Mike Celizic

They’re all super. The name says as much. But some are more super than others, and XLII is one of them. So let the hype begin.

I’m going to be honest here. There have been years when those of us who monger words for a living had to stretch the bounds of credulity to make a Super Bowl sound super. Just last year, I remember inventing reasons why the Bears and their all-knucklehead quarterback Rex Grossman would give the Colts all they could handle. That’s why they call it hype.

You could make a good argument that it’s that way more often than not. I’m not saying there’s any harm in it. But I can see where PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Adjectives — might object that thousands of innocent descriptives were needlessly slaughtered in the cause of advancing a very thin story line.

Have no fear of that this year. Super Bowl XLII is one game that merits the overkill.

Fortunately, it involves teams from New York and Boston, where old-fashioned tabloid journalism — you know, the kind that never lets the facts stand in the way of a catchy headline and a good story — still thrives.

They’re led by the flagsheet of the fleet, The New York Post, which can be expected to send all hands to the Valley of the Sun to keep its readers and the nation informed — or misinformed, as the case may be; it’s all one to The Post — on every development.

The editors at the New York Daily News will feel as if they have to match their rivals, headline for headline. And in Boston, The Herald will feel duty-bound to keep up with the big boys in New York, especially after The Post scooped them on local hero Tom Brady gimping around New York with a walking cast on his right foot.

When the East Coast press has a rooting interest in an event, the effects on coverage are like the convergence of climatological phenomena that result in a perfect storm. New York City has four newspapers and about 10 more populate New Jersey, Long Island, upstate New York and Connecticut, each one trying to outdo the others. Boston has two papers and an equally hungry supporting cast of suburban dailies trying to get the scoop on their betters. And don’t forget that New York has six network television stations and two sports-talk radio stations.

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When Seattle and Pittsburgh were the stars of the show, they brought along a total press contingent that together wouldn’t equal half of what’s going to come with just the Giants. When a city has just one newspaper covering things, a lot of things can slide by.

Someone suggested to me it’s because reporters are nicer in the American Outback and are more likely to give players a break. But it doesn’t have anything to do with nice; it’s about keeping your job. In New York, if you have even a shred of a hint of a scintilla of a whiff of a story, you’d better run with it like starving wolves are at your heels, because if you don’t, another paper will. And then your editor will be on you like sweat on a wrestler.

So no detail will be too small, no social gaffe too insignificant to escape being reported. And if you’re not sure what a media horde is, wait until Tuesday — Media Day — when Brady does his best not to limp onto his dais. It’s going to make the mobs who follow Britney Spears look like a Sunday School class.

For that, we can all be grateful, because the alternative is to spend the week watching your home bleed equity and the dollar leak value and stock market struggle to keep from falling into the abyss.