I was really hoping they’d just close the stadium at halftime.

The mojo from last week was fumbled away early by Mario Manningham, who’s been the perfect candidate this season to do just that, whether it be complete lack awareness of the sideline (lost critical touchdown at end of Philly game) or complete lack of ability to catch a football (countless occasions).

Combine that with a few absurd calls and no-calls early on and New York suddenly resembled their opponent from a week prior, free falling by the second quarter.

The slaughter was apparently too brutal for my Washington Redskins-market television station to bear, which flipped to another game prior to the fourth quarter. Apparently seeing New York taste its own medicine isn’t worth watching Carolina reenact the end of Fargo on us. Don’t’ want to think about it? Then, let’s just saw they beat the Giants with a shovel and shoved us in a wood chipper.

On the bright side, New York narrowly avoided the worst home loss in Giants Stadium’s 34-year history with their 41-9 performance. And it was good to see them put in some of their second stringers in what (I hope) was a virtual tryout for next season.

On the dark side, I nearly vomited upon hearing the announcers note that opponents had a 19-for-20 success rate against New York’s defense on third-and-one, which I think is one of the examples in Webster’s dictionary next to the word “gutless”. When Steve Spagnuolo left, did he really take their mental, emotional and physical toughness with him?

The zebras were no help in the early demise either, calling pass interference when it was completely obvious that Steve Smith had just tangled feet with the defender. This was soon followed by a no-call on Muhsin Muhammad for fully extending his arms to push Terrell Thomas when the 60-year-old caught a touchdown, or a blatant jersey pull in the midst of Eli Manning’s first interception. And this was all with New York in the game.

I was going to say that after the official’s own pathetic performance, they should all be loaded in a cage, and dropped to the bottom of the harbor. But that’s certainly too harsh. So I’m going to tame down the critique, and just say they should all be banned from working in the NFL again, and stripped of pension.

Of course, that’s a ridiculous thing to say, partially because it’s no excuse for the receivers growing unfocused, Eli growing inaccurate, or Eli’s offensive line growing yet more decrepit.

Is Giants Stadium cursed? Are they really just closing the door on a lot of horrible late-season memories over the past several years? How often have those winter games at Giants Stadium left a bad taste in your mouth this decade? 90 percent of the time? More than that? How’d we feel after 23-11 in the divisional round against Philly last season, or 23-0 in the wild card round against Carolina in 2006? I mean, the Giants haven’t won a home playoff game in nearly nine years.

In my Week 14 column I pointed out that Eli Manning — one of the league’s best quarterbacks, especially on the road — was 4-9 in post-November home games. Well, now he’s 4-11. I don’t know if that’s a commentary on him, the Big Blue players of this decade, or the stadium. Options two (significantly) and three (completely) will be eliminated this offseason.

So I might not shed too many tears at the G-Men escaping an aesthetically unpleasing, performance diminishing, hard-to-get-to piece of concrete — no matter how good some of the Giants teams that have played there were, or how great of memories people have had there, or how many of Eli’s passes have been caught in its cyclonic winds. Still, there are the good memories, which make my sentiment bittersweet. Can’t say the same for the team.

Despite mercifully removing themselves from the field, Sunday’s Giants even managed to ruin halftime for the 78,000-plus in attendance; the time that was scheduled for pride and celebration of Giants Stadium nostalgia can be summed up with the following quote, from the man charged with the unenviable task of directing fans to the video board:

"It was a nice ceremony, too," Bob Papa said in the New York Post. "Too bad everybody was angry."

To paraphrase New York’s abominable performance on Sunday, “So long Giants Stadium, #### You.”

---THOMAS EMERICK.