Black & Blue

The players have been prodded and poked. The defenses have been dissected, the offenses disrespected.

At long last, Super Bowl XXXV will unfold today at Raymond James Stadium, perhaps in ways no one expected.

The matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and New York Giants was pronounced a Super Bore and a Stupor Bowl almost as soon as it was determined.

How could a worldwide television audience of 800 million be expected to tune in for a game between a Raven team that didn’t score a touchdown in October and a Giant team that was going nowhere until Coach Jim Fassel made his famous playoff guarantee?

Fans once accustomed to such quarterbacks as John Elway and Steve Young will get the Giants’ Kerry Collins, an alcohol rehabilitation success story, and the Ravens’ Trent Dilfer, whose addiction was to turnovers.

The best player in the game is a linebacker: Baltimore’s Ray Lewis, the controversial figure playing in the Super Bowl a year after he was charged with murder in the stabbing deaths of two men outside an Atlanta nightclub the night of last year’s game. The charges later were dropped and Lewis pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for misleading police, but exactly what happened that night has never been made clear.

Those are some of the facts.

But if 34 previous Super Bowls have taught us anything, it is that expectations often are turned on their heads.

The most anticipated games are sometimes duds, and the score is often lopsided.

A remarkable 25 Super Bowls have been decided by double-digit margins, with scores such as 49-26, 52-17 and 55-10 enough to make the congealed cheese on hours-old nachos look appealing.

Maybe not this time.

The Ravens (15-4) probably can’t score that many points, and the Giants (14-4) are going against a Raven defense trying to make a claim as the best in history after setting an NFL record by yielding only 165 points in 16 games.

“The No. 1 criticism of this game is it tends to be a blowout,” Baltimore Coach Brian Billick said. “I don’t know that that’s a scenario for this game. It should be exciting right down to the end.

“You know, I’m not a huge baseball fan, but a 2-1 game is an exciting game.”

Last year’s Super Bowl certainly was: The St. Louis Rams’ 23-16 victory over Tennessee ended with a heart-stopping tackle of Titan receiver Kevin Dyson by Ram linebacker Mike Jones a yard short of the goal line on the final play.

This Super Bowl might not feature much scoring, but there are plenty of stories.

There’s the question of whether the Ravens have talked themselves into a frenzied lack of focus with all their braggadocio and their strident defense of Lewis in the face of media scrutiny.

The Giants have been talkative, but never incendiary.

“I’ll sit and talk, but I think bragging puts more pressure on me,” Giant defensive end Michael Strahan said.

“It would almost be selfish, because it would put more pressure on my teammates. We talked about beating Detroit, and we got smacked around. We talked about beating the Rams, and we got smacked around two weeks in a row.”

Billick shrugs: If his team is so uptight, why was defensive end Michael McCrary dunking a basketball in a garbage can at practice Friday?

There is the saga of Art Modell, the Ravens’ owner, still scorned in Cleveland after moving the Browns to Baltimore, finally in a Super Bowl against an old friend, Giant owner Wellington Mara.

There is the Giants’ Collins, a passer of potential game-breaking ability who knows how sweet victory champagne would taste--even if he doesn’t drink a drop.

There is Dilfer’s return to the stadium where he was so often jeered when he played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who let him go after last season--a season that began with him throwing three interceptions in a 17-13 loss to the Giants at Raymond James Stadium.

“The worst 10 minutes of football I’ve played in my career were against the Giants last year,” said Dilfer, whose carefully conceived role with the Ravens consists largely of handing the ball to rookie running back Jamal Lewis.

Consider the story of Lomas Brown, an offensive lineman for the Giants playing in the Super Bowl for the first time after 16 NFL seasons.

Or offensive lineman Glenn Parker, playing in his fifth Super Bowl--and still looking for his first victory after four losses with Buffalo.

“From talking to Glenn Parker, he told me losing the Super Bowl is one of the emptiest feelings you’ll ever have,” Brown said.

