Column: Unexpected wins: The best kind for sports fans

By a large margin, Super Bowl XLII was the most fulfilling experience I’ve had in my dozen or so years as a sports fan. Let me put it another, less rational way: I could say with a fair amount of confidence that the Giants’ win over the Patriots in February 2008 fits somewhere in the middle portion of a list of the twenty greatest moments of my life.

How is that possible? Where does that feeling — the one that extends the role of sports beyond its usual one of diversion and into something honestly special — come from?

To be sure, part of that feeling came from the atmosphere in which I watched the game — 40 high school students, rooting interests split down the middle, crowded around a broken-down 36-inch television. The dormitory had never been as loud, never been filled with the same level of chaos, as it was in the instant the unknown David Tyree came down with the ball pinned against his helmet. When Eli Manning hit Plaxico Burress for the go-ahead touchdown, it was followed by a legitimate dogpile in the common room. It was football as friendship.

I think a fair amount of that feeling was also attributable to the story built into the Super Bowl that year, which was as good as any ever. It can’t be done justice in so few words, but it’s worth remembering that the Patriots were aiming to be perfect. They had the perfect quarterback and the perfect coach. What stood in their way was a team led on defense by 36-year-old Michael Strahan and on offense by Eli Manning, a player notable mostly for the throws he could not make — throws his older brother Peyton, another perfect quarterback, could. It was football as narrative.

The imbalance was so apparent to anyone who watched football that the Patriots were favored to win Super Bowl XLII by 12 points. Last Sunday, week five of the NFL season, no team was favored by more than 10. Right there in that spread, in what the spread represents, is where the vast majority of that feeling came from.

The 2007-08 New York Giants were picked by most experts to finish last in their division. Their coach, Tom Coughlin, didn’t look to have a future with the team. Tiki Barber, their most effective offensive threat, had retired. Manning had demonstrated almost none of the ability or leadership expected of an emerging franchise quarterback. The defense couldn’t stop the pass. They didn’t have a good draft — etc., etc.

Sure enough, the 2007-08 Giants turned out, in fact, to not be a very good team. Though they made the playoffs, they finished the year with the 14th-ranked offense and 17th-ranked defense. During the regular season they went 1-5 against playoff-bound teams. That one win came against Washington in Week 3, when a goal line stand was all that prevented the Giants from falling to 0-3.

All of which is to say: Expectations were low.

Expectations were low even when they played Dallas in the divisional round, and they were low when they had to travel to Green Bay to play in freezing temperatures against Brett Favre in his “last” hurrah.

Expectations were low heading into the Super Bowl — New England simply had too much firepower. And expectations were certainly low on third-and-five with just over a minute remaining, as Manning scrambled and unleashed a prayer in the direction of his fourth receiver, David Tyree, a player who had caught four passes the entire season.

Ultimately, that’s what explains it — there’s nothing quite like having your expectations exceeded. We see it come into play every day in the media, but that’s because it is so important in determining how we watch sports. We see it in the Yankees, who are forthcoming in their belief that a season is World Series or bust. We see it in the 2011 Detroit Lions, whose 5-0 start is made all the sweeter by the fact that no one saw it coming. We see it in the Miami Heat — how many titles will they have to win to exceed the expectations of Heat fans? Is it even possible?

We see it here, on campus. We’ve seen it in one way for the men’s squash team — despite a stretch of almost unimaginable success, including several second place finishes nationally, they have failed to dethrone Trinity. We see it in another for the men’s basketball team — though it was tough to see the Tigers lose in the NCAA Tournament, they did a great job in hanging around against Kentucky. We see it in the men’s football team — in the attendance, in the press conferences, in the widely held belief that it is a team that will win when it’s supposed to and lose when it’s supposed to, no more and no less. We do not expect that the team is suddenly going to win six in a row.

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It’s no secret that having low expectations is often more rewarding, and I’m probably as guilty as anyone in taking advantage of the pleasant surprises of pessimism. I’m not sure what this says about my character, my worldview — perhaps we would all be better off always expecting excellence of ourselves and our teams, holding each accountable to the highest standards. But there’s something so alluring about anticipating mediocrity in sports, about the pleasure derived from the every-once-in-a-while destruction of that cynicism. To be clear — nothing, to this day, has come close to matching Super Bowl XLII, and I don’t expect anything ever will. It was too unlikely from start to finish.

When the game was over, Brady’s last deep ball falling incomplete, I walked over to the refrigerator and hugged it. I didn’t know what else to do. In the moment, it seemed to make about as much sense as the final score.