NEW YORK, Jan. 30, 2008
ESPN's Berman On The Game
Jon Friedman: Plus, My Top 10 Ways For The Team To Defeat The Patriots
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New York Giants' Eli Manning throws a third-quarter pass during an NFL wildcard football playoff game, Jan. 6, 2008, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
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But Chris Berman, who has hosted ESPN's "Sunday NFL Countdown" for 22 years, isn't ruling out the underdog New York Giants just yet.
The Patriots are favored to win Super Bowl XLII on Sunday by two touchdowns -- one of the biggest-ever point spreads for a Super Bowl. If they do so, they'll become the National Football League's first 19-0 team, a stupendous accomplishment in U.S. sports annals.
While Berman sensibly stopped short of predicting a Giants win, he coolly suggested the Patriots can be beaten.
Many football observers question the Patriots' overall team speed on defense and believe the team's aging linebacking corps can be exploited by quick-strike offenses.
Besides, the Patriots aren't the most impressive team that Berman has ever seen. That distinction goes to Chuck Noll's Steelers, who won four Super Bowls in six seasons three decades ago. In a mythical battle of behemoths from different eras, Berman believes the Patriots would lose to the 1978 Pittsburgh Steelers.
"All those Hall-of-Famers," he mused.
A Giant Upset
In Sunday's match-up, Berman gives the Giants a puncher's chance.
"The Giants could beat them," he told me the other day via telephone from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn. "They almost beat them the last time."
In the final game of the regular season on Dec. 29, the Patriots had to rally from a 28-16 deficit to defeat the Giants by a score of 38-35.
If the Giants do pull off an improbable victory this weekend, "it would be one of the largest upsets ever," Berman said, stressing that the Giants would have to play a near-perfect game to win.
Then again, the sports world is littered with unlikely champions, with Davids beating Goliaths. In a game befitting a "Hoosiers" scenario, Villanova made seemingly every outside shot to thwart Patrick Ewing's Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA men's basketball final.
Don't forget that the Pats' dynasty got its start when the team upset the heavily favored St. Louis Rams in the 2002 Super Bowl, establishing Tom Brady as one of the sport's all-time clutch quarterbacks.
"The ball that [Adam] Vinatieri kicked to win the game landed six feet away from where I was sitting!" Berman exclaimed in his trademark emotional delivery.
The Patriots went on to defeat the Carolina Panthers in the 2004 Super Bowl and the Philadelphia Eagles a year later. In all three triumphs, the Pats' margin of victory has been 3 points.
By now, Berman has been around sports long enough to expect the unexpected.
At age 24, he joined ESPN in October 1979, only one month after the sports network's inception. He has been voted the National Sportscaster of the Year six times.
He's also a delight to interview, as he clearly loves his job and cares about the viewers of ESPN, a unit of Walt Disney Co. . The Brown University graduate is best known for such trademark expressions as "Boom!" (His nickname, naturally, is "Boomer.")
Does he have any advice for the Patriots?
"They had better be careful," he said.
How the Giants could beat the Patriots
The Jints join the 1968 New York Jets, the 1969 Kansas City Chiefs and the 2001 Patriots as the biggest dark horses in Super Bowl history. It is instructive to remember that all three of those unheralded teams won the Super Bowl.
Here are 10 things I believe the Giants must do to stage an upset:
Above all, Manning must play a near-perfect game by making smart decisions, maximizing the 6'5" wide receiver Plaxico Burress's height advantage over the smaller Patriots' defensive backs and establishing himself as the best quarterback on the field in this game.
MEDIA WEB QUESTION OF THE DAY: What's the best National Football League team in history?
WEDNESDAY PET PEEVE: Unfortunately, because of a technical glitch, I was unable to add the URL for Ron Rosenbaum's terrific blog in my Friday column. Here it is.
READERS RESPOND to my column on NBC's Tiki Barber:
"This is just a case of more New York press talking about New York sports. All the New York press thought that Rudy Giuliani could win the Republican nomination, then he hit the real world and no one cared. That is the way the Tiki Barber story is in the real world. No one cares."
-- Larry Farmer
Media Web appears on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Feel free to send email to jfriedman@marketwatch.com.
By Jon Friedman
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