The Big Game, Part 37.(American football)

America's most-watched sporting event--the super bowl--is just around the corner. I couldn't be more bored. It's not that I don't love American football. It's a fantastic sport, a rare mix of naked aggression, intricate play-calling and graceful athleticism. No wonder this Sunday's Super Bowl XXXVII--the Big Game in sports-crazed America- -will be watched by a staggering 131 million fans.

No, my disgust is purely professional. As a reporter at a major New York daily, my work for the past month has been dominated by football. Not that I'm a sportswriter, mind you. But whenever one of the local teams makes the playoffs--and this year, both the New York Jets and Giants did--my job description changes from Gatherer of Important Facts to Pathetic Civic Booster/ Football Shill.

The task is to make sure there is something in the paper every day that will get readers increasingly excited about the upcoming weekend's game. Not surprisingly, we reporters become pretty desperate. In years past I've done stories about longtime season-ticket holders who are convinced that "this year" our team is "goin' all the way, baby!" I have profiled the guy who dances inside the fleece-covered mascot costume. I've written about people who met their future spouse at professional football games--not to mention that hardy perennial, astrologists who say the stars predict Victory for Our Heroes.

This year I was out of ideas.

"Get Bruce Springsteen and James Gandolfini on the phone," an editor ordered. "They're big Giants fans."

Of course, neither Springsteen nor Gandolfini, the star of the country's hottest TV show, "The Sopranos," returned my call. So I settled for octogenarian "60 Minutes" TV "essayist" and "star" Andy Rooney, who was foolish enough to answer his own phone. We chatted for three minutes before I'd exhausted my line of aggressive questioning about his favorite Giant (he's partial to Tiki Barber) and his prediction for the game ("This is our year"). Baby.

Hardly scintillating reading, but necessary when you're trying to whip up civic pride. I mean, we all know that fans in our opponents' city are less passionate in their rooting and, therefore, more likely to be complicit in their team's certain loss to our team this weekend. Our fans, of course, have much better pregame parties. Our fans are more intelligent than their fans. And, by extension, the ...