After he got hammered in the 1996 election, Bob Dole told everyone who would sit still and listen that he didn't take things as hard as he'd feared. "I slept like a baby...woke up crying every two hours," he'd say.

If last night had just been a game, it would have been OK. Even if it meant the end of the dream of a perfect season, we probably could have handled it. If we'd lost to the Ravens back in November, or the Giants back in December, or even the Chargers in January, life would have gone on.

And it still will. But the Pats lost to New York. We had high hopes for the 21st Century New York drought to last a long time, but it's over, and not just over, but over at the expense of our Almost Perfect Patriots. We'll be hearing about this from our friends to the south for years to come.

It's more than just a game when 90% of the country has an emotional investment in watching your team lose. All the Spygate moral scolds can pat themselves on the back and tell themselves that justice has been served, and we don't have an answer. The '72 Dolphins can haul out the champagne one more time, and we don't have an answer. The Belichick-haters can mock Bill's curt and grouchy postgame comments, and we don't have an answer. The strongest link in the chain of championships we fully expected snapped, and we don't have an answer.

If we let ourselves think about the game (which we can do for about 11 seconds, before we see black patches out of the corners of our eyes), we have to hand it to the Giants. This was a grind-it-out, hard-to-watch game that the Pats mastered in the second half of the season after the Blowout Parade ended. It was the kind of close game that characterized the first few Super Bowl runs, the kind where you just wait and wait for Brady and Co. to make the big play that would make the opponents leave shaking their heads and marvelling at how close they came.

Today, that's us. The Giants and...oh God, don't make us say it....Eli Manning made the big plays. The Patriots - their vaunted offensive line, their bend-but-don't-break defense, their All-World quarterback - didn't make the big plays. And that's why we're bleary-eyed and miserable this morning, and why the rest of the world is having a wonderful day at our expense.

Life goes on. The Bruins are still very much in the playoff hunt. The Celtics still have the best record in the league. And pitchers and catchers report next Friday. Life goes on...just not the way we were hoping for.