Peyton, Cam, Beyoncé and Rudy

Peyton Manning! You just won the Super Bowl in what was probably the last game of your career! Now, what are you going to do?

Essentially, the question that has traditionally been answered in commercials, "I'm goin' to Disney World!" was asked by Tracy Wolfson of CBS, after Manning's Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers 24-10 in Super Bowl 50 last night.

Manning did not say he was going to Disney World. Here's what he did say:

You know, I'll take some time to reflect. I got a couple of priorities first. I want to go kiss my wife and my kids. I want to go hug my family. I'm going to drink a lot of Budweiser tonight, Tracy. I promise you that.

He started off on the right foot. Then, he promoted binge drinking.

And people want to get on Panthers quarterback Cam Newton for how he reacted after the game? Idiots.

This was a few minutes after Dame Helen Mirren appeared in an ad for, yes, Budweiser -- I thought she had more taste than that -- and said:

If you drive drunk, you, simply put, are a shortsighted, utterly useless, oxygen-wasting human form of pollution, a Darwin Award-deserving selfish coward. If your brain was donated to science, science would return it. So, stop it... Don't be a pillock.

She could have used a stronger word, also common in British street speech or pub talk, but it would never have gotten onto American television.

Peyton Manning, for promoting heavy drinking and unfair labor practices (through shilling for Papa John's pizza) before a tremendous worldwide TV audience...

You, sir, are a pillock.

And, if the rumor is true, and you also used human-growth hormone or some other performance-enhancing drug throughout your career, joining with your nemesis Tom Brady -- who, along with his team, has been caught in multiple cheats -- to do what performance-enhancing drugs did to baseball, which is cast doubt on the legitimacy of an entire era...

You, sir, are a... word that Dame Helen probably wanted to use.

See You Next Tuesday.

*

I'm just glad the game's Most Valuable Player award was given to Bronco linebacker Von Miller. I've often criticized the expression "Defense wins games"/"Defense wins championships." Defense never won a damn thing without offense failing. You can't win unless you score. You can't score unless you have the ball. If you have the ball, even if you're a traditional defensive player who's intercepted a pass or picked up a fumble, by definition, you are now on offense.

The Broncos' defense was the 2nd-biggest factor in the game. The biggest factor was the Panthers' inability to adjust to it.

That said, Miller was the player on the winning side who had the biggest impact, and was thus deserving of the MVP.

I was sure they were going to give it to Manning, what with him being beloved by the media, and what with it (probably) being his last game.

Because when the media loves a quarterback, they... how can I put this politely... never shy away from showing you that love. We've seen it before. Johnny Unitas. Joe Namath. Roger Staubach. Joe Montana. John Elway. Brett Favre. Now, Brady and Manning. (Not so much Eli Manning, though -- because he beat Brady in 2 Super Bowls, thus ruining the media's narrative.)

Yes, Elway retired as a back-to-back Super Bowl winner, and as the reigning Super Bowl MVP. But he wouldn't have won a Super Bowl without Terrell Davis in the backfield -- Sammy Winder was good, but, back then, Elway didn't have someone who was TD good, and that's a big reason why he went 0-3 before going 2-0 in the biggest game -- and Peyton wouldn't have won this Super Bowl without Von Miller and his defensive compadres shutting down the Panther offense.

Just in case Peyton was thinking it was all about him. Maybe he wasn't. But, going in, the media sure was.

*

As for Cam Newton: I could criticize him for his postgame reaction. Instead, I'll say that Newton is lucky on 2 counts: He didn't screw up that big for a New York team (or Boston, or Chicago, or Los Angeles), or for his alma mater, Auburn University, against their arch-rivals, the University of Alabama.

However, I can and do criticize Newton for not picking up that fumble that turned a decent shot at a winning touchdown drive into a final score that did not, at all, indicate how close the game was until that point.

Some people are telling him, "Act like you've been there before." Well, he hadn't been there before.

And he may never get back. That's the hard part: In the biggest game of his career, he froze. I'm reminded of Chuck Knoblauch in the 1998 Playoffs, although Knobby is white, was playing a much less important position, and was not in a Game 7, as Newton's game amounted to. On the other hand, Knobby also isn't nearly as smart as Newton.

