The year 2008 has been a fantastic one for sex scandals. Even before we had John Edwards and Rielle Hunter, we had Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson, and maybe even Madonna and A-Rod. And now that it's summer, it seems like we can talk of nothing else. The Edwards scandal has not left the news cycle for one day since it was revealed. So when any public figure receives letters of blackmail these days from two women threatening to go public with stories of an affair, it's bound to send him or her into a tailspin of panic.

Unless, of course, the "stories" are not true. That's what happened to Giants coach Tom Coughlin, in July. He received two letters of blackmail from women who claimed to have slept with him during a trip with the team to Philadelphia in late 2007. Coughlin happened to know the stories weren't true — hey, a 61-year-old grandpa will remember having sex with two chicks, in Philly — so he turned the letters over to the Feds. They quickly tracked down the perpetrator, a cranky Philadelphia car-dealership employee named Herbert Simpson. Simpson had demanded $10,000 and $15,000 on behalf of the two women, who turned out to be real-life former co-workers at a local Wawa. His goal, it turned out, wasn't even to harass the Super Bowl–winning coach; he was just trying to get "revenge" on his fellow employees from a previous job. As though working at a Wawa in Philadelphia isn't punishment enough.

TRAP PLAY TARGETS GIANTS [NYP]