Either way, Jerry Jones's famously expensive (and mostly unsuccessful-as-of-late) team, the Dallas Cowboys, were eliminated by last year's Super Bowl winners, the New York Giants. You may have heard of them: They have been counted out by pretty much everybody year after year and people often call for their coach to be fired and their quarterback to be traded.

Instead, they won the league championship twice in the last four years, which isn't half bad.

As it turns out, they will be playing this other team from Texas at the beginning of the season, in New York. Later in the season, the New York Giants will go to Texas, where they will play this Cowboys team. And the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, had this to say about not the upcoming match, but the one after it today at a training camp:

"Y'all should come to Cowboys Stadium and watch us beat the Giants' asses," Jones told fans during a ceremony to signal the opening of Cowboys' training camp Monday, a festival-like event that featured a few skydivers and a performance from the franchise's famous cheerleaders.

This is interesting, because right before it, Cowboys defensive coordinator Rob Ryan decided he wouldn't say anything in that tone this year, seeing as how it didn't work out so well last year:

Ryan vowed early in last year's training camp that the Cowboys would "beat the ass of the all-hype [Philadelphia Eagles] team," but the otherwise underachieving Eagles won both meetings against Dallas. Ryan, who was especially humiliated in the Cowboys' 34-7 loss in Philadelphia on Oct. 30, plans to keep the bulletin-board material he provides with his mouth to a minimum. "Day 1, I'm not calling anybody out," Ryan said Monday. "I've learned. This is a bigger media than some of the other spots that I've been, so I'm going to keep my mouth shut and work."

That was before the skydivers made an appearance and Jones got on stage with a microphone.

Jerry Jones, who is 69 years-old, and yet, looks like a piece of octogenarian jerky, is married to Gene Jones. Together they have three children, and nine grandchildren. The Cowboys will face in the Giants in a local football game in September, and then again, in an away game, in October.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The news broke that Hideki Matsui—the George Harrison of the Yankees, the quiet, stoic performer, and the 2009 World Series MVP—wouldn't play for New York the following season. The Yankees told Mr. Matsui's agent that he wasn't a priority, so Matsui took a one-year, $6.5 M. contract with the Anaheim Angels.

The same team who gave Carl "Ass Injury" Pavano a $40 M. contract (for which he earned $17,646 per pitch, having thrown in only 26 Yankees games) not four years before let Matsui go, just one month after he was named the MVP of the World Series he'd helped the team win. Even now, when I speak with fellow Yankees fans about this travesty, they just shake their heads and shrug, as if to say: Yeah, we know. What're you gonna do?*

It was a classic, symptomatic moment of Steinbrenner syndrome, a disease characterized by short attention span, poor memory and fits of ecstasy followed by angry outbursts. It affects nine out of 10 New York sports fans (and 10 out of 10 New York sports editors). Its only treatment is frequent, intense doses of winning.

The day after the Yankees won the 2009 World Series, I remember the first conversation I heard on the matter: "Yeah, next season's gonna be great." For Steinbrenner sufferers, victory, while unmistakably rewarding, is also brief. In New York, you're only as substantial as your last championship, even a few weeks later.

Consider two recent case studies of the pattern: the Giants won the Super Bowl not three years ago, in 2008. Former Giants player Tiki Barber essentially called for Coughlin to be fired in 2010. In November 2011, the New York Daily News wondered if Coughlin wasn't done.

The Knicks have made two playoff appearances in the past 10 years. For other American cities, this would be acceptable. For New Yorkers, it simply isn't enough.

Right now, thankfully, the illness is in remission, thanks to the cocktail of the Giants improbable Super Bowl (20-1 odds at the season's beginning) and the even more unlikely emergence of Jeremy Lin as an on-court sensation. But as with any chronic disease, there is always the danger of relapse.

A few months ago, journalist, author and Kean University sports history professor Terry Golway was listening to Giants fans chime in on a sports talk radio program. They were demanding New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin be given the ax.

