HOUSTON -- As soon as New England Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski was satisfied with his Lombardi trophy selfie, the plan was to pass the 22-inch, 7-pound sterling silver bauble into the waiting arms of special teams captain Matthew Slater. By then, though, the trophy had already made two full circuits of the crowded, joyous locker room inside NRG Stadium. It had been smooched, hugged, pumped, cradled and caressed by nearly every team member. ("Chest hair or no chest hair?" Gostkowski had laughed as he fiddled with his shirt collar before posing with Lombardi.) The once-shimmering world championship prize was looking a little, well, "nasty" is what lineman Marcus Cannon shouted when he saw the splotchy, smudgy condition of the trophy headed for the beloved and respected Slater, a six-time Pro Bowl pick. "Naw, naw, naw, this won't do for Slate," yelled Cannon. "Give me that thing."

"Chest hair or no chest hair?"
Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski, while fiddling with his shirt collar before posing for a Lombardi selfie

Cannon, a West Texas native and TCU grad who made the key block on James White's 2-yard TD run in overtime to cap one the greatest comebacks in sports history, wasn't finished cleaning things up for the Patriots on this historic night. He intercepted the trophy before it reached Slater and grabbed a big blue bath towel with one hand and a fistful of Purell from a wall dispenser with the other. After a flurry of buffing and wiping, he delivered a proper Lombardi trophy, shiny and spotless, to his esteemed teammate.

It made sense. After five Super Bowl titles since the 2001 season, the Patriots have more recent experience than anyone in the care and handling of the most prized possession in sports.

The trophy, named in honor of the five-time NFL champion coach Vince Lombardi and built from a design sketched on a cocktail napkin during a 1966 lunch between Pete Rozelle and Tiffany & Co.'s Oscar Reidner, made its first appearance inside NRG Stadium with 1:57 left and while the whole world thought it was still going to Atlanta. A white-gloved rep from Tiffany & Co., which handcrafts the Italian silver in a four-month process each year, took the trophy out of its familiar robin egg blue velvet bag at the 10-yard line near the Falcons bench. There, he held it through the end of regulation and into overtime as the Patriots completed their stunning comeback.

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At game's end, tradition dictates that the Tiffany rep hand the trophy off to a former NFL great for a 30-yard walk through a gantlet of players and to the foot of the postgame awards podium. This year, the task fell to former Patriot and three-time Super Bowl champ Willie McGinest. In what has to be the most NFL moment ever, a worldwide audience of millions saw and heard McGinest take the shiny, clean artwork from a guy wearing white gloves and stomp through a mob of sweaty, bloodied, exhausted players who slobbered all over it while McGinest screamed at them to "kiss this [expletive] trophy, man, [expletive] kiss it!"