Giants succeed in spite of their fans

You probably need to be a New Yorker, or at least know one, to understand this.

Because it makes no sense, really.

Not to anyone else.

Not to anyone who realizes that we, as sports fans, have little impact on our team's performance.

But since there are plenty of New York transplants scattered all over the country, many of you will know what I'm getting at.

So here goes: Those same Giants fans who earlier this season booed the home team at Giants Stadium, screamed for coach Tom Coughlin to be fired and questioned the wisdom that brought quarterback Eli Manning to New York now will take credit for the Giants getting to the Super Bowl.

They'll say their harsh tone, demanding nature and refusal to settle for anything less than the championship-caliber football they believe they deserve ignited the players' competitive fire and turned around a season that was going the wrong way.

They'll say their tough love forced Manning to grow up as a quarterback, stop throwing interceptions and, finally, emerge as the on-field leader he was supposed to be all along.

They'll say their brutal treatment of the team at home was the reason Coughlin and the players acquired a foxhole mentality and banded together on the road.

None of that is true, of course.

But that doesn't matter.

Not to Giants fans, a great many of whom are convinced they're as much a part of this rousing run to Arizona as Coughlin's kinder and gentler approach to dealing with his players, Tiki Barber's ridiculous verbal shots at his former teammates and tight end Jeremy Shockey's season-ending injury, which cleared the stage for Manning to step into the leading man's role.

And, in a way, it's sad.

It's sad they don't see that these Giants play noticeably better, with more confidence and less pause, on the road -- away from the deafening boos that filled the Meadowlands, away from all that New York negativity, away from them.

It's sad they don't see that it's more than mere coincidence the Giants won only three of the eight games they played at Giants Stadium, thus becoming the first team to get to the Super Bowl despite having a losing record at home.

It's sad they don't see that their Giants have done all this unexpected winning in spite of them, not because of them.

Worse, they probably don't care.

As long as their team is going to the Super Bowl.

And now that the Giants have played their way to the big game, you can bet Giants fans now expect them to win.

Or they will by the kickoff time.

The New York media -- of which I was once a proud member -- will make sure of that.

Already, a prominent football columnist for one of the city's tabloids has picked the Giants to win, shrugging off the betting lines that have installed the unbeaten New England Patriots as 12-point favorites. And many of his keyboard-banging brethren will spend the next dozen days telling Giants fans why their team has a real chance.

They'll ignore the fact that the Giants were fortunate to get out of Green Bay with a victory on a night when the Packers played as poorly as they have all season.

They'll harp on the 10 consecutive road wins, including playoff upsets at Dallas and Green Bay, and how the Giants are playing their best when it matters most.

They'll point to the regular-season finale that supposedly changed everything for the Giants, even though the Patriots won the game 38-35 at Giants Stadium, where the home team played loose with nothing tangible at stake and the visitors bore the weight of perfection.

They'll give Giants fans exactly what they want -- and make them feel like they've been a big part of all of it.

Even if the opposite is true.

(Ray McNulty is sports columnist for Scripps Treasure Coast (Fla.) Newspapers, The Stuart News, Fort Pierce Tribune and Vero Beach Press Journal. Contact him at ray.mcnulty@scripps.com or on the Web at www.tcpalm.com.)