For a guy who was born and raised 20 minutes from Foxboro, where the Patriots play, I was happy the New York Giants won the Super Bowl. Once upon a time, I covered the Patriots, but that was once upon a time. Since then, I have more connections to the Giants, some personal, some less so.
I was happiest for Giants’ offensive line coach Pat Flaherty. He was an assistant under Jim Caldwell at Wake Forest, a class guy and a great coach. A couple years ago, he went through a colon cancer scare. So it was great to see him come back and win a title.
Same for Fred Robbins, who played on the defensive line at Wake. It’s always great to see guys with a local connection do well.
And that gets us to Madison Hedgecock. The Ledford HS and UNC alum is from here… one of our own. And he only ended up with the Giants after the Rams had cut him. Now he returns home to Wallburg as a Super Bowl champion.
During his stints as head coach of the Jaguars and even the last year or so with the Giants, Tom Coughlin was portrayed as a ‘hardass.’ Media hammered him because they said players wouldn’t play for him — he couldn’t adapt, players had to adapt to him. Whatever he did this year, it certainly worked.
And maybe Coughlin was the link to that last unbeaten team, the 1972 Miami Dolphins. After all, Coughlin played running back at Syracuse with a guy named Larry Csonka.
As Paul Harvey would say, “And now you know the rest of the story.”
