned by uncomprehending observers even as he was wrestling with his own demons, set about building an edifice of brutally tough, seasoned warriors to protect and support his imperfect, vulnerable team captain.  Setting in place a complicated set of wheels, gears and circuits that will function as a coordinated machine is a magisterial act of engineering that draws its inspiration from a higher set of universal principles above and beyond the understanding of totally witless critics, who will one day be dust even as the hardened bronze monuments to Coughlin and Manning endure for all posterity to contemplate.

But those whom the gods choose to work their will on mortal terrain they first subject to a fiery crucible of torment.  So it is with our great nation, which is now currently being tested by the trials of Job: hurricanes, terrorism, fires, drought, endless war against implacable enemies, economic collapse, incontinent and self-serving leadership, with only our faith in the divine nature of our mission to propel us forward.

In this sense we are all Giants.  Even as the breath of the sea god Neptune, ensconced in his watery lair of Lake Michigan, blew aside the first two of Tynes' field goal attempts to test his determination, fortitude and faith, finally allowing him to succeed at his third, so shall we as a people finally be delivered.

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