History says the GiīˇŊants and Jets should dread playing co-host to Super XLVIII next February.
Doing so can be hazardous to your entire season.
While the fact no team ever has won or even played inđŧ The Big Game on its home field is now part of NFL lore, that uncanny hex has gotten deeper and more corrosive in recent years.
Since the start of the new millennium, playing host to a Supeâr đBowl has meant not making the playoffs at all, and â in the case of the 2011 Colts â finishing with the worst record in the league.
The 2000 Buccaneers were the lađst Super Bowl host to qualify for thęĻe postseason in the same year. Each of next 12 hosts watched both the playoffs and that yearâs Super Bowl from afar.
No wonder itâs difficult to get the Giants or Jets to even talk about the potentđial Blizzard Bowl at MetLife Stadium next Feb. 2, much less their hopes of ending a 47-year streak thatâs become one of the most famous in league history.
âWe definitely look over there sometimes and đ ˇunderstand how monumental it would be to make it, but you canât think about that too much,â Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz said. âWe all know doing that hasnât worked out too wellęŠĩ for anybody over the years.â
Theories to explain that, of course, seem as plentiful as đŽthe numberđ of Super Bowls played.
What has made the streak even more difficult to parse in recentđģ years is the fact the NFL has spread the game around to so many locales, using it as a carrot to pry expensive nâew stadiums out of reluctant cities.
As a result, a game that essentially rotated between ęĻLos Angeles, Miami and New Orleans during its first 20 years has been moved around to Jacksonville, Detroit, Indianapolis and Arlingtđŧon, Texas, over the past decade.
You would think with parity in the salary-cap era that began in 1994 and the rosterđ of Super Bowl hosts greatly expanding in that time that a streak-buster would have finally broken through.
But no.
Despite all that movement and diversity, the Joe Montana-led 49ers in 1984 are still the only team to even come close to a home-field title. San Francisco put a 38-16 beating on Dan Marino and the Dolphins in Super Bowl XIX that season at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, Caliđf., just down the road from Candlestick Park.
Now, for theđŽ first time, there are two teams in the same year with the chance to end The Streak thanks to theđ° NFLâs gamble on a Super Bowl in the potentially frigid, open-air home of the Giants and Jets.
Could this finally be the year?
âI donât really see it happeđning,â Marino told The Post recently. âThe Giants are a possibility with Eli [Manning], obviously, but the Jets are rebuilding. And take it from me, thereâs a lđ ot of pressure when your stadium is hosting a Super Bowl. If youâre a good team, a lot of your fans just expect you to get there because itâs your home field. But itâs just not that easy.â
Marino would know. The Dolphins played host to the Super Bowl three times during his ę§Hall of Fame career, but Miami missed the playofđ fs entirely in 1988 and couldnât get past the division round in 1994 or 1998.
Super Bowl host teams also havđ e been victims of some bad luck that derailed potential streak-busting seasons.
The Cowboys and Colts lost their franchise quarterbacks to season-ending injuries (Tony Romo in 2010 and Peyton Manning in 2011), while the Bountygate investigation wrecked Drew Breesâ chances of leading the Saints áŖto a home-field Lombardi Trophy last season.
The 1999 Falcons looked like an even better candidate to host a Super Bowl, considering they had gone 14-2 and reached the Big Game the previous year. But their ęĻhopes of winning a crown in the Georgia Dome were wrecked in Week 2 by star running back Jamal Andersonâs season-ending knee injury, and Atlanta instead staggered to a 5-11 finish.
In the case of the Chargers, the hex has been downright embarrassing. In the three Super Bowls played in San Diego, a division rival endeđŧd up representing the AFC â the Broncos in 1988 and 1998 and the Raiders in 2003.
Ouch.
In some ways, thođugh, the streak ofđ¸ no home-field Super Bowl winners isnât entirely mystifying.
Not only was the game played six times in stadiums without an NFL team during the early years, but it also was held eight times combined in New Orleans and Tampa from 1970-1991 â a stretch when the Saints and Buccaneeđˇrs were perennially among the leagueâs most hapless franchises.
On the other hand, the inability of the powerhouse Dolphins of the early 1970s to reach the Super Bowl when the game was so frequentđ§ly held at the Orange Bowl remains a head-scratcher.
Miamiâs famed back-to-back world cđ¸hampionships came in the 1972 and â73 seasons â right in the middle of an unusual four-year drought of Super Bowls held in the Dolphinsâ since-demolished stadium.
Though you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the sport who thinks the streak will last foreveręĻ° (especially no team evening playing in a home-field Super Bowl), it somehow endures despite the gameâs 50th anniversary being just around the corner.
âI think itâđ§¸s going to happen,â famed Chargers quarterback-turned-TV analyst Dan Fouts said with a laugh recently. âBut donât try to pin me down [on a year], because nobodyđâs gotten that prediction right yet.â