A columnist for the Post since November 2002, Mike Vaccaro has reported from four Olympics, 12 World Series, 10 Super Bowls, eight Final Fours and five U.S. Opens, among the hundreds of events he has covered in his 20-year newspaper career. His "Open Mike" and "Vac’s Whacks" are regular Sunday features, and he has written three books, the latest -- "The First Fall Classic," about the 1912 World Series between the Giants and Red Sox -- is out Oct. 6.
Suddenly, he is more than a quarterback, more than an athlete — more than a champion, even. Suddenly, Eli Manning in 2012 has become equal parts Elvis from 1956, John Lennon from 1964 and Derek Jeter circa 1999....
February 08, 2012 12:00 AM
Dear Boss: I’m happy to report I made it home without getting bloodied by too many readers who noticed that my Super Bowl pick didn’t quite work out. You may remember that, Boss. I picked the Patriots, 30-27. I...
February 07, 2012 3:17 AM
INDIANAPOLIS — Here’s the thing about dynasties in football: you only see them coming in retrospect. It’s easy now to use time as a crutch and think of the inevitability of the Lombardi Packers or the Bradshaw Steelers,...
February 07, 2012 12:57 AM
INDIANAPOLIS — So this was how the football season was going to end, six months after the silly summer game of labor chicken, six weeks after the Giants had looked as dead as dial-up Internet, 90 minutes after it looked...
February 06, 2012 12:00 AMINDIANAPOLIS — He had just guided his boss through the maze of cameras and klieg lights and fans and family members, given him a lift onto a podium, and now Mike Murphy was standing off to the side, grinning a grin you...
February 06, 2012 12:00 AM
INDIANAPOLIS -- This time, there were 3 minutes and 46 seconds left in the fourth quarter and they only needed a field goal, not a touchdown. The Giants had spent so much of the second quarter looking like a team trying...
February 05, 2012 10:10 PMINDIANAPOLIS — The kids, they don’t know it yet, can’t know it yet. Yes: they understand this is a big game, biggest game of their lives. They probably understand that a few hundred million people across the globe will...
February 05, 2012 1:12 AM
INDIANAPOLIS — You are a New Yorker, and so you are conditioned to detest everything about Tom Brady. He works and plays in New England, for starters, so he has a location problem. He is married to one of the most...
February 05, 2012 1:02 AM
INDIANAPOLIS — They are strangers in a strange land, invaders of foreign turf, and they will enjoy every second of their occupation. They are Giants fans, about 400 strong, who will take over at least one floor of a...
February 05, 2012 12:00 AM
INDIANAPOLIS — You know what probably would have made everybody happy? This: Tom Brady standing in front of the crowd that gathered to send off the Patriots last weekend, his shoulders slumped, his hands modestly...
February 04, 2012 12:00 AM
INDIANAPOLIS — Surely, you remember The Helmet Catch. Surely, in fact, you remember both ends of The Helmet Catch, The Escape and The Catch, capital letters all around, Eli Manning looking like Francis Tarkenton right...
February 03, 2012 12:00 AMINDIANAPOLIS — The original underdogs, they really did face impossible odds. These were actual dogs, taking part in the actual blood sport of bear-baiting, an especially charming event in 16th century England. A bear...
February 03, 2012 12:00 AM
INDIANAPOLIS — Tyler Sash didn’t need to be wined and dined on his official visit to the University of Iowa four years ago. He didn’t need the spirit squad to flirt with him, didn’t need a tour of the football-friendly...
February 02, 2012 12:00 AM
INDIANAPOLIS — When Mark Herzlich first noticed the pain in his left leg, he did what most 21-year-old kids — and the rest of us, too, be honest — would do. He ignored it. He waited for it to go away. He was a football...
February 01, 2012 12:00 AM
INDIANAPOLIS — You have to start here: third-and-5, the ball resting on the Dallas 25-yard-line, late in the evening of Dec. 11 inside Cowboys Stadium. There are two minutes and 25 seconds left in the game, and the...
January 31, 2012 2:37 AMINDIANAPOLIS — This is a terrific American city, a worthy city, a city of hidden charms and historical significance, the second-largest city in the Midwest (behind Chicago), the second-largest capital city (behind...
January 30, 2012 12:00 AM
INDIANAPOLIS — Tom Coughlin would spend his nights quietly in his dorm room on the third floor at Sadler Hall, which still was a relatively new residence hall on the Syracuse University campus that fall of 1967 and...
January 29, 2012 12:00 AM
This was late at night a few years ago, sitting around a saloon at the Final Four, and at the table were four basketball coaches, all of whom had achieved some modicum of success. The subject was Mike Krzyzewski, who...
January 29, 2012 12:00 AMAt first, as he watched the play unfold on the television screen, Liam Coen was just like any other football fan who has grown enamored with the work of Victor Cruz this season: He heard himself screaming mindlessly,...
January 28, 2012 12:00 AM
The kid is forever “Billy,” and he is forever a kid, forever 22 years old and cutting film and choosing football talk over AM radio in the mornings, when the coach and the kid would drive the old Mercury from airport...
January 27, 2012 12:00 AMThere was a buzz that night at Bess P. Harvey Memorial Stadium in Lafitte, La., and not simply because the Fisher High School Gators were hosting their neighbors from New Orleans, the Isidore Newman School. Word had...
January 26, 2012 12:00 AM
As the past few weeks have unfolded, one delightful surprise begetting another, one improbable twist followed by another impossible turn, it’s been hard not to think of just how completely Wellington Mara would have...
January 25, 2012 12:00 AM
THIRTY THOUSAND FEET ABOVE AMERICA — To all of you down there, to the flyover country I’m currently flying over? Sorry. To the fine sporting folk of Northern California, to all of your West Coast brethren, to those of...
January 24, 2012 12:00 AMWhat says the most about the way Joe Paterno lived his life is what the prevailing reaction was when the terrible news about Jerry Sandusky hit in November. As details bled out in bits and pieces at first — and later...
January 23, 2012 12:00 AM
SAN FRANCISCO — This was one of those moments when the pain and pressure the players were feeling was transferred elsewhere, and everywhere. Inside a Candlestick Park stuffed with hungry 49ers fans and dotted with...
January 23, 2012 12:00 AM
SAN FRANCISCO — The forecast calls for a little rain. OK. Maybe it calls for a lot of rain. Maybe it calls for — oh no! oh my! — a little mud on the turf at Candlestick Park. Maybe all of that means there will be — oh...
January 22, 2012 12:24 AM
We certainly would feel guiltier about this if we didn’t know how well-off they were. Look, in a lot of ways, calling for a coach to get fired is the same thing as voting against an incumbent politician on Election Day:...
January 22, 2012 12:00 AMWhen you think about it, San Francisco has gotten away easy over the years. Los Angeles is the city we detest, the city in which all of our ugliest impulses are manifest, the town with the beautiful weather and the...
January 20, 2012 12:00 AM
You know all of the stories about super-human pain-threshold. You have heard about Jack Youngblood playing a Super Bowl on a broken leg, about Lawrence Taylor splattering the Saints with a separated shoulder, about Eli...
January 19, 2012 12:00 AM
Ben is a Roethlisberger. Drew is a Brees. Aaron is a Rodgers. None of them was burdened by a birth certificate, defined by their DNA. Joe was a Namath. Johnny was a Unitas. Otto was a Graham. They were judged by what...
January 18, 2012 2:37 AM
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