The Saints capped a remarkable sporting journey, late on Sunday night, when underdog quarterback Drew Brees drove New Orleans to a stunning victory over the Indianapolis Colts. Among the crowd, we know, in the Sun Life Stadium in southern Miami were a couple of GAA stars; but what can the association learn from the NFL’s greatest show on earth?
1. The game on Sunday night is the last high-wire act in a week-long, multi-ring circus. For the days leading up to the tie former NFL stars make themselves available for workshops with kids; agents and administrators hold public debates and think-ins on the business of their sport while media have access to both teams for a three full days. Why not make the respective All-Ireland finals the culmination to a seven-day festival of the sport. It’s good business.
2. The famous half-time show was merely an exercise in Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry slowly dismantling their hard-earned rock’n'roll reputation with every creaky windmill manoeuvre and missed cue. If The Who offer themselves as half-time entertainment, let’s stick with the Artane Band
3. Peyton Manning is like a super quarter-back built in a lab by the US government using parts from slightly lesser QBs. In other words, just like Henry Shefflin. But not even Manning, with his obsessive-compulsive preparation, laser-like football mind and metronomic arm could lead the Colts to a win that was utterly expected. Fairytales happen, and the GAA world should not expect the Cats to go on winning forever. Right?
4. This year’s broadcast became the most watched event in American TV since the last episode of MASH with 116 million people tuning in. But as much as the on-field action and the half-time show, the commercials that punctuate the play receive as much attention. This year Hollywood starlet Megan Fox in a bath selling mobile phones as well as bitter rivals David Letterman and Jay Leno teaming up for a spot drew the most attention. Perhaps it’s time for the GAA and its sponsors to move away from its top stars hawking cattle feed and Wavin pipes.
5. The Saints won an unlikely victory a mere four years after Hurricane Katrina brought the jazz in New Orleans to a sudden stop. It’s clearly a silly parallel to attempt to draw but there are a collection counties who’ve endured a winter of discontent here – very often under an unwelcome veil of flood water. Like Brees and his inspirational Saints, they’ll be aiming to make hay when the sun shines once again.
First posted this morning to the Irish Examiner sportsblog.
When the Dallas Cowboys opened up the sparkling, box-fresh Texas Stadium with a defeat of the New York Giants in September, it was the denouement to the Jerry Jones story. Boys will be Boys explains how it began. 
A typical football book – particularly one of the game’s superstars – might be cracked open by a reader with some reservations about its journalistic merit. Not this one. 
At 2pm, in the University of Limerick sports grounds the Cork Admirals – in their first title decider – will face the Limerick Vikings in The Shamrock Bowl XXI, the championship game of the ever-expanding Irish American Football League. But Pádraig Harrington will testify; he didn’t win the British Open in Carnoustie – he won it a long way from the cameras. So too, this modest victory tomorrow won’t be earned on a converted cricket ground – meticulously marked out to NCAA standards – in this league, and in this sport especially it seems, more than any other – it’s all about preparation.