The Super Bowl, you guys. It came after all. You feared you’d never get to see commercials with chimps dressed as stewardesses headbutting random men in the dick to sell car insurance. Now you will! Plus Twitter gets to explode by the end of the first quarter. Maybe the whole Internet, too, because the game is being streamed online for the first time. The American dream is still alive. Take that, terrorist commie invading alien clown frauds.

We survived two weeks of Gronkowski ankle updates, Bill Simmons bitching in advance about the Giants faking injuries to slow the Greatriots offense, profiles of Belichick’s shadowy inner circle and examinations of whether another Super Bowl ring will push Brady or Eli into the list of greatest living presidents. Also, fans sublimated their big game anticipation into concentrated stupid thing energy.

And what Super Bowl run-up could be complete without BULLETIN BOARD MATERIAL OF ANCIENT MAYAN DOOM. It looked bleak for morons bleating about superstition until this morning when Chris Canty tweeted a prediction that the Giants would win 28-17. Finally, someone to blame when the karma gods invoke their new age wrath on the Giants.

Hope you didn’t bet the over on the prop bet for shots of Peyton Manning during the game, because from the looks of ESPN’s pregame coverage, Ol’ Battleship is taking in Super Bowl XLII.2 from his Gatorade Is It In You™ NeckAIDS Fallout Bunker deep beneath the city.

So let’s do this. The official KSK position is that this Super Bowl matchup is only worthwhile if the Patriots lose, but it can be a closely contested game, preferably with a huge momentum-swinging play that makes Simmons issue poorly veiled complaints for the next decade. And while this Brady Photoshop is admirable, I can’t support the underlying sentiment or bad comic book movies.

By the way, for this live blog, we’re introducing commenter achievements and badges. Rolling out two today: one for any signed-in reader who comments on a live blog and another for any who share via Facebook or Twitter. Peter King says many movie buffs won’t know the “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!” came from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but then they aren’t real movie fans.

At long last, New York and Boston gets to settle an overblown regional rivalry through the medium of professional sports. It must be very cathartic to finally get that opportunity.

Did you know that Week 9 against the Giants was the last game that the Patriots lost?

Were you aware that that very game ended with Eli Manning throwing a touchdown pass to Jake Ballard, who wears the same jersey number that David Tyree wore as a Giant? A David Tyree who made a Giant Snatch, which was the Official Bill Simmons These Are My Readers Most Luckiest Leg Sweep In Rocky IV History?

These will be IMPORTANT COINCIDENCES used to create an extra sense of drama for a game that doesn’t really need it, but you’ll be bombarded with them nonetheless. But it’s the Super Bowl. If it weren’t these, it’ve been something about Jack Harbaugh whipping both of his sons with the sticks that correspond to the colors of the teams they now coach.

Kyle Williams won’t be in the Super Bowl, however, as he is the worst and people who are the worst don’t get to be in the Super Bowl. Unless they happen to sign as a backup for a good team, a la Leinart in 2008. Good luck with that, Kyle.

It was a pretty fantastic day of football overall. Alex Smith did some reverting to the “We Want Carr” Alex Smith of old as the game wore on and Eli Manning got the bejesus beaten out of him, but showed remarkable toughness for a man-child who typically displays anything but.

Hopefully the Giants will get to apply one of those shots to Dreamboat before the entire New York cut down on the field by a American flag draped Goodell firing squad. Meanwhile, Niners fans seem pretty angry about the Bradshaw fumble being blown dead late in the 4th quarter, but his forward progress was stopped on the play, so live with it. We’re moving onto our sports championship sequel, which Simmons will rank far ahead of other Super Bowl sequels like Cowboys-Bills, Steelers-Cowboys and 49ers-Bengals because those teams aren’t really movie stars.

Oh, and Coughlin brushing off Eli as Manning was furiously yelling that the playclock was running out just as the Giants were about to attempt the game-winning field goal was my favorite thing of the day, except for the whole Lee Evans/Cundiff sequence from the first game, which I’ll have on loop the entire week and maybe also forever and ever.

Ha ha, shredding. Oh dearie, those skateboard jokes. So rad.

The “Joe Flacco feeling unappreciated for being mediocre” meme got major traction this week, helped along by Ed Reed telling the media that Flacco doesn’t do good quarterback stuff. This led to more passive-aggression and surly woes-are-me by the Ravens quarterback.

“I like his style. I mean, kind of. Even though I bet he wouldn’t even notice if I did like him. Whatever. Screw that guy. I don’t care.” – Jay Cutler

Flacco got somewhat of a pass for doing nothing besides convert two-yard scoring drives against the Texans because Houston’s defense is good (elite QBs shouldn’t be expected to excel against GOOD defenses) but now Big Bert has put a huge target on himself. The Ravens have to win and Flacco has to appear impressive in the process or else more Dilfer LOLs at his expense. Easterbrook says the only thing worse than a look-at-me glory boy is a wannabe look-at-me glory boy.

What’s up, Patriots fans? Nice win yesterday. Good to see that at least ONE team can accrue more than a ten-point lead over the Broncos over the course of the game’s first 55 minutes. As spiteful, bile-spewing fans of other NFL teams, it was wonderful to see Tim Tebow’s sad face.

