Armageddon Day Finds Giants in Role as Savior

If Edgar Allan Poe were alive and writing about these Ravens today, he’d have wished he was dead.

Too depressing, he would have thought as he somberly surveyed his subject matter.

Too macabre, he would have decided before he’d written a word.

Finally, Poe would have picked up his fountain pen and, hari-kari style, turned it on himself.

At last, no more having to listen to Brian Billick, Shannon Sharpe and Tony Siragusa.

The Ravens arrived at this Super Bowl like the Black Plague banging on the door. Ordinarily, this would have would have sent the vermin scurrying for cover, but they all had media credentials and deadlines to meet. So they endured great hardship, attended all of the Ravens’ interview sessions and hoped their per diem would cover medication for delirium, hives and the shivering sweats.

Nothing good can come from this Super Bowl. This we knew two weeks ago when the Oakland Raiders and the Minnesota Vikings, favored over Baltimore and New York in the AFC and NFC title games, decided it was a fine time to play duck-and-cover. Assuming the fetal position, waiting for the big one to drop, they finally pried open their eyes to the sight of a ravaged, post-nuclear wasteland and Trent Dilfer and Kerry Collins picking through the rubble.

The best that can be hoped for is that the Giants cut our losses. The party has been crashed, the furniture has been trashed, but maybe we can still save some of the silverware.

The Giants aren’t much to look at. Collins, playing for his third team in three seasons, is not an “elite quarterback,” no matter how many shades of crimson Phil Simms turns trying to persuade us. (Collins is an improvement over Danny Kanell, and it’s best to leave it at that.) Amani Toomer remains more interesting as a concept than a reality. If Ron Dayne and Tiki Barker are “Thunder and Lightning,” God is using cheap help these days.

But at least the Giants haven’t embarrassed their city, their fans, their alumni and the sport of American football during their stay in Tampa. Their conduct this week has resembled Oklahoma’s at the Orange Bowl. Bite your tongue, mind your manners, let the favorites do the crowing, pay no mind to the one-sided predictions.

Oklahoma went on to win that one, 13-2, which has to give the Giants and the nation encouragement during this dark hour.

Two safeties and three Brad Daluiso field goals. Hey, it could happen.

The Ravens, meanwhile, are the best thing in years to happen to basketball, hockey, soccer, baseball, figure skating, billiards and the XFL. For two weeks, the NFL has had one large purple millstone hanging around its neck. If NFL officials were honest, they would admit they would have preferred 15 other AFC teams here ahead of Baltimore, including the Houston Texans, who don’t start play until 2002 and don’t have any players. But at least they haven’t had anyone arrested yet.

Top 10 Things Ailing The NFL Today:

1. All-star lineups at the police station.

2. Players with media-guide mug shots taken from both the front and the side.

3. Teary-eyed cries of “victimization” of players who have victimized others.

4. Franchises making open-field runs from one city to another.

5. The glorification of carpet-bagging, greed-mongering owners because their relocated teams suddenly win a lot of games.

6. A quarterback pool so thinned by expansion that anyone capable of completing a firm handoff is lauded for playing “winning football.”

7. Coaches fanatically obsessed with the notion of playing not to lose at any cost, giving rise to such new philosophies as the prevent offense and making sure your defense has good field position.

8. Game plans so cynical, Machiavelli would be switching over to college football.

9. Half-teams reaching the Super Bowl because salary-cap restrictions rule out such luxuries as quarterbacks and receivers.

10. Half-teams reaching the Super Bowl because they played a soft schedule in a weak division and are canonized by a media corps too callow and too shallow to remember full teams that played way back in the 1990s.

There you have it.

A working definition of the 2000-01 Baltimore Ravens.

Their owner, Art Modell, once lobbied in court against franchise relocation, only to rip his beloved team away from the most loyal fans in the league and move them out of Cleveland because Baltimore built him a new stadium.

Their coach, Billick, has choked everything that is enjoyable about offensive football out of his game plan because he doesn’t trust his quarterback and, because he has won 10 consecutive games with this strategy, now thinks he is smarter than Vince Lombardi.

Their star defensive player, Ray Lewis, was arrested after a double murder at last year’s Super Bowl, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and has shown so little remorse for the loss of life that even Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said he wished Lewis had been more “articulate” when addressing the incident with the media this week.

Their star offensive player, Lewis running mate Sharpe, decided he would help out his friend by reprimanding the media for “exploiting” Lewis during a bizarre midweek rant that achieved little more than to assure everyone that, hey, Ray here is no Ted Bundy.

Their designated “barrel of laughs,” Siragusa, has been lewd, crude and a sorry imitation of Art Donovan, who was genuinely funny and something more than a ham radio operator operating without a radio.

Their publicity department has bathed the city of Tampa in Raven billboards and banners, even though this is a supposedly neutral site, and that required massive advance planning, even though Billick made such a big deal about not looking ahead to the playoffs that he prevented his players from muttering the p-word during the regular season.

Enough is enough.

The Ravens have not yet instructed Dilfer not to throw his first pass against the Giants and already their act is tired. They have been bores, they have been boors, could someone please turn out the lights so they’ll get the message and finally leave?

Giants, that would be you. Your moment is at hand, your task is immense, you are playing not only for New York but for the future of the sport, the league and Super Bowl office pools requiring someone to bet the over.

Godspeed.