Gregg Doyel

INDIANAPOLIS -- So about that Tiquan Underwood thing ...

It was nothing. And it was everything.

It was nothing to the game. Tiquan Underwood, the receiver the New England Patriots released on Saturday night -- roughly 24 hours before the Super Bowl -- might not have been active for the game anyway. He almost definitely wasn't going to be a major factor in what proved to be a 21-17 loss to the Giants. The final Patriots receiver to make the active roster for Super Bowl XLVI, Chad Ochocinco, played a handful of snaps and caught one pass. He was a non-entity in the game, and that's what Tiquan Underwood almost definitely would have been, had he played. A non-entity.

So this whole story is nothing, in a sports way.

And it's everything, in a real-life way. Because Tiquan Underwood is a real-life person, with real dreams and real, yes, feelings. Underwood was one of the hits of Media Day, a charming young man with crazy-tall hair who had a barber carve the Patriots' logo into the back of his hairdo.

You can't make this stuff up.

Underwood is a professional athlete, but he's also a person. He's a man with plans and pride -- and a guy who had all of it ripped from him on Saturday night, at about the time he was trying to decide how to spend his final few hours before going to bed and getting rest for the Super Bowl the next day. That's when Bill Belichick released him, waiting that long presumably to prevent the Giants from claiming Underwood on waivers and using his knowledge against New England. Belichick released Underwood at the best possible time for the Patriots, but the worst possible time for Underwood.

Officially, the Patriots wanted another defensive lineman for the active roster. So when they released Underwood, they also announced that they had signed defensive lineman Alex Silvestro from the practice squad.

But here's the thing:

Silvestro didn't play Sunday night. Only two New England defenders didn't get onto the field, and Alex Silvestro was one of them. In other words, Tiquan Underwood was released for nothing. He was released because Bill Belichick had to be the smartest guy in the room, even if that meant gutting a nice kid like Tiquan Underwood.

This has always been the Belichick way, and the Belichick way has been good for five Super Bowl appearances and three titles in a decade. Belichick's way works, no question. But it's a cold-blooded way that wins games, not hearts. When a player loses his value to Belichick, the player is gone. Even in the realm of professional football, where in theory that possibility is there for every player, nobody has proven to be as bottom-line cold as Belichick.

The Patriots say Underwood will be back with the team next season, and he'd be foolish not to take them up on that. New England is one of the best franchises in the NFL, and who is Tiquan Underwood to say no to the Patriots?

New England is everything. Tiquan Underwood is, relatively speaking, nothing.

As the Patriots made clear on Saturday night.

INDIANAPOLIS -- It's time to consider that maybe New England's Bill Belichick isn't the greatest active coach in the NFL. Yes he has three Super Bowl rings, and three is bigger than two, and Giants coach Tom Coughlin has just two Super Bowl rings.

But Coughlin won both his Super Bowl rings against Belichick, the second coming Sunday night, a 21-17 victory in Super Bowl XLVI.

Three is more than two. We all know that. But head-to-head matters. It must. And head to head, in the most important game in the NFL, the score is Tom Coughlin 2, Bill Belichick 0.

That is not a fluke. That is a trend. And a fact. And a symbol, perhaps, that Coughlin deserves to be considered up there with Belichick as the greatest coach of this era. And seeing how Belichick has been mentioned -- and rightly so -- as one of the greatest coaches of all time ...

That means Tom Coughlin must be mentioned -- and rightly so -- as one of the greatest coaches of all time.

That is the power of the Super Bowl. It shapes legacies -- crushing some, burnishing others. The Super Bowl has burnished the legacy of Coughlin, just as it has burnished the legacy of his quarterback, Eli Manning.

I insist that Peyton, even with one Super Bowl, is better than Eli -- but Eli is a Hall of Famer, right now. If he retires tomorrow, if he never plays again, Eli is a Hall of Famer. So is Tom Coughlin.

