NBC was about to sign off from its Super Bowl Postgame Show Sunday night when Chris Snee appeared on screen with Dylan and Cooper, the older two of his three sons.

Dylan, 8, and Cooper, 5, celebrated with their dad, clutching the Lombardi Trophy with him as the reward for a second Super Bowl title made its rounds among teammates.

Snee, a Montrose graduate, was one of 16 Giants to take part in both Sunday’s 21-17 victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis and the 17-14 win over the Patriots four years earlier in Arizona.

In a phone interview prior to the game, Snee said his youngest son, Walker, would also be in Indianapolis but would remain at the hotel during the Super Bowl. In that same interview, Snee had referred to watching Dylan enjoy the post-game celebration as his favorite memory from the first Super Bowl win.

Snee contributed to the latest National Football League championship with his usual spot as one of the leaders of the Giants offensive line from his right guard position. He also helped the Giants avoid a potentially devastating turnover when he recovered a teammate’s fumble at the Giants 11 with the team still facing a deficit in the fourth quarter.

The rebuilt offensive line, which struggled at times during a season when the Giants finished last in the league in rushing, did its part to help the team outgain the Patriots, 396-349.

New York averaged more than four yards per carry with 114 yards on 28 attempts. Eli Manning had time to go 30-for-40 passing while being sacked three times.

During the preparation for the game, Snee said it was difficult at times for the revamped offensive line that replaced Rich Seubert and Shaun O’Hara prior to the start of the season.

“It was difficult rotating new guys in, to move on from the group that we had that was so good for so many years, losing two real good players, but also two real good friends,” said Snee, who missed one game with a concussion. “It was a big step for our organization to go in that direction.

“We had to break two new guys in, but then they got hurt and I got hurt. There was shuffling among us.”

By the time the playoff push arrived, the line was playing better. The 49ers pass rush gave the Giants trouble in the National Football Conference Championship Game, but otherwise the offensive line played well in the championship-producing, six-game winning streak to end the season.

“We had so many years of great continuity, and so many years together,” Snee said. “It’s tough when you’re constantly rotating guys in.”

The Giants had averaged just 86.1 rushing yards per game and were 7-7 with two weeks remaining in the regular season. They beat six straight quality opponents to make, then advance through, the playoffs, averaging 114.5 yards per ground along the way.

“Even though we were frustrated, I don’t think we ever lost confidence,” Snee said. “That’s something I think we had the whole time.

“That being said, when you start playing better confidence really increased. Nobody on this team is overconfident, but we go out there fully expecting to win games.”

For the second time in five years, that included winning the biggest game in American sports.

WEEK IN REVIEW

Colby Major scored 23 points, including the 1,000th of his career, Friday night to lead Montrose to a 59-47 boys’ basketball victory over Mountain View.

The first-half champion Meteors have the best record among Susquehanna County boys’ teams in the second half of the Lackawanna League basketball season. They trail Lakeland, the team they beat in a first-half playoff, by one game.

Lakeland is 4-0 and Montrose is 3-1.

Susquehanna and Blue Ridge are each 2-2 in the second half.

The Sabers won two straight for the first times since league play started, beating Mountain View, 50-44, and Elk Lake, 60-55.

Andrzej Tomczyk had 22 points against Mountain View. Cole Mallery followed up 19 points against the Eagles with a game-high 24 against Elk Lake.

In girls’ basketball, Montrose and Lakeland share the second-half lead with 4-0 Division 3 records.

In wrestling, Elk Lake closed out the league schedule with a 45-36 victory over Montrose.

Frank Delesky (132), Derrick Smith (138) and Harold Wehler (285) had pins for Elk Lake.

Trevor Tompkins (182), Jesus Avila (195) and Nick Moore (220) had pins for Montrose.

The final Lackawanna League Division 2 standings were: Western Wayne 6-0, Valley View 5-1, Lackawanna Trail 4-2, Scranton Prep 3-3, Elk Lake 2-4, Blue Ridge 1-5, Montrose 0-6.

By finishing in the bottom three spots in the standings, none of the Susquehanna County schools qualified for the District 2 Class AA Dual Meet Championships.

