Throw your picks in below if you feel like it. As usual, bear in mind that I know little about football and don’t pay much attention to it until the playoffs.
My instinct is to take the Giants and the points, although I would still predict a Pats win. Double-digit spreads always feel like sucker bets to me. That said, in this case, I think there’s a decent chance the Patriots will try to run up the score, on top of the fact that they’ve already seen the best the Giants can throw at them and have now had two solid weeks to prepare for it. So I’ll say the Patriots win and beat the spread – say, 41-24.
One other thought on the game. I’m a casual Patriots’ fan, since they’re the local team and they hired Parcells around the time I settled up here – I have always loved that defense-first style of football – and now it’s just habit to root for them, but it doesn’t ruin my week when they lose. This time, though, I’ll be rooting hard for them for a reason unrelated to the franchise: I like history.
When I was a kid, I followed all sports. If Newsday printed standings for a league, I’d pick a favorite team and follow it. (I always rooted for the Denver team when there was one. I still don’t really know why.) And every year, I’d root for an NFL team to go undefeated. There was just something so appealing about that zero in the “L” column – it hadn’t been done since before I was born, and to a kid who liked math, there was something beautiful in the idea of a team going 16-0. (And, yes, in a team going 0-16, although now I have a harder time rooting for anyone to fail to that degree. Well, except the Cowboys.) And every year, I’d get my hopes up, and some time in November, the last undefeated team would fall, and I’d see those idiots from the ’72 Dolphins with their champagne, celebrating someone else’s defeat. So the Patriots going 16-0 this year fulfilled that little wish I had as a sports-nut kid, and I’d love to see them finish it off today with a victory – and, since they’re already on Mercury Morris’ front lawn, to see them urinate in his flower bed and take a dump in his fish tank while they’re at it. Celebrating someone else’s failure is bad enough, but the way the mainstream media celebrates these jackasses’ annual celebration really rubs me the wrong way.
So I’ll be rooting for New England today, despite my New York roots, because I like to watch history happen. The guacamole is made, I’ve got the materials to make tacos for our small crowd, and there’s a chocolate cake cooling on the counter, waiting to be sliced, filled, and frosted. It’s time for football.
EDIT: Jake’s post reminded me of one thing – Tom Brady’s the obvious pick for MVP, but if it’s not him, I’ll take Wes Welker.