So is former Coughlin boss Bill Parcells, for that matter. Parcells didn't make it into the Hall this weekend, but that's an oversight to be corrected another day. And then another day, years later, Coughlin will join his mentor in the Hall of Fame.

Such is the power of the Super Bowl. Such is what Coughlin has accomplished, at the expense of Bill Belichick.

Chris Lytle and Gregg Doyel sparring at Kingdom Martial Arts, February 3, 2012. (Ryan Wilson, CBSSports.com)

GREENFIELD, Ind. -- Chris Lytle doesn't hit like a politician. No shots below the belt, in other words. All to the face -- specifically, my face. We sparred six rounds on Friday, the former UFC fighter and me, and he punches like the professional boxer and cage fighter he used to be ... not like the state senator he's trying to become.

Fascinating guy, Chris Lytle. This is not a political column, so don't read this as an endorsement for Lytle's state senate campaign. Don't read it as the opposite, either. It's neither. But it's recognition of a guy who has always been willing to put his money, as they say, where his mouth is.

That's what he's doing now as he runs for state senator at a time in his life when, frankly, he didn't think he'd be doing such a thing. He's a full-time fireman, husband and father who always fought on the side, first as a pro boxer who built up a 13-1-1 record before switching to mixed martial arts, and then as an MMA guy who went 31-18-5 overall and fought 21 times in the UFC -- taking on the best welterweights in the world, guys like Matt Hughes and Dan Hardy and Josh Koscheck and Matt Serra and Thiago Alves. And Robbie Lawler and Marcus Davis and Nick Diaz. He fought the best of the best and he gave as good as he took, going 11-10 in the UFC with six "fight of the night" awards.

But anyway, those days ended with Lytle's submission victory against Dan Hardy in August, and when his fight career ended he started to think about the bigger picture.

"I've been watching local politics, and I don't see people in it for the right reasons," Lytle told me before our sparring session. "They're not in there to help people in the region or state -- they're in it to help themselves and their friends. It's the good old boys' network, and I decided to stop complaining about it and get in there myself and help fix it."

The state legislature is a part-time job, so Lytle plans to maintain his job as a firefighter. But he says he's finished fighting professionally. More and more, fighters are "retiring" two or three times before finally, irrevocably, being finished. Lytle says that won't be him.

"I got into fighting because I liked the fight game, and wanted to actually do it and not just talk about it," Lytle said. "But you have to have 100 percent focus to do it right, and my focus is on other things."

And now, a little about our sparring session, which took place at Steve Guinn's Kingdom Martial Arts about 20 miles east of Indianapolis. It was my idea, not a tit-for-tat thing but just a chance to get in a workout while I'm town for the Super Bowl. I knew Lytle was from here, so I tweeted him a request to spar. He said yes.

Lytle's savvy campaign manager Beth Dockins turned it into an impromptu campaign stop, mentioning the sparring session on Lytle's campaign twitter and Facebook accounts. Although we were sparring at 2 p.m. on a work day, there were 20 or so people there to watch.



What did they see? The same thing millions of UFC fans have seen over the years: Chris Lytle kicking someone's ass. Problem is, this was my ass. Well, my face. Lytle gave me the option of MMA, but seeing how he has blackbelt-level submissions and I, um, do not ... we stayed with boxing. Unlike almost every other cage fighter I've sparred with, though, Lytle came up as a boxer -- which means he's always comfortable, fluid even, when limited to using "just" his hands as weapons.

And what weapons they are. He's a strong guy -- I didn't ask him, but I bet he benches 300 pounds or so -- and he throws short punches. He especially loves the uppercut, or at least he loved the uppercut against me. I felt like the loser in a game of Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots, my chin getting popped time and again. But he must have hit me in other spots, because when it was over I was bleeding from both lips, the nose and (slightly) from the forehead. My face, never pretty after a sparring session, was a pulpy mess. It was so ugly, Lytle was apologizing to me when the session ended.