In professional hockey, Corey Locke of the Binghamton Senators and Colin McDonald of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins each had an assist for the Eastern Conference in an 8-7 shootout loss to the Western Conference in the American Hockey League All-Star Classic.

Binghamton defenseman Mark Borowiecki was one of many players in the game tied for the best plus/minor at plus-2.

COLLEGE CORNER

Montrose graduate Piper Frick Davis was inducted into the Marywood University Athletic Hall of Fame Saturday.

Davis, a 2002 Marywood graduate, was a four-year player on both the field hockey and basketball teams.

Following her senior season in 2001, Davis swept the school’s three major athletic awards - Senior Student-Athlete of the Year, Pacers Club Humanitarian Award and Dr. Jane Farr Award for Excellence in Field Hockey.

The three-time Academic All-American in field hockey, Davis was named Pennsylvania Athletic Conference Female Scholar Athlete of the Year for 2000-01.

Davis was a four-time first-team, all-star and team MVP who was conference Player of the Year in her senior season.

In basketball, Davis was the team MVP and an honorable mention on the conference all-star team as a senior.

Davis, who has four children, lives in Wake Forest, N.C.

WEEK IN REVIEW

The Lackawanna League basketball regular season comes to an end Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 13-14.

Montrose is at Lakeland in a girls’ game Feb. 13 and Lakeland is at Montrose in a boys’ game Feb. 14.

TOM ROBINSON writes a weekly local sports column. He can be reached online at RobbyTR@aol.com or followed on Twitter at @tomjrobinson.

It’s Time To Put Up Or Shut Up

With the season’s first race, the Daytona 500, fast approaching, it’s time for some teams and drivers to either “put up or shut up.”

When a team falls to the bottom of the points standings, who should be faulted; the organization itself, or the driver?

In the case of Dale Earnhardt Jr., his team, Hendrick Motorsports is considered number one in NASCAR, but Earnhardt has yet to win a race with them. He said the first thing a team does when they start losing is blame the driver.

“A driver can only do so much,” he said. “If he doesn’t have a car capable of winning a race, he’s not going to have a good day. If a driver has a poor handling car, he’s going to be stuck back in the middle with all the other guys that are having bad days.”

But Earnhardt is not alone. There are several Cup drivers that have what are considered great teams, but either no wins or a subpar performance.

Joey Logano came to the Cup scene with great expectations, but after several years with Joe Gibbs Racing, he has only one win, thanks to a rainout. The other two JGR teams driven by Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch have several wins.

So the argument might be that Logano just doesn’t have the potential to be a great driver.

Let’s look at the Earnhardt Ganassi team, which fields cars for Juan Montoya and Jamie McMurray. This outfit has adequate funding and good equipment. They announced last week that their 2012 sponsorship quota had been reached.

Jamie McMurray, winner of the 2010 Daytona 500.

With enough money it would seem any team could “buy” themselves out of a hole, by having the latest equipment and racing know-how.

But this hasn’t been true for Ganassi’s two teams.

A year after combining to win four Sprint Cup races, including the sport’s two biggest events, Montoya and McMurray both went winless last year and finished 21st and 27th, respectively, in points. Both drivers had just two top-five finishes all season and were no threat to make the Chase.

How could an organization that won the Daytona 500, the Brickyard 400 and two other Cup races in 2010 fall so far in 2011?

While that still seems somewhat of a mystery to the drivers and crew chiefs, Ganassi has a good idea, and is very specific in summing that up as well.

“It’s obviously looking at the wrong things and being led astray,” he said. “We live in the information age and I don’t want to be in the information age, I want to be in the correct information age. I don’t need bad information, I need correct information.

“And that’s obviously what happens with these teams. They get the wrong information and they are focused on the wrong things. That’s how you think they are going to be good and they end up being bad. They were good for reasons that they don’t even know why.”

The information highway in NASCAR runs so fast that what is new today may be outdated tomorrow. Rick Hendrick told a group of reporters last week during the Charlotte Media Tour, “If you plan on using last year’s technology and information, you might as well close up shop.”

Ganassi cleaned house during the off season. Gone are competition director Steve Hmiel and team manager Tony Glover, two long-time veterans of the sport. Glover had been with the organization since co-owner Felix Sabates sold the majority of the team to Ganassi and Hmiel came over when the team merged with Dale Earnhardt Inc. in 2009.