Parker was in Tampa with the Bills the last time the Giants won the Super Bowl 10 years ago, when Buffalo’s Scott Norwood missed wide right and Whitney Houston stirred a nation with her rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” during the Gulf War.

“I remember there was a feeling the way the security people were talking, that if there was going to be a terrorist act, it would be here,” Parker said. “I remember how crowded everything was. There were security checkpoints everywhere.”

More indelibly, he remembers watching Norwood miss a 47-yard field goal in the final seconds, leaving the Bills with a 20-19 loss.

Both kickers remember too.

Baltimore’s Matt Stover was in Tampa as an injured member of the Giants. But even when he benefits from missed kicks--as the Ravens did this season against Tennessee and Al Del Greco--something inside him cringes.

“Absolutely, there’s empathy,” Stover said. “I also try to get insight and learn from the situation--what to do, what not to do.

“What happens in pressure situations like that is you get too fast. You’re too anxious.”

With the line favoring Baltimore by a mere three points, many believe a field goal might decide today’s game.

Brad Daluiso, the Giants’ kicker, was still at UCLA when Norwood missed, but it made an impression.

“Nobody likes to miss, and you hope when you do miss it’s not a game-altering or game-deciding situation,” he said.

Like Stover--who is 53 for his last 57 field goals--Daluiso is a dependable veteran. He is 21 for 28 this season, but three of the six misses were blocks.

The Super Bowl could come down to a kick, but Daluiso won’t dwell on it.

“What, two out of 34 have come down to a field goal? You do the math, it’s less than 10%,” he said. “It doesn’t do me any good to worry about it.

“I secretly harbor a hope that it’s 45-0. Anyone who hopes it comes down to a kick is lying, because that means you also have a chance of losing. But if it comes down to a kick, I’ll be ready, and I’m prepared for that.”

They all are. Two of the NFL’s top five defenses facing each other probably makes for a tight game, and managing turnovers--an area where the Ravens excel--could be crucial.

“You’ve got to be dead solid perfect in everything that you do,” said Giant running back Tiki Barber, who scoffs at the idea the Giants could score 41 points against the Ravens as they did against Minnesota in the NFC title game.

“This game could come down to one or two plays,” he said.

Barber had been playing with a cast on his left arm after breaking it Dec. 17, but will wear only a lightweight titanium shield today. Fassel said he’ll decide before the game if Barber will resume returning punts, as seems likely.

With all the talk about the possibility of a few plays deciding the game, it would be quite a tale if punt returns by Barber made a difference.

Ditto if it were the Giants’ other punt returner, receiver Ike Hilliard, who underwent neck surgery after a scary injury in a game his rookie year.

Or how about Baltimore’s Jermaine Lewis, who lost a stillborn child in December and came back to return two punts for touchdowns against the New York Jets, pointing to the sky in tribute to the son he lost?

Then there is Ron Dixon, the rookie kickoff returner for the Giants from little-known Lambuth College in Tennessee.

As recently as 1997, Dixon worked part-time as a gas-station attendant whose duties included cleaning the bathrooms.

“From the toilet bowl to the Super Bowl,” he said.

Never the most disciplined guy, Dixon has a little snooze-button problem and was suspended for a game in December after arriving late to a Saturday walk-through.

He came back and made the big play in the Giants’ playoff game against Philadelphia, returning the opening kickoff 97 yards for a touchdown.

“His apartment must sound like a fire-alarm now,” Fassel said. “He’s got more alarms, phones going off, his Dad calling him. He’s got something like four alarms.”

Dixon said it’s only two or three, but he’s required to call his father back once he’s in his truck on the way to practice.

Nobody figured these teams would get this far after the Ravens went 8-8 last season and the Giants were 7-9.

Now the Ravens have won 10 games in a row and the Giants have won all seven since Fassel’s guarantee.

Here they are, right on time.

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BALTIMORE RAVENS vs. NEW YORK GIANTS; Tampa Raymond James Stadium, 3:15 p.m., Channel 2