The New York Giants are the NFL’s “champions”.

The New York Giants had a 10-6 regular season record. Four other teams had 10-6 records, one of which wasn’t even invited into the post-season.

A whopping 6 teams had a better regular season than the Giants, putting the Giants only barely in the top quartile of NFL teams from September 6th to December 29th.

The New York Giants did not win their division. Divisions only contain four teams. They failed to achieve a winning record within their division.

The New York Giants beat the New England Patriots, who went 16-0 in the regular season including a victory over the “champions” and whose only loss came at the end of the playoffs with a quarterback that may have been something below 100% due to injury. They won their first playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys, against whom they went 0-2 in the season making their overall record against the team a losing one for the year.

But… because they managed to eek out a slightly-better-than-mediocre regular season record and then pulled out wins in their last four games, the last three of which they won by a single field goal, they get to be the champions.

Fair enough. I don’t think that the Giants should have been in the playoffs because I don’t think that we should have wildcards, but those are the rules of the game and everyone knew going into the season that those were the rules of the game.

Yet many of the same people that will be talking about Eli Manning and the Giants and what champions they are do not believe that LSU were truly the NCAA football champions because they didn’t deserve a shot at the title because they lose twice, in triple-overtime, to Arkansas and Kentucky. Nevermind the BCS rules wherein every team knew that they might have to win every single game for a shot at the championship and that there’s no team that anyone can definitely point to as the team that “should be” the national championships (in contrast to 2002, when USC was the renegade champion).

So, in tribute to anti-BCS folks everywhere, I will put quotes or air quotes around the words “champion” and “championship” in reference to the New York Giants (until I get tired of doing so) because I don’t like the system that produced their so-called “championship”.