Some Dogs Have Their Day

Belief, Motivation Were Major Factors In Previous Upsets

GLENDALE, Ariz., Feb. 2 -- In the dark of night, the Patriots left. They filed into the gilded elevators of the luxurious old Fairmont Hotel in downtown New Orleans on the day before Super Bowl XXXVI, slipping through the carpeted lobby, out the glass doors and into waiting buses ready to whisk them toward the airport, to a building that was far less spectacular.

Their coach, Bill Belichick, never did warm to the team's proximity to the French Quarter. It was too tempting, too close to the mayhem. And what was all the ruckus downstairs? The throngs of people pouring in and out of the doors never stopped. For a coach who loathes distractions, this bordered on the insane.

So when it could, after all league obligations had been met, the team headed to a drab airport motel that, needless to say, lacked the splendid flourishes of the Fairmont.

Looking back, it was a critical move that led to the unimaginable events that unfolded the following night, when the Patriots, who had scrapped through the playoffs with the luck of an ambiguous fumble rule, stunned the mighty St. Louis Rams in one of the Super Bowl's greatest upsets. In ensuing years it would be hailed as one of the top reasons why New England was able to neutralize an offense so explosive it was called "The Greatest Show on Turf." The Rams hit Bourbon Street in the days before the game. The Patriots headed as far away as they could, to the least likely place you would find a Super Bowl team.

"It was basic, very basic," said New England special teams coach Brad Seely, one of the few coaches left from that year. "I mean how nice a hotel can you be getting on the night before the Super Bowl with rooms for 80 people?"

Was it like the Red Roof Inn, he was asked.

"I don't think it was as nice as the Red Roof Inn," Seely said.

But indulgence hardly mattered on the eve of the franchise's most significant game. The most important thing was to eliminate distractions.

"That hotel lobby was like Bourbon Street," Seely said of the Fairmont.

And the less-sensational airport hotel?

"Very quiet," Seely said with a laugh.

Now everything has changed. The Patriots loom as an impediment bigger than even those Rams, while the New York Giants come into today's Super Bowl seemingly without a chance -- a wild card against a football machine that has gone to four Super Bowls in seven years. If New England faced the impossible in New Orleans, what must the Giants be up against? If the unbelievable is to happen again, New York likely will have to follow a path set before it in some of the great sports upsets of all time.