Super Bowl Capsules: Giants lauded as champs in NYC parade

NEW YORK (AP) — Eli Manning hoisted the Lombardi Trophy from a glittering blue-and-white float, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg joked that New York City should now be nicknamed the “Big Blue Apple,” as thousands of fans crowded lower Manhattan on Tuesday to celebrate the New York Giants’ Super Bowl victory amid tons of confetti.

The parade set off from the southern tip of Manhattan and rolled slowly north to City Hall, past fans dressed head to toe in red, blue and white Giants gear, with confetti wafting slowly from the high-rises lining Broadway.

Manning, the Super Bowl MVP, joined by coach Tom Coughlin, Bloomberg, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other teammates, waved and grinned from the float as a deep roar rose from the crowds.

Defensive end Justin Tuck said he was glad to be part of the team, leading its defense and sacking New England quarterback Tom Brady twice during the 21-17 victory over the Patriots,

“We made it here by believing in each other. We believe in every guy on this team,” he said later during a ceremony at City Hall Plaza. “Honestly, we wouldn’t be here today without your support.”

The team was introduced with thunderous applause from the thousands of fans outside the City Hall gates. A lucky 250 fans received tickets to the fete, where the Giants were honored with symbolic keys to the city.

The crowd went wild for running back Ahmed Bradshaw, who plopped down in the end zone Sunday to score the winning touchdown. Wide receiver Victor Cruz did his trademark salsa moves as he accepted his key.

Manning joked about the team’s fourth-quarter comebacks. “Make it tough but make it possible,” he said, laughing about how the team blew an early lead to come back and win. The Giants had eight fourth-quarter comebacks to win games during the season.

“Finish games, finish fourth quarters and finish the season strong. That’s what we did,” Manning said.

Coughlin said the Giants were successful because they never gave up.

“The key thing was to remember this: All things are possible for those who believe,” Coughlin said. “We always believed.”

Some fans had waited since 6 a.m. to catch a glimpse of their favorite players. About half of a Long Island high school class skipped school to see “a whole nation coming together in one place — this parade,” said Mike King, 16, of Wantagh.

King and seven school friends got up at dawn, arriving by subway in lower Manhattan to join the crowds packed behind police barricades. He attributed the win to Manning’s stellar performance and the hold-your-breath catch by Mario Manningham that led to the game-winning drive.

Frank Capogrosso, 11, from Staten Island, leaned against a barricade at the beginning of the parade route with his dad and best friend.

“This is better than TV. I love the cop cars, the toilet paper and the ecstatic fans,” he said. “I love the Giants. I love their style. They play, they don’t talk.”

The parade for the Super Bowl champions could bring the city as much as $38 million, depending on the number of spectators, Bloomberg said. As many as 1 million people were expected — about a third of them from outside New York.

After the parade, the team traveled to New Jersey for an afternoon rally at their home turf, MetLife Stadium. Tens of thousands of fans roared as the team walked onto the field in East Rutherford, making it feel like a regular Sunday game for Big Blue.

Some fans even got to touch a piece of history when Giants running back Brandon Jacobs capped the boisterous celebration by taking the Lombardi Trophy and walking it around the stadium to give delirious fans in the lower rows a chance to lean over and put their hands on it. It was an impromptu moment that fit the mood of the afternoon.

It’s the second Super Bowl championship parade for the Giants in four years. They beat the Patriots in the NFL title game in 2008.

Bloomberg asked the crowd: “Are you feeling deja blue all over again?” referring to the team’s 2008 win. Fans cheered.

Workers in high-rises tossed confetti — and later entire pieces of papers — from their windows.

Jun Kim, 28, a Korean linguist at the law firm Kenyon & Kenyon, reserved his biggest batch for Manning. “You are a star!” he yelled as the quarterback passed by. “People thought he would crumble under pressure, but he didn’t. He’s the best.”

And once, so were four former Giants players who all starred in past Super Bowls and joined Kim on the 11th floor of Number One Broadway, watching from a balcony “with the best bird’s-eye view of the parade,” said managing partner Michael Loughnane.

Howard Cross, a onetime Giants tight end, said he only caught a few seconds of the parade from the drop-dead height because “I’m scared — I don’t lean over edges!”

Three other former Giants were also at the confetti fest in the 19th century building: Otis Anderson, George Martin and Sean Landetta.

Just moments after the parade passed around noon, a lineup of sanitation plows scraped their way up Broadway, pushing mounds of confetti — some as high as 5 feet.

Fans stood on sidewalks ankle deep in the paper that was later sucked up by sanitation workers armed with hand-held vacuums.

Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said he expected about 40 tons of paper to be thrown. That’s a lot but not one for the record books: The city threw 5,438 tons of ticker tape on returning veterans at the end of World War II in 1945.

The actual ticker tape from those days has been replaced by recycled paper that’s shredded into confetti. About 34 tons of paper were cleaned up after the Giants’ 2008 parade.

Mindy Forman, 53, of Yorktown, was one of the lucky few who scored a ticket to the festivities at City Hall. She said the win was a much-needed victory at a time when many could use some cheering up. She counted herself among that group: She was laid off two weeks ago from her job as a college administrator.

“It celebrates New York,” she said. “It celebrates the city. It celebrates the state. And it gives people something to believe in in very hard times.”

New York has feted its public heroes since 1919, with the first parade for World War I General John Pershing and his victorious troops.

They were followed by more than 200 parades honoring such people as aviator Charles Lindbergh, scientist Albert Einstein, Pope John Paul, South African leader Nelson Mandela and pianist Van Cliburn. Their names are chiseled into the Broadway sidewalks.

Tens of thousands greet Super Bowl champs in N.J.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — It wasn’t the Canyon of Heroes and there wasn’t as much tickertape, but that didn’t seem to bother about 30,000 New York Giants fans who flocked to MetLife Stadium Tuesday to celebrate the team’s rousing Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots.

