Disillusioned by the Giants victory parade
Before yesterday, I’d never been to a ticker-tape parade. But when the Giants won the Super Bowl, I knew I owed it to myself to see this one—it would be a long time before I had the chance to experience another.
I’ve always imagined victory parades as a crowded sea of people, with red, white, and blue confetti pouring out of windows while people cheer their heads off as all the different players go by on a few floats. In my mind, a parade like that should only take at most 10 minutes to go by.
Maybe it’s because I was situated so early in the parade route, maybe it was the company I kept at the parade, or maybe it’s just because the Giants aren’t really my team, but I kind of felt like the parade was one big fat farce.
Call me a prude if you want, but my first impression of the parade was sealed when I got on the 1 train and Giants fans were already drinking. Yes, drinking on the subway at nine o’clock in the morning! I mean, sure it’s five o’clock somewhere, but hell, shouldn’t you at least have breakfast first?
I’ll admit, when more people got on the train as we got further downtown, the F Tom Brady, F the Eagles, F the Cowboys, (I’m really not a fan of Jason Garrett) and F the Jets chants were fun. And there were even some more positive “Eli Manning” and “Victor Cruz” chants in there—a few people broke out their salsa moves.
But once I arrived downtown, I began to realize that this experience wasn’t going to be straight out of my dreams.
First of all, I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting but I can tell you that it wasn’t for people to start throwing shredded office paper out of their windows 20 minutes before the parade even started.
Then once the parade finally did start, people were throwing rolls of toilet paper into the street. When one landed, they wanted the cops to kick the roll over to them so they could throw it again. Apparently, that’s a thing people do at parades. It was news to me.
What I really didn’t understand was why there were so many people in the parade that nobody knew. These people were on those red, double-decker tour buses and were just taking pictures of the crowd. I didn’t get it.
But what really baffled me was that the Lombardi Trophy wasn’t on the last float. It came right in the middle, after a few lame high school bands and red buses, and—at least from what I could tell—was accompanied by Tom Coughlin, Eli Manning, Justin Tuck, and Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Manning was holding his Super Bowl MVP trophy as well. (The thumbnail of this post is my shitty android phone’s picture of their float going by.)
All right, I’ll admit this as well—seeing the Lombardi trophy in person was super cool. And if it had been the Browns, I may or may not have started crying.
But in all honesty, they should’ve had Eli driving that sweet new black Corvette he won for being the MVP. They should’ve had the trophy come at the end and given me a real reason to stay the whole time. And they really could’ve cut the parade time down from 50 minutes to 15 with the amount of people who in my opinion had no business being celebrated—and yes, I mean those people in the stupid buses.
Perhaps if I had been in the City Hall celebration where the Giants players broke out into song, I’d feel a little differently. But for now, I still prefer the victory parades of my dreams.
Myles Simmons is a Columbia College sophomore. He is currently mourning the end of the NFL season, but is very much looking forward to the start of baseball season in a few short weeks.
Hello? Parades are always better on TV. Think Macy’s. Football fans are generally middle age drunk males.
True, but I don’t really watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade either–too busy watching the NFL Network.
And interestingly enough, the drunk subway people appeared to be college students, or at least college-student aged. Most of the middle aged people I saw were sober and had their kids with them.
Right, they are people who love sports. They can sit the whole day watching them with a beer bucket by their side.
There’s something that has been bothering me since Sunday: That last touchdown. Why did he hesitate to score? That was just not normal…
It’s a little complicated. First off, the Patriots intentionally let him score because they only had one timeout left and if they took it, the Giants could let the clock run down and kick a field goal to win the game.
But Bradshaw tried to stop because Eli was literally telling him, “Don’t score, don’t score!” If he had gone down before scoring the touchdown, the Giants could’ve run the clock out and kicked a field goal to win. But since they did score, the ball went back into Tom Brady’s hands, and with 57 seconds and one timeout, that’s plenty of time for him to take the team down the field and score a touchdown to win it.
Clearly the Tom Brady scoring part didn’t actually happen—mostly cause his receivers couldn’t catch the ball. But the whole hesitating thing was about trying to avoid Brady from having the ball again.
But as a Browns fan, even kicking a field goal from that close is a pretty huge gamble, cause weird things can happen and you miss, even from that close. (http://youtu.be/qxzcRZQ8LT0 is a fantastic example)
That’s a totally long winded answer to a short question, but I hope it helps.
Thanks. It certainly did, although it still bothers me a bit.
I have been to several different ticker tape parades, including the Yankees as well as the Giants in ’08. I went to the parade on Tuesday and frankly I find this article insulting. I am a New Yorker; I love the Giants; I thoroughly enjoy all of NY’s traditions. Of course I can’t expect you to capture the essence of the feeling a New Yorker gets when she sees her champions roll through the streets as her comrades cheer toilet paper is thrown – but at least try next time, or don’t go. Those “random” people on the buses are the staff & families of all of the people affiliated with NYG – all the people who worked to make the championship happen. You see here in NY we understand that the NFL doesn’t solely consist of players – other people work to make sure the games function smoothly, the players are happy, and the fans get their money’s worth. It figures a Columbia student would undermine the worth of someone who isn’t a star football player – thanks for fulfilling the Ivy League Prep Douche stereotype. I’m sorry you don’t understand exactly how much fun it is to throw a roll of toilet paper across the street without consequence – in front of cops no less. AND have the cop toss it back to you. Most of all, I’m sorry you went to the parade – you didn’t deserve to be there over the many fans who were stuck at work or abroad.
BC’13
could not have said it better myself!
i was debating whether or not to go to the parade. i ended up not going, but your description of it sounds awesome and makes me wish i went.
that was not sarcastic btw.
why did you not expect paper to be thrown?
ticker tape = old school stock trade printouts. which were thrown from wall street offices during parades until the whole thing was made electronic.
i’m so glad to see this tradition is back!
shaker heights aint half this rowdy
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