Doug Ford Tries to Overturn Giants’ Super Bowl Win

"And in the time remaining, I'd like to talk about... Da Bears."

Everyone in Toronto knows that Etobicoke councillor Doug Ford is a huge football fan, just like Mayor Rob Ford. The brothers have made no secret of their desire to lure an NFL team to Toronto, and Super Bowl Sunday is famously their favourite day of the year. But after last weekend’s exciting game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, Doug is surprising many by launching a campaign to overturn the results of the game, a 21-17 triumph by the Giants.

While insisting that the NFL is supreme, a group of Etobicoke councillors led by Mr. Ford is attempting an end-run around last week’s result, sending a letter to Commissioner Roger Goodell asking him to allow the Bears to be declared the winner of the game. This is the latest gambit in Ford’s strategy to find respect for the Bears, who play in the US city that he calls his second home. The Bears did not make the playoffs, let alone play in the Super Bowl, which Mr. Ford calls “a real shit-slap in the face to all the hard-working taxpayers of Chicago.” He’s paying for the lobbying effort–which he calls SOB or “Save Our Bears”–out of his own deep, daddy-provided pockets.

“It’s really incredible that he’s trying to make the results of the Super Bowl, the supreme deciding force in football, irrelevant,” said Councillor Joe Mihevc, a left-leaning opponent of the Mayor and his brother, as well as a better judge of football talent, based on his record of defeating the Mayor in the Council football pool this past season. “But I will say one thing, SOB is a great name for this thing–it suits Doug to a T.”

For his part, Mr. Ford counters that “The recent decision by the NFL to move ahead with awarding the Vince Lombardi trophy to the Giants poses a number of concerns.”

The letter to Goodell added that heroics by Giants quarterback Eli Manning at last Sunday’s Super Bowl “reversed the direction” of a March, 2011, memorandum of understanding between the NFC, AFC, Commissioner’s office, and football fans that “the Giants are a bunch of East Coast, latte-sipping elitists.”

Reached for comment, Commissioner Goodell said that the memorandum of understanding was “non-binding” and required the Bears to actually make the playoffs. Mr. Goodell indicated last week that the winner of the Super Bowl has to be one of the teams playing in the game.

During Tuesday’s press conference announcing his challenge, Mr. Ford’s allies briefly debated the question of whether their gambit was consistent with football tradition. “I respect the game of football,” said Mr. Ford. “But football has to start respecting the fact that the Bears rule.”