"What is it about New York sports fans," Mr. Golway laughed, "that they would demand a guy like Coughlin, who's obviously been pretty successful even before last January, get fired? What is it about them?! There were no losing seasons involved, but, you know, they missed the playoffs three years in a row and that's a cause to fire a coach?"

Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher, he noted, "made the playoffs a few times, made the Super Bowl, but obviously the expectations in New York are different."

Another example can be found in quarterback Mark Sanchez. "At this point in Eli Manning's career, it looked like he was going to be a bust," Mr. Golway continued. "Sanchez lead his team to the AFC championship his first two years. Joe Namath didn't. Eli Manning didn't. Peyton Manning didn't."

And it's not just civilians who are affected by the malady: even fellow Jets players ripped Mark Sanchez to the New York Daily News.

Despite what the rest of America might think (that we've always been like this), Mr. Golway is quick to point out that in a historical context, the pervasiveness of this mentality is a fairly new concept. He cited the classic New York sports fan as a Brooklyn Dodgers supporter, whose mantra—"wait 'til next year"—is maybe one nowadays only adopted by Mets followers like himself.

"I hate to say it, because it sounds like such a cliché, but New York has been corrupted by George Steinbrenner. It's that simple. This mentality is very much part of what Steinbrenner brought to the Yankees in the '70s. And now," he sighed, "it has infiltrated all of New York sports."

(Exacerbating the symptoms, of course, is the multitudinous nature of New York City—there are simply more distractions. What is there to do in Buffalo besides watch the Bills or the Sabers, and eat wings?)

While it is primarily the fans who come down with Steinbrenner syndrome, its true victims may be the athletes.

In December, Dallas Mavericks center Tyson Chandler decamped for New York City, leaving behind both Dallas and the 2011 NBA championship team he just played on with it. It's not an obvious career move: Leaving a championship team in a thriving market that's slightly more forgiving than our own, for a team with two marquee stars vying for attention in the most vicious media climate in the country.

"I was happy for Ty," explained Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who was careful to note that New York City is a "great sports town," before going on to explain just how it's a "unique market." (This last might as well have been a euphemism for "shitstorm gauntlet.")

As he sees it, New York is has become "the center of the universe for headline and backpage porn. There is absolutely nothing that happens in the New York City media that is ever subtle."

The resulting journalistic output can be kindly characterized as bipolar: Either hyperbolic plaudits or overexaggerated rage at what a failure of a human being one is.

In other words, explained Mr. Cuban, "when you are at the top of your game in the sports world, you get the love. When you are not, you can't walk the streets without hearing about what a bum you are." While athletes might not get literally heckled in the streets—since they are too busy being chaffered between bottle service outings—Mr. Cuban's point stands: their constituency is far more inescapable here than elsewhere.

Besides, he argued, as opposed to the past—where bigger markets in larger cities meant more significant coverage—the proliferation of digital media and the speed with which it travels makes a players' national (let alone international) star potential a far less regionally oriented concept than it's traditionally been in the past.

"That's not to take away anything from the Big Apple. It's an amazing city for everyone and anyone," he added, before finishing, "except maybe the 110 pro athletes that compete for their teams."

That's another thing: New York City's sports fans have anywhere from four to seven professional sports teams to choose from, an enabling fact for Steinbrenner sufferers, who tend to lose interest as the wins dwindle.

Dr. Jay P. Granat, a sports psychotherapist who's worked with professional athletes in the New York City area, argues that it depends on the player. He doesn't dispute, though, that the psychological makeup of individual players factors into New York City's draw more intensely than other places they might find work.

"They're demanding here, there's no question about that," Dr. Granat said. "How much a player is dependent on fan approval has a lot to do with how well they function in this environment."

In his experience, the majority of professional athletes' decisions regarding where to play generally revolve more around numbers and simply having a job than the anthropological makeup of a locale. There are, however, exceptions, of which he cited Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony as an example: "He wanted to play here, and he made it public, no bones about it." Granted, Melo's from Brooklyn, so he may have built up a childhood immunity to the affliction.

But Jeremy Lin, a West Coaster, may not be. Already, he has seen a brief outbreak. After weeks of clean bills of health, Lin failed to deliver a win against the Miami Heat, widely considered the best team in basketball. "LINEPT!" screamed the back cover of the New York Post, the day after. Steinbrenner again.

