"Always it is about numbers at the Super Bowl, before we mercifully get to the only one that counts, the final score, sometime around 10 o'clock Sunday night, unless the Giants decide to give us overtime in the Super Bowl, too.

So many numbers, starting with the silly Roman numerals we still put to the whole thing, so that Super Bowl 46 can style itself up as Super Bowl XLVI. And it is about the huge ratings number that NBC thinks it can rack up with this rematch between the Giants and the Patriots, and about the point spread, and the over-number, and other exotic ways you can bet this game.

But when you clear all that away, as we finally arrive at this country's national football holiday, the country coming to a football game at 6:30 Sunday night as anticipated as any Super Bowl in history, maybe the only real questions about it are these:

Do the Giants still have Tom Brady's number or not?

And does Eli have theirs?"