If this had happened to Newton in a regular-season game, we'd talk about it until the next game. Instead, we talk about it forever, because it was in the Super Bowl. Ask Jackie Smith. Ask Scott Norwood. Ask Kevin Dyson -- and he didn't even do anything wrong; quite the contrary, he did his damnedest, and came up a few inches short.

But look at this list: Daryle Lamonica, Joe Kapp, Vince Ferragamo, Ron Jaworski, Ken Anderson, David Woodley, Dan Marino, Tony Eason, Boomer Esiason, Stan Humphries, Neil O'Donnell, Drew Bledsoe, Chris Chandler, Steve McNair, Kerry Collins, Rich Gannon, Jake Delhomme, Donovan McNabb, Matt Hasselbeck. Most likely, Rex Grossman will end up being added to this list. Possibly, so will Colin Kaepernick.

Each of those quarterbacks went to one Super Bowl, lost it, and never got back in.

There's a lot of talent there. Marino is in the Hall of Fame. McNabb becomes eligible next year, and will probably get in, if not on the 1st try. Lamonica, Jaworski, Anderson, Esiason and Bledsoe are all worthy of Hall consideration. At the very least, Newton should end up with a career as good as those last 5.

But this could have been his only chance, and he blew it.

The truly sad part is, the game wasn't even interesting until that play. And then, it got interesting in a bad way.

*

About the halftime show: Thanks to Newton, no one is going to remember that Coldplay never should have been selected. Not that they were offensive. They were just... weak.

But Beyoncé Knowles upstaged the whole thing. As she usually does. She gave a Black Power salute, a la Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics. The dancers behind her wore black berets, like the Black Panthers, founded just up the road in Oakland 50 years ago.

And Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, saw it as an attack on his favorite people (whom he refused to ever give a raise), the police. Here's what he told Fox News this morning:

This is football, not Hollywood, and I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers, who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive.

And what we should be doing in the African-American community, and all communities, is build up respect for police officers. And focus on the fact that, when something does go wrong, okay, we'll work on that. But the vast majority of police officers risk their lives to keep us safe.

Well, gee, Rudy, maybe African-Americans would have more respect for police officers if they didn't see some of them -- not 1 every 10 years, but several times in the last few, from Staten Island to Baltimore to Cleveland to Ferguson, Missouri and so on -- get away with murder. Who didn't "keep us alive." (I'm using "us" in this case even though I'm white.)

And that doesn't even include Trayvon Martin's murderer, a cop wannabe that the cops didn't think was mentally stable enough to join them.

You want black people to build up respect for police officers? Start by demanding that police officers respect them. The motto is, "To serve and protect." "Serve" comes before protect, Rudy, you fascist... pillock!

Rudy needs to shut the bloody hell up. His great achievement as Mayor, reducing crime, would never have happened without the crime bill pushed and signed by President Bill Clinton. (A liberal Democrat and Hillary's husband, in case you've forgotten.) And even at his moments of triumph, we all knew, even if we didn't want to say it out loud, that Rudy was a racist.

As the late Sidney Zion, a columnist for the New York Daily News and a strong supporter of Rudy's, put it, "The problem with Rudy Giuliani is that he's not a peacetime don." In other words, he can never accept victory, because he's always looking for a new war to fight.

And rather than accept the truth, which is that Beyoncé and the people who agree with her have a point, he attacks.

But you're not going to win a popularity contest with either of the 2 most popular women in the country. He's already lost one popularity contest to Hillary, when he refused to run against her for the U.S. Senate in 2006.

And now he's launching one against Beyoncé? Fool.

As the lady herself might have said, If you didn't like it, then you shoulda put a sock in it.

Top 10 College Football Rivalries

Okay, this isn't scientific, but I checked 7 different online polls, to get as comprehensive as possible, and to weed out any outliers.

Note that I have listed all of these rivalries in alphabetical order. It has nothing to do with which team I like better, or with who has won this year's game, or with who has the better overall record, the better academics, the better mascot, the hotter cheerleaders, the better-looking uniforms, the better city, the better restaurants, or anything else. It's alphabetical order, the simplest way to do it.

Regardless of whether a poll listed 10 teams, 25 teams, or any other number, I assigned the rivalry that finished 1st 25 points, 2nd 24, and so on. Matchups mentioned in a poll but did not make the cutoff in it got 1 point.