The fact is, New York City is a fair-weather town. Lin has a one-year contract with the New York Knicks. If he continues to be a sensation, he'll soon have plenty of options deciding where to play. But will Lin flee the hot zone, and find a home free of that malady of the spoiled sports fan?

fkamer@observer.com

[*The answer: Attempt to sign Carl Pavano again in 2011 for $10 M. Pavano learned his lesson, and declined the Yankees' offer. ]

“Who is that with the massive studs?” we asked a clueless Japanese editor.

“Ramses Barden! New York Giants, wide-receiver,” snarled some dude one row back.

Excuse me! We’re staunch Patriots fans…

Moving on!

Oliveira Baptista strives to maintain Lacoste’s prestige within the fashion community with his designs; while also giving label a touch of edge. It works allegedly: The sporty/preppy institution still has robust sales (especially on the Eastern seaboard), boasted Lacoste employee, Giselle Bueno, with a smirk.

In terms of the clothing, think the “rugby dress meets ski-suit.”

“We looked into the archives; Lacoste had dressed the [national] ski team in the late ‘60s. So there were photos of the family in Chamonix[-Mont-Blanc] and they were very chic…” explained the designer.

“It’s very relevant and empowering,” Monsieur Oliveira Baptista continued.

“The idea is that it could be worn every day of the week. A women and a guy could wear them every day.”

We’re not sure if Mr. Barden can pull these looks off… but Leigh Lazark sure could. See you in Vail bitches!

Images courtesy Lacoste/Yannis Vlamos.

(Flickr/Francisco Javier Argel)

If you were among the crowds in Indianapolis rooting for the New England Patriots or New York Giants last Sunday, there's a chance you received more than a beer and barbeque hangover or big foam finger for your troubles: health officials in Indiana report at least two cases of measles in the Super Bowl village.

While the patients who came down with measles didn't go to the game, they did pass through Super Bowl village along with 200,000 others. Since measles is highly communicable, Indiana officials elected to alert state health departments across the country.

According to Dr. Greg Wallace of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), measles have been basically "eliminated in the U.S.," however cases have increased in the last decade, with more than 200 reported last year.

It is unclear as to how the patients in Indiana caught the bug, but they are expected to make full recoveries.

If you're looking for some kind of Contagion or The Stand-like outbreak, however, it won't come from measles; the measles vaccine is reportedly 95-99% effective. If you've been vaccinated, you can probably enjoy your foam number 1 finger in unspotted peace.

[AP/ABC News]

And so the Giants finished their season in high style, winning their second Super Bowl championship in five seasons. Like their title run in 2007-08, this one seemingly came out of nowhere. A season that seemed like the very definition of mediocrity became, almost in an instant, a magical, memorable season of brilliant moments and unforgettable images.

Through it all, through the depths of a four-game losing streak that seemed to doom their playoff chances, through the blitz of called-in demands for coaching changes and doubts about the quarterback, the Giants’ owners did precisely what Giants’ owners traditionally do.

They did nothing. More to the point, they did nothing rash. They said nothing to incite back-page headlines. They issued no demands of their players. They ended no sentences with the phrase “or else.”

The Mara and Tisch families run the Giants with a sort of patience and class that seems so very old-fashioned in the 24-hour sports-media cycle. The antics, tirades and ambitions of Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder and Mark Cuban are made to order for ESPN’s SportsCenter. John Mara and Steve Tisch, the Giants’ top two executives, prefer to keep their media appearances to a minimum—preferably to postgame interviews with the Vince Lombardi Trophy in their hands.

Mr. Mara and Mr. Tisch stood by their coach, Tom Coughlin, when fans were convinced that he was too rigid, too old, too unimaginative for today’s NFL. They saw no reason to give up on a struggling young quarterback named Eli Manning when championships did not immediately materialize during his first few seasons.

They have been repaid, and then some, for their integrity and loyalty. It was hard not to miss the genuine affection among coaches and players for the two families during the postgame ceremonies on Sunday. Typically, when Mr. Tisch accepted the trophy named for his team’s most famous one-time assistant coach, he thanked the Giants’ fans first.

