Superb Owl -- the answer is 42

A friend (She is the football devotee, thankyouverymuch) collected me in time to catch the start of the second quarter¹, at which point I was mildly surprised to see the Giants scoreful and the Patriots otherwise. You must understand that the only SB-related opinion/wish/prayer I had held during the entire run-up was this:

Please ${deity}, from asinine stunts which might derail Tom Petty's gig, spare us. Amen.

IMHO, that was the most important aspect of the entire circus.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers rocked² as if they had invented the stuff. That was what I had really hoped to see, and the rest⁴ was just a game…

Soon, players returned for the second half. And then the strange thing happened: they made me care about the game.⁵

In retrospect, Super Bowl XLII was IMHO one of the cleanest, best-fought matchups between the two best teams of the year that I can recall watching.³ If one could reasonably expect to see more superb owls of similar quality, I might be at risk of football-related viewer recidivism this time next year.

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(1) Still trying to find replays of two items I'm told I would have appreciated: the reading of the Declaration of Independence prior to the game and the National Anthem being sung by someone unrelated to either a singed cat or Rosanne Barr. Both features were described to me as both worthy and showing more class than I can remember seeing in any five SBs…

(2) First person to use the word “still” earns a baleful glance from this old fart. >_<

(3) as opposed to another boxcar-scoring, ugly-as-sin, eye-gouging, Haha-we-pissed-in-your-Gatorade bitchfest which invariably showcases the least attractive properties of any participant(s).

(4) The song “I Won't Back Down” seemed appropriate at halftime, and more so as the game progressed.

(5) As opposed to the hype, the commercials, or the other ancillary BS which has increasingly competed for attention against the very game around which it accreted.