Some of them even got to touch a piece of history when Giants running back Brandon Jacobs capped the boisterous celebration by taking the Vince Lombardi Trophy and walking it around the stadium to give delirious fans in the lower rows a chance to lean over and put their hands on it. It was an impromptu moment that fit the mood of the afternoon.

“We just came from a great parade in the Canyon of Heroes, but when you pull into this place and see all the fans, there really is no place like home,” team co-owner John Mara told the cheering crowd.

Thousands of fans showed up hours early to tailgate in the parking lot as if it were a Sunday during the season. And with weather in the upper 40s and low 50s, it was hard to distinguish it from October anyway.

Carol and John Senatore of Stony Point, N.Y., near West Point, share a season-ticket package and didn’t even consider going into New York for the morning parade.

“We tailgate all year, so we figured why not do it today, too,” John Senatore said. “This is more intimate.”

Dennis Ubiles, a Manhattan resident, opted to come across the river instead of heading downtown. He managed to get son Andrew out of his elementary school for the day. And the two were ready to celebrate, Dennis in his Victor Cruz jersey like so many Giants fans, and Andrew with the No. 9 of kicker Lawrence Tynes.

“I like him because he’s Scottish and my mother’s Scottish,” Andrew explained.

Ubiles said he never doubted the Giants would rise to the occasion even when they lost four games in a row late in the season. He said he chose to come to the New Jersey celebration because he thought it would have a little more edge.

“I think the players will really kick back,” he said. “We might see some salsa.”

It wasn’t salsa being performed on the players’ stage in the middle of the field, but there were some non-football moves being made when the rap group Naughty By Nature performed at the end of the program.

Afterward, Cruz, the wide receiver who became an instant hero this season with his long touchdown runs and end-zone salsa performances, signed autographs for dozens of fans who leaned over the front row of the stands to get close to him. At one point during the bedlam, he posed for a picture with 18-year-old Zack Pollack of Passaic, a cerebral palsy sufferer who watched the ceremony from his wheelchair on the field.

“This means so much to him,” his father, Larry said. “He watches all the games.”

Zack couldn’t contain himself, shouting out, “I love Victor Cruz!”

Several players, including quarterback Eli Manning and defensive lineman Justin Tuck, addressed the fans, with Tuck proclaiming that the stadium the Giants share with the New York Jets is “our house.”

Gov. Chris Christie attended the ceremony but did not speak.

One fan held up a sign that captured the essence of the day: “Thank You Giants, We Got To Miss School Again.”

-- David Porter

2.1 million viewers live stream Super Bowl online

NEW YORK (AP) — The first live stream of the Super Bowl drew 2.1 million unique viewers, NBC said Thursday.

That’s a small fraction of the record 111.3 million viewers that watched NBC’s broadcast of the big game. But it was still enough to make it the most-watched single-game sports event online, according to the network.

Kevin Monaghan, managing director of digital media for NBC Sports Group, said the live stream “exceeded our expectations in every way.”

The New York Giants 21-17 win over the New England Patriots was streamed on NBCSports.com and NFL.com. The Internet webcast included optional camera views, tweeting from a handful of personalities and HD-quality video. But it didn’t feature the live TV broadcast commercials (they were clickable for on-demand viewing) or the Madonna halftime show, and the feed lagged behind the broadcast.

The webcast was available on some mobile phones from Verizon.

Monaghan framed the live stream not as an alternate viewing option from broadcast, but as “a complementary ‘second screen’ experience” to the televised game.

Previous major sporting events streamed live include the 2010 World Cup by ESPN, the 2010 Olympics by NBC and the annual NCAA men’s basketball tournament by CBS and Turner Sports. More recently, ESPN offered live streams of this year’s Rose Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl, though both of those games were watched by less than 400,000.

In the 2010 World Cup, ESPN said 1.1 million people watched at least some part of the USA’s win over Algeria on its website.

But no sporting event is bigger in the U.S. than the Super Bowl, and NBC’s first live stream of the game was surely a milestone in sports viewing. The Super Bowl stream had an average user engagement of 39 minutes per visit.

Hans Schroeder, senior vice president of media strategy and development for the NFL, said the league “will continue to look for more ways to reach our fans.”

-- Jake Coyle

Obama congratulates Giants on Super Bowl victory

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has offered his personal congratulations to the New York Giants on their Super Bowl victory.

The White House says Obama called Giants coach Tom Coughlin (KAWF’-lihn) Tuesday morning. The White House says the president told Coughlin that his team’s victory Sunday was a testament to his leadership.

Obama told Coughlin he looks forward to welcoming the Giants to the White House. Sports champions are traditionally honored with a ceremony at the White House.

The Giants defeated the New England Patriots 21-17.

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Giants TE Ballard has left ACL tear

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — New York Giants tight end Jake Ballard tore his left anterior cruciate ligament during the second half of the Super Bowl, the team announced on Tuesday.

An MRI discovered Ballard’s injury, and with the help of crutches, he was able to participate in Tuesday’s parade and ceremonies in New York and New Jersey.

Ballard, an undrafted free agent, had 38 catches for 604 yards and four touchdowns this regular season. In the four playoff games, he had five catches for 43 yards. He had two receptions in the Giants’ 21-17 win over New England on Sunday in Indianapolis.

Ballard made fans quickly forget about former Giants tight end Kevin Boss, who signed with the Oakland Raiders after the lockout ended last summer. In the Giants’ 24-20 win over the Patriots on Nov. 6 in Foxborough, Mass., he had four catches for 67 yards and a touchdown. In a 27-24 win over Buffalo at home on Oct. 16, he had his career-best receiving total, 81 yards on five receptions.