Chargers at the Patriots and the Giants at the Packers

Let’s get ready to rumblllle!

Today’s the big day where we find out which two teams will be playing in Super Bowl XLII.

The underdog Chargers will be taking on the Patriots in Gillette Stadium at 3 ET and the game will be broadcast on CBS. The Giants and the Packers will go at it at the uber-frigid Lambeau Field, where temps will be near zero, with wind chills even colder than that. Game time is 6:30 ET on Fox.

Just for the record, this won’t be the coldest playoff game on record, but I’m sure to the fans sitting out in the stands, it’ll sure feel like it.

One fan sitting in the stands will be Eli Manning’s fiance Ali McGrew who, according to Eli’s brother Cooper, will do so at the request of Eli himself as he fears a jinx a la Jessica Simpsons’s alleged jinxing of Tony Romo:

No hottie is going to hex Eli Manning during the biggest game of his career — he’s made sure of that.

The Giant quarterback has told his college sweetheart and fiancee, Abby McGrew, to get layered up for tonight’s bitter-cold playoff game in Green Bay — because she has to brave the elements and suffer through the action from stadium seats if he’s going to win:

Eli believes he’s jinxed when McGrew watches his games from the cozy warmth of a stadium suite, Manning’s oldest brother, Cooper, told The Post.

Those times McGrew has watched her man play from a suite, the Jints have lost.

“Abby almost always sits in the stands, but I guess once or twice she was invited to sit in a suite and things didn’t end well,” Cooper told The Post.

So Eli took steps to ensure he’s not the next Tony Romo.

“In the spirit of superstition, Eli told her, ‘I don’t care if it’s 4 degrees in Green Bay, you’re sitting in the stands,'” laughed Cooper, who sells oil stocks and lives in New Orleans, the Manning clan’s hometown.

So, Cooper said, Abby will be in the stands tonight, shivering amid the cheeseheads at frozen Lambeau Field in wind chills expected to dip below zero degrees.

Just how the bleep does one stay warm in zero degree, windy weather? I know what I’d be wearing:

“Randy”, from the movie A Christmas Story,
getting all bundled up by his mother.

McGrew would have to get it specially made in Giants blue, of course

As to predictions, ST reader William Teach predicted in the comments on the weekend open thread:

Giants by 4.

I think the Pack wins handily today, while the Chargers give the Pats more of a game then they’re thinking they’ll get. In the end, though, the Pats will win by 10.

How about everyone else?