But don’t think for a second that beating Tebow makes you an ounce less detested. You’re still racist self-centered scum, and we will continue to hate you with our black hearts forever and ever until Batman kills Goodell and the Earth swallows up a field defenders incapable of catching Hines Ward in the open field. (NOTE: will never happen)

Screw you, we’re gonna watch Tom Brady crap his pants as Elvis Dumervil flattens him 800 more times.

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What is the Jets? AWWW ANSWER IN THE FORM OF A QUESTION BURN. I’LL TAKE TEAMS WITH A STUPID DRUNK AS THEIR GREATEST LEGEND FOR $1,600. Anyway, looks as though letting Nacho wing it around was still in the Jets’ bag of tricks. It might be in their best interests to curtail that practice. I mean, don’t let me tell you how to run your football team. Just a little input is all.

At least Nacho’s terrible timeout at the end of the first half didn’t come back to haunt them. Because the enormity of that particular mistake was obscured by a second half of mostly terrible football. But at least Revis shut down Welkah. Maybe next time they’ll find some way to keep Gronkowski from spiking the ball in their face a half dozen times.

Upside: a loss to the Patriots will get the Jets good and irate before a game against Tebow on Thursday. HACK THE BONE, REX, HACK THE BONE!

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The Patriots have lost two straight largely because their defense blows and the offense has no one capable of stretching the field. Last week, Eli Manning essentially replicated the game-winning Super Bowl XLII drive (MINUS THE LUCKIEST PLAY IN RECORDED SPORTING HISTORY ACCORDING TO BILL SIMMONS) and now the Patriots must travel to the Quasi-Newish Meadowlands to face their biggest rivals.

“FACK THIS TEAM! THEY AHHHH NAWT WORTHY OF THE PROUD NAME OF THE GREATRIOTS! THEY AHHHH REDUCED TO PLAINTRIOTS WHO PRAWBABLY EAT FRIED CHICKEN AND DRINK BE-AH IN THE HUDDLE! OCHOSTINKO DOUBLE FISTS FAHHTIES AWN THE SIDELINE. I SAWR HIM! CUT HIM NOW OR-AH TRADE BILLY B. TO THE CUBBIES”

It’s worth nothing that New England already soundly beat the Jets in their first encounter, but that was before Rex Ryan and Brian Schottenheimer arrived at the brilliant realization that perhaps the best course of winning for their team was entrusting as little responsibility to Mark Sanchez as possible. It’s called Tebow Tactics and it’s a proven godsend.

NFL Films did a typically excellent job with the first installment of the Bill Belichick documentary series. It’s a well-done, insightful look into the monomaniacal life of the Spite King of The Hobos. The problem is, “Hard Knocks” spoiled us by making audiences accustomed to documentary subjects who actually have personalities. Whereas Rex Ryan gave stirring, memorable speeches that we’ll quote through the ages, Belichick deadpans brittle platitudes and coldly lists team shortcomings. Rex appeared briefly in the first episode tonight, if only as a source of trash talk against the Patriots. Belichick is asked for a response by a reporter over the phone, whereupon he stammers for about 20 seconds before brushing off the question. GREAT TELEVISION. LOFTY TELEVISION. That he lacks a way with words and human feeling doesn’t make Grumblelord a lesser coach, obviously, just a far more boring one. And really, is anyone shocked that that’s how Belicheat actually is? Of course not.

It’s great viewing if your idea of humanizing portrait is a coach disdainfully eating melon while conducting phone interviews with reporters, playing golf in jeans and crying about how much he misses spending all of his time watching film and being berated by Bill Parcells in the Giants team headquarters way back when. In the end, Belichick is still football culture’s platonic ideal of an NFL coach: lifeless, uncaring and obsessed with minutiae. But he’s fantastically successful so he gets a documentary series. It’s about as fun to watch as it probably is to experience. Which is to say, not very much. Like I said, unprecedented access that was rewarded by a good job putting it together. The part where Brady and Belichick sat in the coach’s office and scouted the Ravens defense was legitimately illuminating, but I could have mostly done without the rest.

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“Let’s live blog two.” – Some baseball asshole

Presenting the regular season debut of Ocho with the Pats. The first appearance of the tired husk of Larry Johnson with Miami. Mostly likely Reggie Bush’s first five fumbles with the Dolphins.

Oh yeah, and there’s a late game. Maybe if six Broncos quarterbacks get hurt, maybe Tebow will play.

A carved Patriots watermelon. How delightfully random. And by that, I mean let’s hope Rex Ryan is readying his Gallagher mallet.

Massholes are ambivalent about the result. On one hand, the execution is fantastic and the floral touches really add class to the tackiness. On the other hand, nobody in FOOTBALL RED SAWX NATION is quite convinced that this isn’t some furtive and insidious form of outreach to the dahhhkkkkiieesss on the part of the franchise.

[Via Awfficial Greatriots Twittah Feed]

There’s been so much talk about this game that I’m actually anticipating the game being over more than I am the game being played. But the tabloids would have us believe that this is the MOAST IMPAHTANT GAME EVAH, and no one’s going to tell them otherwise. Not you, not you, and not you!

Prediction: bitches gon’ get pregnant.