National Football League

Osi pledges unlikely bid for LT's ring

Published May. 19, 2012 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Bids for New York Giants great Lawrence Taylor's Super Bowl ring reached $192,001 on Saturday night as the auction entered into extended bidding.

There were 30 bids for the ring on SCP Auctions when bidding had been scheduled to close, but bidding was extended as offers continued to flow in.

Earlier Saturday, current Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora promised to buy back Taylor his Super Bowl XXV ring.

The catch was that Umenyiora would only bid to win the auction if he landed 500,000 followers on Twitter.

The British-born NFL star said that if he was the successful bidder, he would choose one of his Twitter followers at random to present Taylor with the ring.

Originally, Umenyiora said via Twitter on Saturday he would buy the ring back if he reached 1 million followers.

Even with the reduced target, Umenyiora was well off having to cough up the money — as he only had about 48,000 Twitter followers on Saturday night.

Taylor, meanwhile, was still coming to terms with the fact that his Super Bowl ring, which he won at the end of the 1990-91 season when the Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills in the title game, was even up for auction.

A longtime representative of Taylor told FOX Sports' Jay Glazer on Friday that the former NFL linebacker had given the championship ring to his son TJ who could do whatever he wanted with it.

"Lawrence was in fact unaware of it but said he gave it to TJ and it's his right to do what he wants with it. He's fine with whatever TJ decided," Mark Lepselter told Glazer.