Now as much as I hate Eli Manning (for no reason other than he looks like he has down syndrome most of the time), I'll be the first to admit that this win does put him in the elite class of current quarterbacks. Winning one Super Bowl is hard, winning two is harder, and winning both against Tom Brady is nearly impossible. By all accounts Eli should be the best quarterback in the league.
Here's where I differ from most people. RINGS DON'T EQUAL GREATNESS. All I ever hear in sports is that championships equals greatness, and it's just not true. As long as these are still team sports, one player's status on championships that they don't win by themselves. We all know it takes a good team, and usually another superstar to win championships. In the NBA Michael had Scottie, Magic had the whole Showtime squad, and Bird had a Hall of Fame Celtics team. Even with one of the best players to ever touch the rock, Kobe Bryant has never won a championship without Shaq or Pau Gasol. In fact, in the years between the two Kobe didn't make the playoffs and was eliminated in the first round after not showing up in a game 7. Really, the one player to almost win a ring by himself is the man everyone loves to hate Allen Iverson, who almost won it all with this group of bums.
The worst part about the ring factor is that it takes away from truly appreciating great players while they are here. LeBron James is one of the most amazing basketball players in history, and yet every morning I have to hear Skip Bayless hate on him. There's only one trophy per season, and winning takes time. You can see that with former MVP's Dirk Nowitzki and Kevin Garnett, who won in the later part of their careers. With that being said, there will always be great players who weren't in the right situation to win a ring.
Going back to Eli Manning, there's no one on Earth who will say that the kid can't play. It's obvious by how we leads his teams to wins. At the same time, you can't place him above some other players. If someone came up to me and said Eli is better than his brother Peyton just because he has one more ring I'd get the baby powder out and slap them. In a case like this, Eli just had a better opportunity to win. I'll even argue that Eli isn't better than Tom Brady, even though he's beaten him twice in the Super Bowl. Now don't get it confused and think that rings are meaningless, that's why you play the game. All I'm saying is championships have to be taken in context. If rings are everything then Robert Horry is better than Michael Jordan, and Barry Sanders is one of the worst half backs to ever run the ball. With that being said, I think it's time to start measuring legacies by how good a player actually was, and not by how much their team won.
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