Crew chief Brian Pattie also is gone, along with several other crewmen and engineers.

Former Roush Fenway Racing manager Max Jones has taken over as team manager while former Red Bull Racing technical director John Probst is the new technical director at Earnhardt Ganassi.

The first order of business is trying to figure out where the team got off track.

McMurray says simply, “I don’t know.” Asked what changed from 2010 to 2011, he says, “Nothing.”

“That’s what makes it so frustrating for us. We ended 2010 so good and we went into last year and didn’t really change anything and struggled,” he said. “… It wasn’t like we went back and tried to recreate the wheel and make things better; we didn’t change anything. We just didn’t have the success that we had, and the cars just weren’t as fast.

“It seemed like we took just a short break (after 2010) and we went back to the track and no one knew our name, we didn’t know our name. We didn’t know where we were headed for some strange reason. The difficult part is putting our finger on what happened.”

Felix Sabates said that the team’s cars simply were not being built correctly.

“We went to (one race) and both cars wrecked within half a lap of each other. The frame came apart in both cars,” he said.

“We thought we had something great, and it might have been great for IndyCar, and that’s where we had some of the engineering people we had [come] from. That doesn’t work. You’ve got to have a guy from (NASCAR) to make the cars go.”

Sabates said another sure sign that the problem was the cars was Montoya’s performance at Infineon Raceway, where he finished 22nd. Montoya has two Cup wins - both on road courses, including a 2007 victory at Infineon.

“When you go to a road course and Montoya is not one of the prominent drivers, that tells you something is wrong,” Sabates said. “That might have been the eye-opener for Chip, when he saw Montoya in the back of the pack at Sonoma.”

Sabates said it was difficult to pinpoint the source of the problems, thus the wholesale changes.

“It’s time for us to put up or shut up. This has got to be the year when we shine and show people that we are here again.”

The 54th annual Daytona 500 on Sunday, Feb. 26 will carry a record purse of more than $19 million as well as a new contingency award that will payout $200,000 to the driver leading at the completion of Lap 100. The posted awards for "The Great American Race" are $19,142,601 with the winner collecting a minimum of $1,431,325. The second, third, fourth and fifth-place finishers in the Daytona 500 will receive a minimum of $1,050,075, $759,600, $609,900 and $486,550. The Daytona 500 Mid-Race Leader Award will reward the driver leading the midway point of the historic 200-lap, 500-mile race with a $200,000 bonus. If the race is under caution at Lap 100, the leader of the race at the completion of the fifth consecutive green flag lap following the caution will receive the award.

Racing Trivia Question: How many Daytona 500 wins does Michael Waltrip have?

Last Week’s Question: Who won the 2011 Daytona 500? Answer. Trevor Bayne.

You may contact the Racing Reporter at hodges@race500.com.

The Montrose girls’ basketball team had a perfect January, highlighted by a nearly perfect night for senior guard Dallas Ely.

Ely scored 30 points, made a variety of other contributions and became the school’s all-time leading scorer during the team’s biggest game of the season Jan. 12.

She did not stop there. After setting the career record, Ely actually increased her season scoring average to keep the Lady Meteors rolling.

For those efforts, Ely has been selected as the latest Susquehanna County Transcript Athlete of the Month. She also won the award in February, 2010 and January, 2011.

The performance on the court has also helped land Ely a partial scholarship to play Division II basketball at West Chester University.

“I loved the school and I loved the coaches,” said Ely, who plans to study criminal justice or forensics. “Their style of play just seemed like the right fit for me.”

Ely averaged 23.3 points as Montrose went 10-0 in January, extending a winning streak that has now reached 15 games. The career point total reached 1,533 by the end of the month.

Although she later scored 34 points in a game against Lackawanna Trail, the highlight of the month came on the night Ely broke Ellen Mulligan’s 31-year-old school record for career points.

Ely had 30 points, six steals, six rebounds, four assists and a blocked shot during a 54-28 victory in a battle of division unbeatens with Forest City, the team the Lady Meteors needed to top in games to assure themselves of the last two Lackawanna League Division 3 championships. She produced those numbers without playing in the fourth quarter.

