I consider myself blessed enough to be sitting right around the 20-yard line when Eli Manning took the snap and faded back to pass on third-and-five. I saw him disappear into a crowd of mauling Patriots defenders and then, miraculously, wrench himself free. He launched that now-famous pass to David Tyree, who somehow held onto the ball. And, moments later, before my own eyes, with 80,000 fans on their feet and screaming, Plaxico Burress caught the game-winning TD pass.

I drove back across the desert and I've gotten more or less a good night's sleep, and I've read all the coverage and viewed the play over and over -- and I still don't believe it happened.

After the game, I talked to the Giants' linebacker, Antonio Pierce. He is an intense, bright man, a leader of the squad. And, as I wrote in my book, I Dream in Blue, he's of note because coming out of college he was undrafted; that is, not even claimed by a single team, who took nearly 50 linebackers in the draft, but not Pierce.

Yet there he was with a Super Bowl ring. Another lesson to all of us about determination. As Woody Allen famously said, although I think he underestimated it, "85% of success is just showing up."

"I can't tell you exactly how good we played," Pierce said," but I know that when I heard Tom Brady yelling at his offensive linemen because they weren't giving him good protection, I figured we were doing alright. We shocked the world, but we didn't shock ourselves."

And yet I still can't believe it.

What I can believe is that of all the teams we watched in the playoffs, the Giants were the team that played the hardest and with the most determination, and that is what counts. A lesson for everyone.

As is the unflappable persistence of Eli Manning. America has changed over the last few 50 years. We are no longer a country that admires a man of few words, or that sees something to emulate in a man who refuses to be distracted and, like Gary Cooper in 'High Noon' walks down the middle of main street with no entourage, no scripted words, no lighting effects.

I still, however, can't believe it. In the spring of my senior year at Haverford,1971, I was earning extra money by driving a shuttle between Haverford and Bryn Mawr, and, occasionally, all the way to Swarthmore. Late one March evening, after completing my shuttle run to Bryn Mawr, I stood in the cold outside the guard's shack while the security guard relayed to me the delayed radio coverage of the Muhammed Ali – Joe Frazier heavyweight fight from Madison Square Garden. It seemed to me at the time that I was the only person on the campus who understood the moment -- two undefeated heavyweights meeting for the belt in their first match. My heart pounded that night (although I was disappointed by the result) and it pounded just as hard on Sunday.

Although I still can't believe it.

-- Roger Director '71