No need for that, of course. Lytle beat me up even as he was taking it easy on me. Fighters -- good ones, anyway -- have a code of honor in sparring: The better fighter will go only as hard as the lesser fighter. I went hard after Lytle, and he allowed me to do so, but popped me just enough to make it clear that there was only one alpha dog in the ring, and it wasn't the sportswriter.



Fine by me. It was an honor to be in the ring at all with such a good fighter, and a good man, as (possibly) the future state senator from Indiana, Chris Lytle.

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P.S. The video is of our first round, a warm-up round. It got much more painful intense as the rounds mounted.

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- The NFL playoffs will continue without the top two offenses in the league, now that the New York Giants have eliminated Green Bay.

The Giants' victory on Sunday, which ended a 7-0 run by home teams in the 2012 NFL playoffs, came one day after San Francisco bounced the similarly potent Saints.

The Giants play at San Francisco next Sunday for the NFC title.

In this one, New York stuffed Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers with pressure from the front seven -- linebacker Michael Boley was as devastating as any down lineman -- and with help from Green Bay's receiving corps. The Packers dropped at least five passes, including one in the end zone by Greg Jennings. Instead of drawing within 20-17 on Jennings' (should-be) touchdown, the Packers had to settle for a field goal on the next play that made it 20-13.

The Giants drove for a field goal on their next possession, pushing their lead back to a comfortable two-score margin at 23-13. After the Packers' third lost fumble of the game, this one by running back Ryan Grant that New York returned to the Green Bay 4, the Giants scored on the next play to make it 30-13 with 6:48 to play.

The Giants got more than 300 yards passing from Eli Manning, including a 37-yard Hail Mary to Hakeem Nicks on the final play of the half for a touchdown that gave the Giants a 20-10 lead. Nicks, too strong for the Packers all day, also had a 66-yard scoring reception earlier in the half and finished with seven catches for 165 yards.

As if the Jets could be even more dislikeable, we have this: Multiple players ripping starting quarterback Mark Sanchez in the most gutless way possible. No, not on Twitter. See, using Twitter would have required attaching their name to it.

The Jets? They ripped Sanchez anonymously through the New York Daily News.

And this is not me defending Sanchez. It's not. He could well be "lazy," as one gutless wonder told the newspaper. He could be a "baby," as another gutless Jet said. It's entirely possible that "he goes in a hole when someone tells him the truth," as someone sniveled.

But there's a right way to do things, and a wrong way, and damn if the Jets don't take the wrong way every ... single ... time.

No need to list the transgressions here -- CBSSports.com's server holds just 14.74 kajillion megabytes -- but idiots are aplenty. Rex Ryan, Santonio Holmes, Bart Scott and all these gutless wimps ripping Sanchez anonymously ...

The only person in the organization with any gumption is the backup quarterback, Greg McElroy, who attached his name to some fierce criticism last week. Everyone else? Gutless. No wonder the team choked all season.

DENVER -- He's no longer a novelty, no longer a mystery, no longer a fluke. Tim Tebow is now a playoff-winning quarterback, and not because he managed this game.

He won it.

With Tebow tying two franchise records set by John Elway and throwing the winning touchdown pass in overtime, the Broncos defeated the Steelers 29-23 Sunday to advance to the next round of playoffs, next weekend at New England.

Tebow threw for 316 yards and ran for 50, and produced touchdowns each way. He joined Elway as the only Denver quarterbacks in the postseason to (1) complete two 50-yard passes and (2) throw and run for a touchdown, both in the same game.

Tebow needed just 10 completions to surpass the 300-yard mark, throwing rarely but gouging the Steelers for huge chunks of yardage when he did. That included his 80-yarder to Demaryius Thomas on the first play of overtime for the winning points.

Thomas finished with 204 yards on four catches.

Penn State people are mad, no furious, with the reported hire of Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien as the man who would replace The Man. Which means Penn State fans just don't get it.

