So it began yesterday in the American Heartland, where the Patriots and New York Giants will clash on Sunday in the center of the football world. Let's be honest here. Putting aside all point spreads and individual biases, the Giants have recently been playing better football than anyone. In their last five games, the Giants have effectively knocked the New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys, Atlanta Falcons, Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers from contention, head coach Tom Coughlin and troops running the gauntlet to earn their way into the most celebrated event in sports.
The Patriots? They tipped over a succession of empty soup cans before defeating the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game, and even then it took some extremely good fortune. How the Patriots and Giants got here are two very different stories, though the beauty of the Super Bowl is that none of it really matters.
Once you're here, you're here. And as Patriots history has taught us during the bookend years of 2001 and 2007, the Super Bowl is the most glaring example of any given Sunday, the phrase that has come to define the modern NFL.
Before anyone suggests this is all somehow a way to discredit the Patriots for being here, you are badly missing the point. When it comes to the Super Bowl, everyone is lucky. The one possible exception was the Patriots of 2007, a team so motivated and dripping with talent that we all expected them to be here. New England's utter dominance that season made the entire year one rather long and relatively joyless exercise, particularly following a Week 9 victory here in Indianapolis that made something abundantly clear.
The Patriots weren't playing for a championship that season.
They were playing for the right to be called the greatest team ever, perhaps in any sport.
