Twenty bucks. No points. Our Giants.

I was in Las Vegas, going to UNLV, and I had no money. I put twenty bucks on the Giants to win Super Bowl XXV.

Straight up. No points.

Buffalo was favored. I took my Giants. Twenty dollars mattered to me then, but this team mattered a hell of a lot more.

When they won, I went fucking nuts.

That is the personal version of 20–19. The football version is one of the great things this franchise has ever done, and the two versions have been living together in my head ever since.

We knew these men.

The Giants started 10–0 and finished 13–3. The defense allowed the fewest points in the league. LT was still there. So were Carl Banks, Gary Reasons, Leonard Marshall, Mark Bavaro, Phil Simms, and so many of the players who had helped make 1986 ours.

That familiarity mattered. We had watched this group earn a championship. Seeing them make another run felt like watching people you trusted come back to finish more work.

Then Simms broke his foot against Buffalo on December 15. Two regular-season games remained. Jeff Hostetler had to take over a team with a legitimate chance to win the Super Bowl.

Think about the weight of that assignment. Your starting quarterback is gone and the season is still right there. Hostetler won the last two regular-season games, then all three playoff games. He gave the team exactly what the situation demanded.

Seven to three. Face mask to face mask.

Before the playoff rematch, there was December 3 at Candlestick. Both teams were 10–1. San Francisco beat us 7–3, and the image I still carry is Phil Simms and Ronnie Lott right in each other’s faces.

That loss is one of my favorite Giants games to remember. Those two men, that rivalry, neither one backing away. Phil was my quarterback. I loved seeing him stand there.

It didn’t put a win in the standings. It belongs in the season anyway. Some games tell you what a team means to you before you know how the year ends.

First, take it from the champions.

The Giants beat Chicago 31–3. Then they went to Candlestick Park to face a San Francisco team trying to win its third straight Super Bowl.

They won 15–13 without scoring a touchdown. Five Matt Bahr field goals. Gary Reasons running thirty yards on a fake punt. Leonard Marshall helping make the afternoon miserable for the 49ers.

Late in the fourth quarter, Erik Howard forced Roger Craig’s fumble and Taylor recovered it. Give both men their credit. Howard made the ball come out; LT made sure it was ours.

The Giants moved into range. Bahr’s 42-yard kick went through as time expired. San Francisco’s run was over. Ours was going to Tampa.

There are wins that feel good and wins that leave you wanting to shake every player’s hand. That one belongs in the second pile.

Whitney. The anthem. The country watching.

Super Bowl XXV was played on January 27, 1991, during the Gulf War. Operation Desert Storm had begun ten days earlier. The war was still going on when the teams took the field.

Whitney Houston sang the national anthem, and that performance became part of how the country remembers the day. It belongs to my memory of the game, too. Some moments stay attached to an event so completely that you can’t really separate them afterward.

The security, the flags, the uncertainty about what was happening overseas, the size of the audience: there was a lot surrounding this football game. The game had to find its place inside a much larger moment.

Then the ball was kicked, and the Giants had to deal with a Buffalo offense that could score in a hurry.

Keep the football.

The Bills led 12–3 after Bruce Smith sacked Hostetler for a safety. Hostetler held onto the ball while being brought down in the end zone. That mattered. Two points hurt. A loose ball and a Buffalo touchdown could have hurt a lot more.

Before halftime, Hostetler took the Giants 87 yards and found Stephen Baker for a 14-yard touchdown with twenty-five seconds left. Now it was 12–10. We were right there.

Then came the possession I still love thinking about.

The Giants took the second-half kickoff and kept the ball for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Buffalo’s offense watched from the sideline while New York worked its way down the field.

On third-and-thirteen, Mark Ingram caught the ball short of the line to gain and fought his way through defenders for fourteen yards. Watch that play again. Watch how much work is packed into getting those last few yards. That drive keeps living because Ingram refuses to let it die.

Ottis Anderson finished it with a one-yard touchdown. Giants, 17–12.

That was the second half I was losing my mind over. We had the ball. We kept the ball. The Bills couldn’t run their beautiful offense while our guys were still out there earning first downs.

It still came down to one kick.

Bill Belichick’s defense gave Buffalo different looks and extra defensive backs, trying to take away the passing game even when that meant accepting room for Thurman Thomas to run. Thomas was outstanding. His 31-yard touchdown put Buffalo back in front, 19–17.

The Giants answered with another long possession and a short Bahr field goal. Now it was 20–19. There was still a lot of football to survive.

By the end, the Giants had held the ball for 40:33. Anderson had 102 rushing yards and would be the MVP. All of that control, all of that work, and Buffalo still got Scott Norwood a 47-yard field-goal attempt.

The kick went wide right. Four seconds remained.

One point. A second Super Bowl championship. A broke college kid in Las Vegas with twenty bucks on his team and absolutely no ability to behave reasonably.

The second one had its own meaning.

The 1986 Giants had given the kid in me a dominant champion. The 1990 Giants gave me the satisfaction of seeing so many of those same men find another way to win.

They lost their starting quarterback. They beat the defending champions on the road. They went into the Super Bowl against a favored team and made the game as difficult as it needed to be.

I think about the anthem. I think about Ingram fighting for the first down. I think about Anderson running while Buffalo waited. I think about how sure I was that I wanted my twenty dollars on the Giants.

I didn’t take the points. We only needed one.