And look, PSU people, I'm not mocking you. Not taunting you. Not enjoying your anger or frustration. You're going to see plenty of those people in the next few days, media people and otherwise, people who were so shaken by the Sandusky scandal that they take it out on anything and everything representing Penn State. And I understand their rage, I really do. But I'm not one of them, so don't miss what I'm writing here.

I'm trying to help. Honest. And what occurs to me, from my point on the periphery, is that there are people at Penn State -- even a truly intelligent insider like ex-PSU linebacker LaVar Arrington -- who are so close to the situation that they can't see it for what it is.

And what it is, for Penn State, is impossible.

The administration had no chance to win the press conference, as it's called when the new coach is introduced to acclaim. Whoever that guy is, he wasn't coming to Penn State. Not so soon after ... Sandusky.

It just wasn't going to happen.

The initial hint came way back in November when Joe Paterno was forced out, and the first name to surface was Mike London of Virginia. That's a humble name, Mike London of Virginia. Career record at UVa: 12-13. Four years total as a head coach, the first two at Richmond. And when London was connected to Penn State by media reports, he backtracked as if Penn State was something he almost stepped in.

That was our sign. That was your sign, Penn State fans: This job wasn't going to be filled easily, and as the following two months showed, it wasn't filled easily. Penn State alums didn't want it. Outsiders didn't want it.

Meanwhile, the Penn State administration was trying to conduct its coaching search in privacy, even secrecy, because there was no way the school was going to hire someone with a great resume if that hiring was leaked before it became official. So Penn State did what it could on the down low, and for that Penn State people are mad. I've been getting tweets all morning like this one from a Penn State fan lamenting the "secrecy and arrogance" of the search.

As if there's any other kind, these days.

There are Penn State supporters, LaVar Arrington among them, who insist the job should have gone to interim coach Tom Bradley. And that underscores my earlier point, about some people being too close to the situation to see it clearly.

Tom Bradley was never going to get this job. It would have been outrageous if he had gotten it. And that's not a shot at Tom Bradley, who gets high marks from every media person I've ever talked to about him. But he spent years on staff with Sandusky, and was on staff when this story exploded, and was even the face of the program for the month after the explosion.

That guy can't be given the job on a permanent basis. Not if this school is sincere in its desire -- and the administration sure seems to be sincere -- to put behind it one of the ugliest stories in college football history.

It couldn't be Bradley. It wouldn't be Mike Munchak. Even the sub-.500 coach at a basketball school in the ACC wouldn't touch it.

Other than Bill O'Brien, who was Penn State going to get?

Nobody, that's who. The complaining today from Penn State people is as misguided a reaction as the riot by students the night of Paterno's firing. It's anger for the sake of anger, but it's aimed in the wrong place. Sandusky should be the target. Sandusky, and those who didn't do nearly enough to stop his alleged reign of terror.

This is not Penn State President Rodney Erickson's fault.

This is not Bill O'Brien's fault.

Want to be mad, Penn State? Get mad at Sandusky. Get mad at former president Graham Spanier and former athletics director Tim Curley. Hell, get mad at Joe Paterno.

But if Bill O'Brien truly is your next coach, get behind him, and do it now. You are ... Penn State. Remember?

Time to act like it.

And the Marlins were doing so well.

They hired manager Ozzie Guillen. They signed shortstop Jose Reyes. They signed closer Heath Bell. They signed starting pitcher Mark Buehrle. They talked Hanley Ramirez into moving to third base.

The Marlins were all set to move into their Miami stadium with those shiny pieces, but then they went and did the unthinkable. They invited a cockroach into their new home.

You know his name. Carlos Zambrano. He might not be a bad guy 363 days out of the year, but he'll have two or three (2012 is a leap year!) where he just baffles the brain, alienates the fans, abandons his teammates, disrupts his clubhouse.

Zambrano could win a lot of games, but at what cost? What lessons might he teach, say, Ramirez?

The Cubs are paying Zambrano more money this season than the Marlins -- a lot more -- and the Cubs are paying that price just to be rid of him.

There's a reason. Apparently some lessons must be learned in person.