Super Bowl XLVI Pick: What a difference four years makes

It's strange to think back to the last time these two teams met in a Super Bowl in 2008. As you might remember—or will certainly be reminded several thousand times today—the Patriots were trying to finish off a perfect NFL season, and then ended up having their last game be their only loss in arguably the greatest Super Bowl ever.

Considering how badly I wanted that New England team to finally send those miserable 1972 Dolphins to their graves knowing that their accomplishment was no longer unique, and maybe even lessened by having only won 17 games instead of 19, that game also represents the last year I got a Super Bowl prediction wrong.

The Patriots were overwhelming favorites in 2008, and while I wasn't keeping track of other people's predictions back then, there's a significantly larger percentage of people picking the Giants this time around. I just watched every single one of the political pundits at the Roundtable on "This Week" pick New York. If you look at the predictions elsewhere from people who have been making football picks all year, again the Giants seem to have emerged as a clear favorite.

Anyway, after having taken the year off from making weekly regular season predictions, I have fared pretty well thus far in playoff predictions. And despite the late surge in popularity for the Giants emerging as champions later this evening, the team I picked back at the beginning of the year is still alive as well. Will I stick with them?

I will include the others' precdtions with the screencaps I have forgone up until this point, but here's how everybody has done this postseason:

1. (1) Merrill Hoge, ESPN: 8-2 (2-0)
1. (1) Chris Mortensen, ESPN: 8-2 (2-0) 
1. (1) YOURS TRULY: 8-2 (2-0) 
4. (4) Mike Freeman, CBS Sports: 7-3 (2-0)
4. (4) Clark Judge, CBS Sports: 7-3 (2-0)
4. (4) Dave Richard, CBS Sports: 7-3 (2-0)
4. (4) Adam Schefter, ESPN: 7-3 (2-0)
4. (4) Mark Schlereth, ESPN: 7-3 (2-0)
9. (11) Will Brinson, CBS Sports: 6-4 (2-0)
9. (4) Les Carpenter, Yahoo: 6-4 (1-1)
9. (11) Jason Cole, Yahoo: 6-4 (2-0)
9. (11) Ron Jaworski, ESPN: 6-4 (2-0)
9. (11) Pete Prisco, CBS Sports: 6-4 (2-0)
14. (17) Eric Allen, ESPN: 5-5 (2-0)
14. (11) Mike Golic, ESPN: 5-5 (1-1)
14. (4) Seth Wickersham, ESPN: 5-5 (0-2) 
17. (11) Michael Silver, Yahoo: 4-6 (0-2)

As for the Super Bowl, here's the Yahoo group:

The CBS Sports guys:

And then there's ESPN, where there's the two dudes I'm really competing with:

If you weren't counting, that's 12 votes for the Giants to the Patriots' four. So, somehow the pick I had at the beginning of the year enters this final game as a sort of underdog:

New England Patriots (15-3) over New York Giants (11-8)

I really can't say that a win for either team is going to annoy me all that much, but I'm picking the Patriots mostly in the interest of continuity with my own logic. If I had not picked New England at the beginning of the year, I might be a little more tempted to pick New York. Still, while many players are different for both teams than the names that were on the rosters four years ago, I do not believe that either Tom Brady or Bill Belichick have forgotten how close they were to perfection four years ago. In actuality, I am, as usual, hoping merely for one last entertainingly close game. In the end this year, I just have to believe that the luck toward the end will go New England's way this time around. Maybe Ron Gronkowski plays and makes a difference, or maybe he doesn't. Perhaps it will be a new star that is born, if only for one game. That memorable catch made by David Tyree, after all, ended up being the last one he ever made in an NFL game.