By Ron Borges

If the long shot Giants find a way to upset the peerless Patriots Sunday night in Super Bowl XLII, New Yorkers will immediately insist it’s the biggest upset since David dropped Goliath with a well placed stone to the noggin. New Yorkers would be wrong, not that that’s anything new.

They will talk about the odds against the Giants winning three straight playoff road games just to get to University of Phoenix Stadium (which a Vegas odds maker friend tells me boiled down to roughly 40-1) and the even deeper odds of any team winning 10 straight road games (3000-1) on its way to the Super Bowl.

The Giants opened as 12-point underdogs, making them one of the biggest ‘dogs in Super Bowl history but the fact is the betting line has been 12 points or more nine times in the 41 previous Super Bowls and three of those underdogs won, so mathematically and athletically New York would seem to have at least a 1 in 3 chance of pulling off the upset. If they do where would it rank among Super Bowl upsets?

Certainly not first or second, although people from Manhattan to Queens might argue otherwise because of their team’s wild-card status and the Patriots’ undefeated record. More significantly though, one can also debate what was the greatest upset in Super Bowl history.

The conventional wisdom is that it was the Jets and Joe Namath when they defeated the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. Not only were the Jets 17-point underdogs when betting opened and 18 point underdogs by game time but the historical importance of the victory serves to certainly make it the most significant Super Bowl.

That’s because the then American Football League was given no respect and no chance to compete against the allegedly unbeatable Colts. The public believed no AFL team belonged on the same field with the NFL’s elite, a case Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers had made quite forcefully in the first two Super Bowls by dismantling the Kansas City Chiefs and the Oakland Raiders. But none of that dissuaded Namath from guaranteeing a victory early in the week and then pulling it off, 16-7, that Sunday in the Orange Bowl.

That win established the legitimacy of the AFL in the public’s mind and made its merger with the NFL, which was to go into full effect in two more years, acceptable. It also sent shock waves through the stodgy NFL and the cocky Colts to the point that nearly 40 years later the embarrassment of that defeat still resonates with then Baltimore middle linebacker Mike Curtis.

“No one knows the despair, the abject humiliation we felt that day,’’ Curtis insists in a funereal tone. “We lost to somebody we would beat 1,000 times. It was humiliation…to be kind.’’

A loss that still stings so deeply four decades later says much about the importance of the game and the fact is the Jets were the biggest underdog ever to win the Super Bowl. They also won the most historically significant Super Bowl as well. But was it really the biggest upset?

The Colts had finished 13-1 that season, allowed a record low 144 points (10.2 per game) and were led by league MVP Earl Morrall at quarterback, who had replaced the injured Johnny Unitas all season. They were seen, frankly, as unbeatable.

Yet if one assesses what the Patriots accomplished in Super Bowl XXXVI against the St. Louis Rams, there is a strong case to be made that their victory was in fact the bigger upset.

The 2001 St. Louis Rams were first in the league in points scored (503), first in total yards, third in total yards allowed and seventh in points allowed. They averaged 31.4 points per game, the third straight season they’d scored over 500, and allowed 17.1, meaning they won by an averaged margin of slightly over two touchdowns (14.4 points per game differential).

They had the league’s Most Valuable Player and the Offensive Player of the Year AND IT WASN’T THE SAME PLAYER, Kurt Warner winning the MVP while Marshall Faulk won player of the year for the third straight season.

They had two receivers who had over 1,000 receiving yards and a back who rushed for 1,382 yards while also catching 83 passes and scoring 21 touchdowns. And then there was their defense, which was ranked third overall based on yards allowed.

The Patriots, meanwhile, had tied with Miami at 11-5 for the division championship although they won it based on having a better divisional record. They barely escaped their first playoff game due only to the obscure but now legendary “tuck rule’’ that saved Tom Brady from a game-losing fumble and allowed New England to eliminate the Oakland Raiders in overtime by virtue of two Adam Vinatieri field goals through a blizzard.

Frankly, no one outside of their immediate families felt New England could keep up with The Greatest Show on Turf but they did more than that. They beat them, 20-17, giving them the second biggest upset in terms of point spread but arguably a bigger one than the Jets pulled off because while the Colts had a tremendous defense their offense was outgained and outscored by both the Dallas Cowboys and the Cleveland Browns. The Rams were outgained and outscored by no one that season and few teams in NFL history.