First, a few that got mentions, but didn't make the cut:

* Mentioned in 1 of the 7: Arkansas vs. Louisiana State (hereafter referred to as LSU), Auburn vs. Georgia, Baylor vs. Texas Christian, Colorado vs. Colorado State, Colorado vs. Nebraska, DePauw vs. Wabash, Florida State vs. Louisiana State, Georgia vs. South Carolina, Grambling State vs. Southern, Iowa vs. Iowa State, Kansas vs. Kansas State, Kansas vs. Missouri, LSU vs. Mississippi (hereafter referred to as Ole Miss), Maryland vs. West Virginia, Michigan State vs. Notre Dame, Ohio State vs. Pennsylvania State (hereafter referred to as Penn State), Penn State vs. Pittsburgh (hereafter referred to as Pitt), Texas A&M vs. Texas Tech.

* Mentioned in 2 of the 7: Alabama vs. LSU, Amherst vs. Williams, Florida vs. Tennessee, Kentucky vs. Louisville, Michigan vs. Notre Dame,  Nebraska vs. Oklahoma, Washington vs. Washington State.

* Mentioned in 3 of the 7: Alabama vs. Tennessee, Arizona vs. Arizona State, Georgia vs. Georgia Tech, Lafayette vs. Lehigh, Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State.

* Mentioned in 4 of the 7: Harvard vs. Yale (#5 in one of the polls), Michigan vs. Michigan State, Minnesota vs. Wisconsin, Pitt vs. West Vriginia, Texas vs. Texas A&M,

* Mentioned in 6 of the 7: Brigham Young vs. Utah, Clemson vs. South Carolina, Mississippi State vs. Ole Miss, Oregon vs. Oregon State.

You may have noticed some interesting names missing. If this were basketball, Kentucky vs. Louisville would be a lot higher. And you would likely see Duke vs. North Carolina, Indiana vs. Purdue, maybe Georgetown vs. St. John's or Connecticut vs. Syracuse. Although you wouldn't see Rutgers vs. Princeton: That died out as a serious rivalry long before anyone not at ARPA ever heard of the Internet.

If it were hockey, Harvard vs. Yale, Michigan vs. Michigan State and Minnesota vs. Wisconsin would be higher; while Minnesota vs. North Dakota and Boston College vs. Boston University would be on the list. If it were wrestling, Iowa vs. Iowa State and Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State would be the top 2.

About any of these pairs of teams, you could use the line of the greatest of all college football announcers, ABC Sports' retired but still living legend, Keith Jackson: "These two teams just... don't... like each other!"

Top 10 College Football Rivalries

Note that every one of these games is played in late November, except where noted, and may even be playing today.

10. Florida vs. Florida State. It was mentioned in 5 of the 7 polls, but still had more cumulative points than the 4 Honorable Mentions cited above that were mentioned in 6 of the 7. This is one of the more recent big rivalries, as it didn't get noticed nationally until Bobby Bowden propped FSU up in the late 1970s.

It is part of a 3-way hate triangle with Miami (see below, although Florida vs. Miami didn't even make my first cut). Particularly in the 1990s, this was rough. Fights still happen on the field. Once, a fight happened even before the kickoff.

9. The University of California at Los Angeles vs. the University of Southern California, a.k.a. UCLA vs. USC. It was mentioned in 5 of the 7 polls, but still had more cumulative points than the 4 Honorable Mentions cited above that were mentioned in 6 of the 7.

This one isn't as big as it was, but it's still a classic, with spectacular uniforms (powder blue and gold vs. maroon and gold), great old stadiums (the Los Angeles Coliseum as home ground for USC, the Rose Bowl for UCLA), and one of the closest matchups (the campuses are just 14 miles apart).

8. Florida vs. Georgia. It was mentioned in 5 of the 7 polls, but still had more cumulative points than the 4 Honorable Mentions cited above that were mentioned in 6 of the 7. "The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party" has to be held on "neutral ground" at EverBank Field in Jacksonville (and, before that, at the previous stadium on the site, the Gator Bowl).

7. California vs. Stanford. It was mentioned in 6 of the 7 polls, and probably only missed the 7th because that one only mentioned 6 rivalries. "The Big Game" between the East Bay school usually called "Cal" for sports and "Berkeley" for all other purposes, and the Peninsula school nicknamed "The Farm," is the best one on this list, academically speaking, although the students at the schools at #3 may dispute this. It's probably the one with the richest alumni, although those from the schools at #4 may dispute this. With either of those, people of Harvard and Yale might dispute it.

