Giants have sleepless, glorious night
Antrel Rolle and Ramses Barden on the ground after the Giants defeated the New England Patriots. (Feb. 5, 2012) Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams, Jr.
INDIANAPOLIS -- Tom Coughlin was able to get at least some sleep in the hours after the Super Bowl victory.
"About 15 minutes," he said.
The 65-year-old looked a lot better than that. And a lot better than some of his bleary-eyed players who spent the night, the morning and most of the day Monday celebrating the 21-17 victory over the Patriots.
"No sleep, some beer, some 5-Hour Energy [drinks]," defensive end Dave Tollefson said at an appearance at a midtown Modell's Monday night, less than 24 hours after the game kicked off. "I just ate about an hour ago. Back's a little sore. But my mind is sharp."
Brandon Jacobs said the team partied "hard," but he also spent some time early Monday morning browsing through the vast YouTube collection of sports bars and other arenas that videotaped their fans at the moment the Giants won the Super Bowl.
"I typed in 'New York City bar erupts Giants win' and there were like eight or nine different bars going crazy," Jacobs said. "It was great to see that."
Mathias Kiwanuka left the team's hotel in his hometown of Indy Monday morning still wearing the blue wristband that earned him admission to the celebration where there was singing, dancing and, of course, a lot of celebrating. The wristband read: "Giants Postgame Party, Super Bowl XLVI, February 5, 2012."
Of course, the party continued on into Feb. 6 and now Feb. 7.
Eli Manning spent some time with the team before retiring for some family time (imagine those X's-and-O's conversations). Coughlin also spent time with his family. And team president and chief executive John Mara said he was too exhausted to party and turned in early.
"We enjoyed ourselves, some more so than others," Mara said. "I was pretty tired so I went to bed early, but it was a lot of fun."
"It was basically family, very close friends and a lot of banter back and forth," Coughlin said of his evening.
"The circumstances were great. As late as the hour was, being able to reminisce about the game, talk about the game and take great pride again in the outcome, and just relax a little bit, [it was] different from the way it's been for the last six months."
With Zach Schonbrun