Though dominate, the 1968 Colts were not as formidable as the Rams while the Jets had finished the regular season second in the AFL in scoring, third in total yardage, fourth in points allowed and first in fewest yards allowed. In other words, they were dominant themselves. The 2001 Patriots, by comparison, finished sixth in points scored but 19th in total yardage and while sixth in points allowed defensively, they were 24th in yards allowed.

In other words, the Jets were statistically more formidable than that 18-point spread would have indicated on paper while the Patriots were statistically no match for the Rams’ offensive and defensive package. Yet New England held off St. Louis, 20-17, winning perhaps the most dramatic Super Bowl game in history. Arguably it was also the greatest upset by all the normal barometers but the width of the point spread.

There are other contenders as well, like the Kansas City Chiefs’ 23-7 rout of the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV. Kansas City was a 12-point underdog in that game, thus making its upset victory a 28-point swing. The Chiefs’ quarterback, Len Dawson, was dogged all week with allegations that he consorted with known gamblers, although nothing was ever proven, and he weathered that storm well enough to win the game’s MVP Award after going 12-for-17 for 142 yards and a touchdown. That upset was nearly as colossal historically as the Jets’ victory over the Colts the previous year because it cemented the idea that AFL teams were not only competitive with the NFL but their top echelon teams might be superior.

The next biggest upset came in Super Bowl XXXII when John Elway led the Denver Broncos to a 31-24 victory over the defending champion Green Bay Packers after being 11-point underdogs at game time and 12-point ‘dogs when the line was first established.

The Packers, led by Reggie White on defense and Brett Favre on offense, seemed headed toward the kind of dynasty the Patriots have now established but the Broncos derailed them and they never fully recovered.

The NFC had won the previous 13 straight Super Bowls and in the eight Super Bowls prior to the Broncos’ victory the NFC representative had beaten its AFC rival by an average margin of 20 points. Yet Elway, who was 0-3 in Super Bowls on teams that had been outscored 158-50 in those games, combined his arm and the overpowering legs of Terrell Davis (30 carries, 157 yards and three touchdowns) to win the first of back-to-back Super Bowl championships.

Rounding out the top 5 Super Bowls upsets, the Giants’ 20-19 defeat of the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV seems fitting. The Bills’ K-Gun offense, a no huddle hybrid run expertly by Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly, was considered all but unstoppable, just as the Rams had seemed to be. Although the Giants had a powerful defense led by Lawrence Taylor, the Bills were seven-point favorites and the fact is they would have been even bigger favorites had the odds makers not known that much of the betting money would come down on the side of the team from New York city and so they kept it close to encourage equal money on both sides.

They got it and they also got one of the greatest Super Bowls ever, a game won by the margin of kicker Scott Norwood’s missed 47-yard field goal, which was wide by about a coat of paint on the uprights. That miss coupled with the Giants controlling the ball for 40 of the game’s 60 minutes and led to a major Super Bowl upset, although nothing of the magnitude of the Patriots’ win over the Rams or the Jets’ undressing of the Colts.

Where would another upset by the Giants rank if they knock off the undefeated Patriots? That depends on where you put the Jets’ win in Super Bowl III and the Patriots’ win in Super Bowl XXXVI. Personally, I think the Patriots’ win was a more unlikely upset than the Jets but there is no question they rank one and two one way or the other.

If the Giants, a 12 ½ point underdog, stop New England a game short of a perfect 19-0 season it would certainly be at least the third greatest upset in Super Bowl history for the same reason the Jets get the nod from most historians. It would be a stunning upset and one of deep historical significance because it would have stopped only the second team in the Super Bowl Era to enter the game undefeated one game short of perfection.

That would be an upset and then some.

NOTE: In case you were wondering, the biggest Super Bowl point spread was not the 18 the Colts were favored by against the Jets, despite the insistence of some. It was the 18 ½ that the San Francisco 49ers were favored by against the San Diego Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX.

In fact, at least one Las Vegas odds maker, Sid Diamond, opened with San Diego as a 20-point underdog before ultimately cutting it down to 18 ½.

“I wanted to get as much money as I could down on San Diego early because I was so sure the 49ers would win,’’ Diamond recalled. “I wanted to encourage people to go in that direction, which they did.’’

The 49ers easily covered the number, winning by 23, 49-26.