“I felt like tonight was the night for a big win and for everything to happen,” Ely said after setting the record that night.

Montrose ended the month with the only perfect record - boys or girls - in any of the three divisions of the Lackawanna League. After going 7-0 in the first half, Montrose improved to 4-0 in the second half with its first win of February and ran its overall record to 16-2.

The Lady Meteors dominated throughout, more than doubling the point production of their opponents. The closest games were a 49-41 victory over Lakeland, which was tied for second place at the time, and a 45-30, non-league victory over Division 1 opponent North Pocono.

On the season, Ely is averaging more than 21 points and two 3-pointers per game.

“We need to finish up the season strong,” Ely said. “We can’t let up now.”

Ely has been a starter for four years in basketball and is in position to do the same in softball where she is a shortstop and leadoff hitter. She started in soccer as a freshman and sophomore, missed her junior season with an injury then switched to volleyball in the fall, landing a starting spot for her senior season.

Dallas is the daughter of Bud and Connie Ely of South Montrose.

NO. DATE; TRACK; SIZE; TV; TV START

1. Feb. 25; Daytona, Florida; 2.5; ESPN; Noon.

2. Mar. 3; Phoenix, Arizona; 1; ESPN2; 4 p.m.

3. Mar. 10; Las Vegas, Nevada; 1.5; ESPN2; 5 p.m.

4. Mar. 17; Bristol, Tennessee; 0.53; ESPN; 1 p.m.

5. Mar. 24; Fontana, California; 1.5; ESPN; 5 p.m.

6. Apr. 13; Ft. Worth, Texas; 1.5; ESPN2; 8 p.m.

7. Apr. 27; Richmond, Virginia; 0.75; ESPN2; 7 p.m.

8. May 5; Talladega, Alabama; 2.66; ABC; 3 p.m.

9. May 11; Darlington, South Carolina; 1.36; ESPN2; 6:30 p.m.

10. May 20; Newton, Iowa; 0.87; ESPN; 1:30 p.m.

11. May 26; Charlotte, North Carolina; 1.5; ABC; 2:30 p.m.

12. June 2; Dover, Delaware; 1; ESPN; 1:30 p.m.

13. June 16; Brooklyn, Michigan; 2; ABC; 3:30 p.m.

14. June 23; Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin; 4.04; ESPN; 3 p.m.

15. June 29; Kentucky Speedway; 1.5; ESPN2; 7 p.m.

16. July 6; Daytona, Florida; 2.5; ESPN; 7 p.m.

17. July 14; Loudon, New Hampshire; 1.05; ESPN; 2:30 p.m.

18. July 22; Chicago, Illinois; 1.5; ESPN; 2 p.m.

19. July 28; Indianapolis, Indiana; 2.5; ESPN; 4 p.m.

20. Aug. 4; Newton, Iowa; 0.87; ESPN2; 7:30 p.m.

21. Aug. 11; Watkins Glen, New York; 2.45; ABC; 2 p.m.

22. Aug. 18; Montreal, Canada; 2.70; ESPN; 2 p.m.

23. Aug. 24; Bristol, Tennessee; 0.53; ESPN; 7 p.m.

24. Sep. 1; Atlanta, Georgia; 1.54; ESPN2; 6:30 p.m.

25. Sep. 7; Richmond, Virginia; 0.75; ESPN2; 7 p.m.

26. Sep. 15; Chicago, Illinois; 1.5; ESPN2; 3 p.m.

27. Sep. 22; Kentucky Speedway; 1.5; ESPN; 3:30 p.m.

28. Sep. 29; Dover, Delaware; 1; ESPN2; 3 p.m.

29. Oct. 12; Charlotte, North Carolina; 1.5; ESPN2; 7 p.m.

30. Oct. 20; Kansas City, Kansas; 1.5; ESPN; 3 p.m.

31. Nov. 3; Ft. Worth, Texas; 1.5; ESPN; 7 p.m.

32. Nov. 10; Phoenix, Arizona; 1; ESPN; 3:30 p.m.

33. Nov. 17; Homestead, Florida; 1.5; ESPN2; 4 p.m.

All times are Eastern.