Ricky Williams, the Dolphins’ second-leading all-time rusher whose time in Miami was marked by success and controversy, said he’s retiring from football.

Said Giants QB Eli Manning after a second title in four years: ‘This isn’t about bragging rights. This is about something bigger.’

It was the moment of truth Ahmad Bradshaw had dreamed of since he was a kid hearing play-by-play commentary inside his head. With his team trailing and a minute left in the game, it was his chance to score the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl.

I Nice to see an old warrior who socked away enough of his haul. Jim Plunkett, the former Oakland Raiders quarterback who won two Super Bowls, brought 15 people to this one at $1,200 a head just for tickets.

I Yes, magic still exists in the big city. A few months ago they were ready to ride Tom Coughlin out on a rail. Today they’ll be strewing rose petals in his path.

INDIANAPOLIS This was the right ending, the perfect ending really. This was Eli Manning waiting until the final drive of the season to give his team another comeback win, which is basically the script he and the New York Giants followed all year and seemingly follow every time they win Super Bowls.

For the second time in five seasons, quarterback Eli Manning directed an underdog Giants team past Tom Brady and the Patriots in the Super Bowl, this time doing it in brother Peyton Manning’s town.

This, quite simply, was a blueprint for how a Super Bowl broadcast should be done. With exceptional announcing, timely but restrained use of graphics and nifty angles on replays, NBC delivered exemplary coverage of Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday.

How unlikely is a safety being the first score of a Super Bowl? One site taking prop bets had it at 60-1.

As the last Super Bowl before the recession, South Florida’s 07 game continues out-pricing other Super Bowls. Little cities don’t help: prices down 15 percent from last year’s game in Dallas.

No, no, the Giants and New England spent the week insisting, revenge on the Giants for that 17-14 upset in Super Bowl XLII plays no role in this game. Why, look at the rosters! It’s not even a rematch of the game that cost the Patriots a perfect 19-0 season.

INDIANAPOLIS The NFL is a quarterback league. The teams with the best quarterbacks win most. The quarterbacks are protected most. The quarterbacks in the draft are valued most.

Cortez Kennedy crashed into the Pro Football Hall of Fame the same way he used to crash into people who tried to block the old Miami Hurricane.

Is there a pattern to any of this? A formula? A key? A clue? There must be historical guideposts that indicate or at least suggest why teams reached a Super Bowl. How they did it. Right?

Peyton Manning illustrated last week why football is like anything else in entertainment. He has a future that is essentially unknowable, but storms of speculation swirled around him in a way that was curious because we’re not so good in sports at accepting “I don’t know” as a correct answer to a question, especially not in the soap-opera-for-males world of sports. This led to Yahoo! reporting that Manning’s injury is more dire than expected and ESPN reporting that he had been cleared to play, all of the conflicting information from anonymous sources, noise disguised as news, the media feeding the interest because the interest feeds the media. The truth? Ehhhh, whatever. That’s ancillary. All that really matters is the interest — both the kind given by fans and the kind given by banks.

<span class="bold">WHEN THE PATRIOTS RUN THE BALL</span>

If Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin remind you of Bill Parcells, that’s no surprise. Sunday’s two Super Bowl coaches learned much of their trade under him.

The Miami lawsuit is one of 20 the NFL faces nationwide, alleging the league ignored evidence that head injuries incurred during the game results in serious health issues later on.