There are some famously voluble characters in professional sports these days—one of them, a large fellow whose team shares Met Life Stadium with the Giants, periodically issues guarantees of championships—but the Mara and Tisch families have chosen to let their team speak for itself. Not with attention-grabbing predictions or outrageous antics, but with championships.

Their team reflects their values, and their values reflect New York’s confidence and style.

They surely are champions.

Madonna strikes a pose. (Christopher Polk/Getty Images)

Yesterday, New York residents found themselves split into two categories: the people who celebrated the New York Giants’ victory over the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl—for the second time!—by reveling in the ticker tape parade that stretched all down Broadway, and the people who spent the day trying to get through their daily commute. We’re not saying that Eli Manning shouldn’t be celebrated like the “elite” quarterback (take that, ESPN) and god of pigskin that he is, but why couldn’t the city have the parade over the weekend?

Not that we’re complaining—O.K., we are complaining—but if there’s anyone whom we should be cheering on for their performance on Sunday night, we’d pick Madonna over Victor Cruz. Not only did she perform more daring feats of agility and endurance than men half her age and eight times her size during her halftime show, but she made us all believers in the power of Madge again. Who cares if she lip-synced through the entire performance (like Elton John snarked that she would)? Madonna—whose reputation in recent years has been overshadowed by the likes of Lady Gaga and her own crazily-muscled arms—made us all believers again in the power of Vogue. We’re convinced that the reason this year’s Super Bowl was the most watched event in history had less to do than those fourth-quarter plays than with nonsports fans tuning in to see the Queen of Pop prove that she still deserves her title (after which those same viewers turned the channel to PBS to catch the new Downton Abbey).

But while Madonna was off representing New York in Indianapolis, the city was having its own musical revolution. Jay-Z performing in Carnegie Hall was history in the making—if only for the fact that he managed to keep Kanye West off the stage for the entire show. We were disappointed to find that Blue Ivy Carter wasn’t wheeled out during Jay’s rendition of “Glory” (especially because the infant provided back-up vocals on the track), as we were entirely prepared to go down on one knee and bow to our new messiah. How can we worship her if People magazine hasn’t even been able to get a cover shot yet? Oh, well. The arrival of Nas on stage was a nice consolation prize.

On the off-chance you weren’t able to snag one of those $1,200 seats for Carnegie’s biggest hip-hop show, you could comfort yourself by curling up on the couch and pretending you were backstage on Broadway. After so much fanfare, Smash finally premiered (though NBC has been promoting the show for so long that we could basically piece the pilot together just from the commercials). The ad campaigns had us confused about the real focus of the show—was it a Glee-like musical about two young women vying to be Marilyn on Broadway, a TV version of Burlesque, or a reality show in which Angelica Houston throws water on people?—but the first episode quickly cleared it up for us. The show was about drama, desperation and adopting Chinese babies. While you can’t judge a show by its pilot (O.K., you can), Smash was objectively not an instant smash hit with the critics. Except for New York Post’s theater critic Michael Riedel, of course, since he’ll be playing himself in the show. Tres meta!

Still, there are far greater tragedies on television than Debra Messing’s wasted screen time: HBO’s dark look at the sleazy world of horse racing turned out to be more of a reality show when PETA discovered that two of the race horses used for the Michael Mann drama had to be put down after fracturing their legs during filming. (They do shoot horses, don’t they?) Our advice to star Dustin Hoffman? Make sure your insurance covers any sort of foot injury. We wouldn’t want to see Tootsie carted off to the glue factory as well.

Even Fashion Week is getting into the musical vibe. We’re especially looking forward to the American Express Tommy Hilfiger show, which will include its own version of Off-Broadway theater with a performance by a fictitious family called (appropriately) the Hilfigers going on a camping adventure. (Did we mention Cobra Starship will be playing a live set during this romp?) The whole scenario couldn’t sound more bizarre if it included a Fashion Week edition of Rich Hil(figer)’s infamous rap classic, “Cookies and Apple Juice.”