Put it this way: If the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders ever met in a Super Bowl, Cal vs. Stanford would still be a bigger game to people in the Bay Area.

6. Florida State vs. Miami. It was mentioned in 6 of the 7 polls. Miami has fallen on hard times, or else this one could be higher. And, somehow, a Hurricanes game at the Dolphins' stadium out in the suburbs doesn't have the same kind of atmosphere as one at the Orange Bowl in the ghetto.

Seminoles fans are fine with having the better atmosphere at Doak Campbell Stadium, and with having the better team the last few years. But in the 1990s, this game was every bit as big as FSU vs. the Gators.

5. Notre Dame vs. USC. It was mentioned in 6 of the 7 polls. It is held in mid-October when ND hosts in South Bend, Indiana, and on the Saturday after Thanksgiving when USC hosts in Los Angeles. It can't be held in November when the Fighting Irish are the hosts, because it would be too cold.

This is the only real intersectional rivalry in college football, and between 2 of the biggies. There are people who don't like either team, for their successes and their arrogance, but they still watch this game, for all the history involved, at and between the schools.

The last 4 were the only ones mentioned in all 7 polls.

4. Oklahoma vs. Texas. This one came in 3rd in one poll, and 4th in all the others. It is held at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, as part of the Texas State Fair, every 2nd Saturday in October, but is actually closer to the Sooners' campus in Norman than it is to the Longhorns' base in Austin.

When rich Southern men who are not used to defeat go up against each other, well, I'm surprised there isn't usually shooting afterwards.

3. Army vs. Navy. This one came in 1st in 2 polls, 2nd in another, 3rd in another, 4th in another, and 5th in the other 2.

It is always played at a neutral site, usually in Philadelphia, which is roughly halfway between the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. (They've used Franklin Field, Municipal/John F. Kennedy Stadium, Veterans Stadium, and now Lincoln Financial Field.) They've also used the Meadowlands, Baltimore's new stadium, and the Washington Redskins' new stadium in recent years.

It this the best one, academically? Maybe. The one with the best pageantry? Could be. The one with the most respect for each other? Absolutely. One where each team's given record, now and historically, really doesn't matter? You bet your brass.

Based on my ratings system (25 points for 1st place in a poll, 24 for 2nd, and so on), the last 2 were very close: 170 to 168. If you put a gun to my head and told me to write down the top 10, and rank them, these would be the 1st 2 I would think of, in that order.

2. Alabama vs. Auburn. It came in 1st in 2 polls, 2nd in 3, 3rd in the other 2. For years, it had to be held on neutral ground, at Legion Field in Birmingham, because they hate each other that much. Known as the Iron Bowl, this game has divided families, broken up marriages, and even led one angry Alabama fan to poison a pair of beloved trees in the town center of Auburn a few years back. And with both teams challenging for the National Championship the last few years, and each team having won it recently, it's as good (or as bad) as ever.

The Iron Bowl is easily the nastiest in-State rivalry. But the best one between one State and another, and the best one period, is this one, and that's far from just my choice:

1. Michigan vs. Ohio State. This one came in 1st in 3 polls, 2nd in 3, and 3rd in the other.

Michigan was the original dominant football school in the Midwest, and Ohio State coach Woody Hayes decided that he would do whatever it took to, to borrow a phrase from English football (soccer), knock them off their perch. He would never refer to his rival as "Michigan" or "The Wolverines": It was always "That School Up North" (which Buckeye fans now abbreviate to TSUN).

When Bo Schembechler, who had played for Hayes at Miami of Ohio and assisted him at Ohio State, became the Michigan coach, Buckeyes vs. Wolverines became bigger than ever, retroactively known as The Ten-Year War (1969-78). Woody would hear that Bo was recruiting in Ohio, and he'd call up the State Police and say, "Close the border! Bo's in the State!" Paranoid? Al Davis of the Raiders had nothing on Woody.

Michigan would reassert its dominance, but when Jim Tressel was given the OSU job, he said his priority was not to win the National Championship or the Big Ten Championship, but to beat Michigan. Mission accomplished: Michigan has won just twice since he took over, even though he's now gone, and former Florida maestro Urban Meyer is in charge.

You can fit nearly 100,000 fans in Ohio Stadium in Columbus, and over 110,000 fans in Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. And getting tickets for this game can be filed under "Forget it." As with Harvard vs. Yale, this is known simply as "The Game."