Time and time again fans had to withstand an exciting regular season and playoffs, only to be let down by a lackluster performance in the Super Bowl. Will this year be different? Will the New York Giants step up to the big bully of the league, the New England Patriots? Will the recent allegations against the Patriots affect their gameplay? Can the commercials finally step up and outperform the last few years of mediocrity?

Tonight we will find out. Here are the official Mind Rite Sports picks. Happy Super Bowl Day!

“Win or Lose: It’s the Patriots Game”
by: JMD

The game on Sunday, just like the entire NFL season to this point, will be about one thing: the New England Patriots. Can they do it? Can they win the big one? And when I say big one, I’m not talking about the Super Bowl. I’m talking about the finish line: that final game to achieve perfection. The actual championship title, the actual gold ring, it may mean a lot to the players and hardcore Pats’ fans, but to most of us it will only be an afterthought. Because this will never be remembered as the year the Patriots won the Super Bowl, or the year that the Patriots came in second place. This is the year that the Patriots went for perfection, and on Sunday they’ll forever be remembered for either making it or not.

The Giants here are a classic underdog. Personally, I don’t think they’ll pull it off. The Patriots are a machine, and if the Giants end up scoring more points, they won’t be widely remembered as the team that beat the machine. We’ll just remember the machine, and why and how it fell apart.

If the Giants win, the sports talk the next day may center on Eli Manning and the tough plays he had to make. But a week after, will the chatter still be about Manning or will it fall to Tom Brady and what went wrong? Was it the foot injury I saw on TMZ? Was he too hurt to play? The what-ifs and whys will probably forever outnumber the actual events.

Sunday’s Super Bowl, what should be the most watched one in history, belongs to the Patriots. It’s theirs to win and it’s theirs to lose. Yes, the Giants can beat them. Yes, they can be embraced by a nation that loves a Cinderella story. But they can’t become the best team in the NFL. That title has already been taken. And they won’t be remembered for the 2007-08 season. That page in history has already been written. Now it just needs a last sentence.

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Damn Those Talented, Cheatin’ Pats
by: Tim

The New England Patriots are the most talented team of any NFL single season, with the experience to boot. But win, lose or draw, it will be impossible to think of this 2008 team with a clean record. There is enough speculation surrounding this team, so much to the point where one word seems to go hand-in-hand with their team name these days: Cheaters.

Early in the season, the Patriots were caught taping signals from the New York Jets sidelines. Their punishment from the league came by way of a hefty fine and a revocation of a first-round draft pick. Just when they thought the SpyGate controversy was gone, Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) stepped in this week and questioned the NFL’s reasoning for destroying the tapes from the Jets game, along with up to 5 other tapes. On “Outside the Lines” this morning, Sen. Specter points out that one of the important factors in his intervening in this issue is because the NFL has an anti-trust exemption. As the one and only dominant professional league, the NFL owes it to the exemption and its fans to keep the league clean at all costs. The Patriots were caught red-handed cheating once. How many times did this happen? Can they be a legitimate perfect team?Today, the Patriots may blow right through the Giants. Their record this year would lead you to believe this is so. But if there is any justice, any karmic balance in the world, the New England Patriots will lose tonight. Yes, I’m placing my “hater” cap on tonight. Please forgive me, folks. But, like the Pats’ record shows, there only comes one time in a lifetime where you can root against an 18-0 team. So… let’s make history.