Clareified

Great story about two lowly special teams guys who changed the momentum in the biggest football game of the year.
I have a much longer, weirder post about Superbowl 44 kicking around my brain, but for now I will confess two things: 1. I didn’t really care. I almost skipped the game to watch Michael Jackson’s This is It. But Pi promised me a February barbecue at her house AND picked me up and dropped me off, so… 2. When I started to care, I was pulling for the Colts in spite of myself. Peyton Manning was the picture of perfection through almost two quarters. It was thrilling to watch. The Saints just looked scared and chokey.
No bueno.
But then when it all went haywire and Manning actually got intercepted twenty or so yards from the game tying play, I knew that my brain had done what it needed to do to channel my innate cooler powers away from the Saints. Cause hot damn if I wasn’t jumping up and down once the Saints had put the game out of the reach of the dang dirty Colts and their stupid long faced gross quarterback. I was a little worried that Brees might break my boy’s record 32 completions in a Superbowl…but, whew.
All in all, glad I watched, glad about the outcome. And the story this article relays, reminds me why:

It went 10 yards. It went off Hank Baskett, the fifth wideout on the Colts. The ball bounced toward Reis, plowing single-mindedly toward the spot he knew the kick was going to settle, 10 to 12 yards downfield. At the 42-yard-line of the Saints, Reis dove for the ball, and the scrum began. (Officially, linebacker Jonathan Casillas was credited with the recovery, but Casillas and other Saints said it was Reis who came away with the ball.)

The ball at first lay underneath Reis’ legs as bodies flew in trying to get it. “I was able to get the ball into my hands and just cradle it here,” Reis demonstrated for me later in the locker room, with his hands cradled around his stomach, slightly bent over. “So I just pulled it tight to my body and held on.”

“White ball!” Reis heard one official yell in the mayhem. The Saints were wearing white. Good.

“Blue ball! Blue ball!” he heard another official yell. The Colts were blue. Bad.

“So I just figured I better hang onto it for dear life,” he said. “The Colts were punching at it and grabbing for it, trying to get it out. But I didn’t care if they broke all my fingers. There was absolutely no way in the world I was going to let go of that ball. That was our ball.”

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.