TAMPA – Now, here’s a sporting event with a twist.
For the first time in recorded history, the New York team is – take deep breath here before continuing – the good guys!
Unaccustomed as we are to affection from any life form existing on the wrong side of the Hudson River, tonight’s Super Bowl XXXV will be a healthy dose of culture shock for anyone in Raymond James Stadium tonight, or camped out in front of 200 million TV sets around the world.
Thanks to the proliferation of cameras, microphones and notebooks that descended upon Tampa for Super Bowl week, the world already knows that the nasty, arrogant, selfish, big-mouthed and big-headed team – and that only covers Tony Siragusa – is the one from the charming and genteel city of Baltimore.
Now, those are adjectives usually reserved as the sole property of whichever team represents New York. Any sport, any season, we always seem to have the team America loves to loathe.
So here come the New York Giants to the Super Bowl for the first time in 10 years, and guess what? They forget to bring even a single convicted felon with them.
Their coach, Jim Fassel, could never win an unpopularity contest against Brian Billick, who this week retired the award for insufferability, previously owned by one of our own, Bill Parcells.
Nobody has a nasty word to say about Wellington Mara or Bob Tisch, the co-owners of the Giants, but plenty of people in two cities have nothing good to say about Art Modell, and I haven’t even asked anyone in his old Brooklyn neighborhood for an opinion.
All week long, while the Ravens have been blowing more smoke than a Baltimore sweat shop, the Giants have been humble and low-key.
They come to this Super Bowl hat-in-hand, staring down at the ground while chewing on a fingernail and pawing the dirt with the toe of their boot.
They began every answer with something like, “Aw, shucks, ma’am . . .”
And to top it off, they are the underdogs, expected not just to get beaten by the Big Bad Ravens, but maybe even shut out!
Face it, New York, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
How could we ever send such an ill-suited group of – dare I say it? – gentlemen to a ground war like the Super Bowl?
No wonder some people persist in calling them the Jersey Giants.
New York teams are supposed to have guys like Ray Lewis, who has the same Hall of Fame numbers as O.J.: two murder charges, one dubious “acquittal.”
Instead, we got Jason Sehorn and his supply of hair gels, sprays and pomades.
The Baltimores have big, fat, blustery Siragusa. A savage who probably uses the wrong fork at dinner. If, in fact, he bothers to use a fork.
The Giants have big, fat, serious Glenn Parker. A wine connoisseur!
We’re supposed to have the greedy and obnoxious owner. After all, this is the hometown of George Steinbrenner, isn’t it?
Our coach is expected to be the blowhard. We let this hayseed Billick walk off with a distinction that used to belong to us.
And it was our tarnished quarterback, Kerry Collins, who set the tone for the week with his Oprah Winfrey moment before the 3,000-headed monster known as the media.
Just what in Tarpon Springs is going on here?
Clearly, there is only one thing left for the New York Good Guys to do: Go out and give the Big Bad Ravens a good beating.
It can be done, you know.
A year before these Baltimore Ravens were dubbed – mostly by themselves – as the second coming of the ’72 Dolphins, they were a mediocrity, an 8-8 team with a pretty good defense and a pretty bad offense.
Now, they boast of having The Greatest Defense of All Time, and yet, a month ago the Jets – the hapless Jets of Testaverde, Groh, and a receiving corps of flashlights – lit up the Ravens for 481 yards passing.
And that ain’t all. In Week 2, before The Legend had started to bloom, the Jaguars’ Jimmy Smith dropped 15 catches on them for three TDs and nearly 300 yards.
I know it’s out of character this week for a New Yorker to be so brazen, but allow me to suggest that perhaps, the Greatest Defense of All Time can be had through the air.
And let’s also not forget that the Giants have a pretty good defense, too.
In fact, if any defense in this game is likely to pitch a shutout, it is the Giants’.
After all, the unit that shut down Daunte Culpepper, Randy Moss, Cris Carter and Robert Smith shouldn’t lose much sleep over the likes of Trent Dilfer, Shannon Sharpe and a bunch of guys named Lewis.
In fact, if any team should be laughing right about now, it is the Giants contemplating the Big Bad Baltimore offense. Operative word: Bad.
The Ravens have dug a pretty deep hole for themselves with their mouths this week:
Peter Boulware: “One of our goals is to get a shutout. We expect that, and anything less than that is beneath our standards.”
Chris McAlister: “We don’t feel like anyone can beat us. We’ve been thinking about a shutout all week.”
Siragusa: “You don’t think this team can shut out the Giants?”
At this point, it seems like shutout or Shut Up for the Ravens. There is no in-between.
Personally, I never think it is a particularly good sign when athletes in any sport mouth off too much.
It usually means they are trying to convince themselves, and all they wind up doing is revealing to their listeners just how unsure they really are.
But it really doesn’t matter whether the Ravens win or lose the football game tonight.
They’ve already lost the war for the affection of the American public.
That’s one the New York guys never win, but faced with this kind of opposition, it was never even close.
Don’t be surprised if the game turns out to be just as much of a mismatch.