Actually, scratch that. We don’t want to make the models hungry, lest they get faint and fall down during their sashay down the runway. They might shoot horses, but the fate of a model that breaks an ankle is way worse: at least the show ponies don’t have to suffer under the withering gaze of the entire Vogue editorial staff in the front row.

This is going right up on the special IRS YouTube channel

When we think of how the housing bubble almost wrecked the U.S. economy, we think in terms of those sneaky Wall Street bond traders and insurance companies like AIG; the type of people Michael Lewis writes about in The Big Short as greedy and oblivious to the apocalyptic scenario they were creating when they bundled all those subprime mortgage loans as CDOs and authorized credit default swaps.

And there's a reason for this: we don't like to think of the average American who took out those teaser-rate mortgages as being stupid or greedy themselves; they were just duped by a system that was either lying to them or too complicated to understand.

But that's not entirely true. The human instinct, when presented with an option too good to be true, doesn't necessarily act in his or her own best interest. Because this is America bitches, and if you've just won $7,500 in your office's Super Bowl pool, the first thing you do is videotape yourself screaming about how you should be put on "IRS YouTube! Yeah!"

This guy's poor wife, oy. And here she thought that maybe they could pay off their mortgage this month without having to default on their home loan.

Screengrab

As many as 2000 students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst rioted in the streets tonight following the New England Patriots' 21-17 loss to the New York Giants. There were riot squads at the ready. Police used flashbangs and smoke bombs break up the action and supplemented with horseback officers who waded into the crowd gathered in student residential area. Police were on hand because reports indicate rioting in conjunction with major events is simply something students at UMass Amherst sometimes do:

Approximately 1,000 students rioted last May to mark the death of Osama Bin Laden, lighting small fires and scaling Berkshire Dining Commons’ low-hanging awning, chanting, flashing and setting off fireworks before a row of riot gear-clad officers marched at the crowd and sent rioters fleeing through campus.

None were arrested following the 2011 celebration and campus officials issued a release praising the handling of the situation.

The relative ease with which police broke up the gathering tonight made University spokesman Edward Blaguzewski hesitant to use the word riot, telling local media authorities were dealing "with a large crowd and there was a need to issue a dispersal orderto move them along."

Masslive.com reports police made 8 arrests after students poured into the streets following the Patriot's Super Bowl loss to the Giants 4 years ago.

Videos allegedly made during the riot were uploaded to Youtube Sunday night, including the one seen below, which was accompanied by a description indicating campus police on horseback "shot at the crowd--not with real bullets, but with what I'm sure hurts like a mother effer."

Umass Amherst Superbowl 2012 Riot - YouTube.

[masslive.com]

via @MikeGiardi

It turns out the New York Giants were prescient when they briefly put their website on a championship footing Saturday: in spite of a strong effort by the Patriots in the 4th quarter including a failed Tom Brady Hail Mary pass, the Giants won their Super Bowl match-up against the New England Patriots, 21-17.  The Giants profited as much off Patriot foul-ups as they did from quarterback Eli Manning's efficient move into high gear in the fourth quarter, when Mr. Manning led what would ultimately be the game-winning drive, culminating in a touchdown by Ahmad Bradshaw with less than a minute left in the game. The AP reports as many as 100 million viewers may have tuned into the game on NBC.

M.I.A.: is that a middle finger or are you just glad to sing for us?

Madonna's much-anticipated half-time show was a musical recap of her career so far and featured guest players LMFAO, Nicki Minaj, M.I.A. and Cee-Lo Green. There were no FCC-baiting "malfunctions" as seen in past Super Bowl half-time shows but in a screen capture of M.I.A.'s performance circulated over social media, the singer appears to flip off the camera. As yet the House has not convened a Warren Commission-style panel to investigated the gesture, but we will keep you updated as developments warrant.

Business Insider has published a master post reviewing the often over-hyped Super Bowl ads in live-blog format--highlights included spots for the city of Detroit starring screen legend Clint Eastwood and a bizarre Ken Burnsesque Budweiser ad.

[Fox/AP]