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Tedy Bruschi combed his hair, left his game face in the Patriots locker room, put on a brown sweater and walked alone to an enormous tent designed for media interviews.

"Tedy Bruschi now at podium 9," said a voice over the intercom. About 30 reporters bunched close. Bruschi spoke up, clearly and audibly. If he was hurting, he didn't let it show.

"It's a shame we couldn't finish it, but at the Super Bowl, the loser is just lumped in with the other 30 teams," he said. "I'm not shocked. But I didn't like getting confetti with the other team's colors sprayed in my face."

He smiled weakly.

The former UA All-American was neither maudlin nor emotional. He was what most 12-year NFL veterans are. He was a realist. The Patriots will not be the first pro football team to go 19-0. He will not win his fourth Super Bowl ring. The New York Giants, a wild card entry, beat the Patriots 17-14 in a comeback for the ages Sunday night and they are the exciting new champions.

The Patriots immediately became old news.

Someone asked Bruschi about the failure to go 19-0.

"It's not even worth talking about," he said. And so he didn't.

At that moment, the intercom system in the media tent was broken by this announcement: "Antonio Pierce now at podium 5" Many in the group talking to Bruschi scattered to chat with Pierce, another former Wildcat standout. Pierce was still wearing his game uniform, complete with grass stains. He kept tugging at his Super Bowl XLII Champions cap.

Unlike Bruschi, Pierce was not introspective. He was, instead, brassy, as is his reputation.

He insisted that New England quarterback Tom Brady was "rattled."

"I kept hearing him yelling at his linemen," he said. "This is so great because it silenced so many people who didn't believe in us."

Someone asked Pierce what he thought about the Patriots' truncated dream of finishing the season 19-0 and he made light of the many books, some of them already at the printer, based on a perfect season.

"Maybe the book should be called '18-1: The World Champion New York Giants.' Someone should write that book."

Because New York is the media capital of America, many books will be written about the New York Giants of 2007 and Super Bowl XLII. They won eight straight road games, including playoff victories at Tampa Bay, Dallas and Green Bay.

They were supposedly equipped with the wrong Manning, Eli, not his accomplished older brother, last year's Super Bowl champion quarterback, Peyton Manning.

No one has ever called Giants coach Tom Coughlin a genius, a word that has been much too loosely tossed around to describe Patriots coach Bill Belichick.

But today and for posterity, the '07 Giants will be called champions.

It will make for good reading.

Bruschi acknowledged that the Giants' compelling rally, an 83-yard drive in the final 2:43, will be remembered forever.

"The escape by Eli and the catch by (David) Tyree are plays that win Super Bowls," Bruschi said. "We had our chances, but they executed at the most critical times of the game."

Manning's magnificent escape from a Patriots pass rush, and his desperate, 32-yard pass to Tyree on a third-down play with 59 seconds remaining is surely one of the epic plays in 42 years of Super Bowls.

Coughlin, a 61-year-old head coach who made his way through the system after stops at Rochester Institute of Technology, Syracuse and Boston College and as an NFL assistant in three cities, knew immediately what the Manning-to-Tyree pass meant.

"That might be one of the great plays of all time," he said. No one was available to disagree.

For the Patriots, the inability to finish their 18-0 start will be fodder for sports-talk shows and internet postings for months. Years, perhaps.

Rather than enter history with the '27 Yankees and the '72 Lakers, they will now be lumped with the 2001 Seattle Mariners, who won a baseball record 116 regular-season games but failed to reach the World Series.

The Patriots are now in company with the 1991 UNLV Rebels basketball team, one that went 34-0 and then collapsed in the final three minutes of a Final Four game, losing to Duke, snapping a 46-game winning streak.

"I think the '72 Dolphins can come and join us a little bit in our celebration that we are going to have Tuesday," said Pierce. "We did save them their (lone) perfect season."

The Patriots probably aren't finished as a Super Bowl contender. Belichick is 55, single-minded, apparently ready to coach into his 60s as did Tom Landry and Don Shula.

Brady is 30, and does not appear the worse for wear. Among other Super Bowl quarterbacks, Troy Aikman went until he was 34, John Elway to 38 and John Unitas to 40. Of Sunday's Patriots starters, only Bruschi, 34, fellow linebacker Junior Seau, 39, and defensive back Rodney Harrison, 35, are older than 32.

But fame is fleeting in pro football, especially pro football, and neither the Patriots nor the Giants can be sure they'll be good enough to reach Super Bowl XLIII.

"This is the beginning of something new," Pierce said. "We shocked the world but not ourselves. We played at a different speed and a different level today. It was difficult, but we did it."

Watch a slide show and video from the Super Bowl at go.azstarnet.com/superbowl