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Giants owner Mara reflects on historic win

BY NEIL BEST | neil.best@newsday.com

12:14 AM EST, February 5, 2008

PHOENIX - Given his lifelong association with the team, when John Mara told a national TV audience after Super Bowl XLII that it was the greatest victory in franchise history, the sentiment resonated.

In the locker room afterward, Newsday asked the Giants' CEO to elaborate.

"To shut down the greatest offense in the history of this sport and hold them to two scores is just an incredible achievement," he said. "Looking at who we beat, everyone thought they'd be 19-0, for us to come from where we were, I don't know how you top that."

Mara also called Eli Manning's third-and-5 pass to David Tyree on the winning drive "one of the greatest plays in the history of the franchise."

Mara and Steve Tisch paid tribute to their fathers, Wellington and Bob, the respected co-owners who died within weeks of one another in the fall of 2005.

"He would have been pretty cool during the game, but he would have been pretty pumped at the end," John said of Wellington. "And he, unlike myself, would not have forgotten my mother. I got to the elevator and realized I left my mother in the suite. We sent a cart back down to get her."

John strongly prefers to sit in the press box, but the Giants were given only three seats there. Two went to GM Jerry Reese and a public relations official, and John did not want to take the other seat and shut out his brother, Chris.

So John and Chris reluctantly watched from the suite.

"I'm not a suite kind of guy," John said. "They just kept wheeling in food. There's seven minutes to go in the game and they're bringing in this big fondue pot. I said, 'Fellas, nobody is going to eat that stuff, just take it out.' "