Recalling days when Giants ruled New England

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Maybe you have to be of a certain age to truly appreciate that the Patriots and the Giants are both in the Super Bowl. Maybe you have to have come of age in the late 1950s and early '60s, back when the Giants were our home team in New England, their games on television here every Sunday afternoon, in the time when the NFL was mushrooming in popularity, and they were called the New York Football Giants. Back before Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl and playoff games at night and all the things that are now as much a part of the NFL as pre-game shows and sideline reporters. Maybe you have to be old enough to remember Y.A. Tittle and Frank Gifford, Charlie Conerly and Sam Huff, and all the other names from a long-gone era, back when they appeared in our living rooms on small black-and-white television sets. Back when Chris Schenkel broadcast the games.The Giants were ours. The Patriots? They were a minor team in a new league, a team that seemed to bounce around different stadiums in Boston like football gypsies, so very far from the romance of the Giants it was almost as though they were playing a different sport. So very far from the Giants who came into your living room every Sunday with their Yankee Stadium mystique and their aura. There was no way the Patriots could compete with that. Not then. Not even close. Even when they were on TV back in the '60s, it always seemed to be late on a Sunday afternoon after the Giants had already played the real game, and even then it invariably was a game played in front of scores of empty seats and some quarterback you never heard of was throwing the ball 40 or 50 times, the essence of minor league. Maybe it was this simple back then: The Giants were Broadway, the Patriots were the "Patsies." Even in 1989 -- the summer the Giants came to Bryant College in Rhode Island for a scrimmage against the Patriots -- it was the Giants who were the attraction, as if they had descended from some football Olympus. For there were still a generation of fans here whose first allegiance was to the Giants, not to the Patriots, who were still fourth on the New England sports scene then. But now? Now everything's reversed. Now we have another Boston-New York matchup to go along with the white-hot intensity of the Red Sox and Yankees, another episode of the Boston-New York rivalry that's arguably as good as any in sport. Only this time, as inconceivable as that might have seemed back in the '60s, it's the Patriots and the Giants. With the Patriots in the traditional role of the Yankees. It's the Patriots who are the glamour team, the franchise everyone else in the NFL aspires to be. They are the team with the glamour quarterback and the glamour coach, the team that will go into the Super Bowl 18-0. It's the Patriots who have become the team that much of the country now loves to hate, thanks to both their perceived arrogance and their success, just as so much of the country has traditionally hated the Yankees for decades for the same reasons. It's the Patriots -- already having been established as a 12-point favorite -- who will enter the Super Bowl on Feb. 3 with the entire football world expecting them to win. It's the Patriots with all the pressure on them, the same way the Yankees are always expected to win because of the enormity of their payroll. It's the Patriots who have become the Yankees in shoulder pads, minus the salary cap, of course. And the Giants? Now they are the gritty underdogs, like the Red Sox used to be before 2004, back when they always seemed to eventually be slapped down by the Yankees, as sure as death and taxes. The Giants are the team that had to win three playoff games on the road to get to the Super Bowl, the team that's not supposed to be still standing. The team that's quarterbacked by Eli Manning, Peyton's little brother, a young quarterback who had been criticized much of the year in the New York tabloids for being inconsistent, a young quarterback who now has had two very good games, winning at Dallas and Green Bay. The team that will come into the Super Bowl with nothing to lose, the team that's had a great ride just to get to the Super Bowl. That's the story line, and for the next week we will hear it over and over: the big, bad Patriots versus the underdog Giants, Boston versus New York, until eventually it will seem as if Derek Jeter plays wideout for the Giants and David Ortiz nose tackle for the Patriots. That comes with the territory, too. The other story line is the one we've been dealing with for months now, ever since we looked at this Patriots team and saw greatness, ever since we began to realize that this was a team that was going to chase history. It's the fact that this Super Bowl is really all about the Patriots. Can they go to 19-0? Can they actually run the table? Are they really the greatest team of all time? All these questions will be answered in this Super Bowl. The Giants? The Giants are the other team. Where have you gone Y.A. Tittle?(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)