It’s on.

Finally, the Super Bowl we always wanted.

Not for the last two weeks. Thirty years, in my case. Perhaps longer, in yours.

Ever since I was old enough to figure out that the New England Patriots were not the only NFL team that mattered in our mountainous, cold corner of the fruited plain, it was a lifelong dream to see those bragging rights settled once and for all in the only game that matters.

Patriots-Giants is not Red Sox-Yankees. You don’t get 19 opportunities every year to lord the latest victory over your buddy on the other side of the argument, or an immediate shot at revenge the next day if things don’t fall right.

Our region’s two most popular football teams exist in different conferences and different television contracts.

In the NFL, that might as well be different solar systems. Patriots-Giants is an intergalactic phenomenon that comes along once every four years, at most. That little elimination bout on Dec. 29 was only the second, maybe third, meaningful encounter between the two teams. Ever.

That hasn’t stopped true believers on both sides from baiting each other with the standard line that your team drinks vigorously through a straw. I know this because I’ve worked closely with at least four ardent Giants fans in my two decades with this company. Most of them left me wondering how such great guys could be such insufferable individuals about a football team.

History lesson for the bandwagon jumpers and once-a-year football fans in the crowd: Hard to imagine in their current decade as the be-all, end-all, but the Patriots didn’t exist until 1960. Or two years after the Giants played the Baltimore Colts in an NFL Championship Game that their fans still discuss with a lump in their throat as if it ended with the Second Coming, even though the Ponies won in overtime.

“Hey, I remember being 5 years old and sitting next to my Dad watching the Giants every Sunday afternoon,” said Peter Brown, a retired school administrator and coach at Jay High School. “And there was no such thing as the Patriots.”

Fair enough. I carry an emotional torch for manifold meaningless places and activities to this day, simply because I associate them with my parents and my childhood. Tough to step on those toes.

All’s fair, though, when you’re arguing about sports in this Who’s No. 1/Buy or Sell/Tastes Great, Less Filling world in which we live. And so I ask: Who’s better? Which is the historically greater, prouder, superior franchise?

I only ask because today’s game will settle the debate, at least for now. It’s a dead heat going into Glendale.

That sound you just heard was a collective of Giants fans questioning my sanity and manhood and the legitimacy of my birth. They would point out to you that the New York Football Giants (Good Lord, drop the pretentious ‘football’ from the corporate name the baseball team moved to San Francisco 50 freakin’ years ago) won NFL titles in 1927, 1934, 1938 and 1956, all before the AFL was a gleam in Lamar Hunt’s eye.

Oh, stop it. You’re like those NHL fans – all 52 of ’em – who get weepy whenever there’s a game pitting two of the almighty Original Six. The NFL was a much smaller, ethnically monochrome league back then. Ninety-five percent of its players placed in a time machine would not have been physically fit to collect the jockstraps and throw them in the laundry in 2007.

Football’s modern age, the only epoch fit for apples-to-apples comparison, began in 1970 with the merger of the stodgy NFL and the upstart AFL. Even Vince Lombardi’s Packers of the 1960s rate far too much reverence.

Based on that standard, here’s the case for each corporation:

Patriots – Team of the Decade from 2001-present. Five previous Super Bowl appearances with three victories. Most prolific playoff coach and quarterback of their generation in Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. Twice set NFL records for most consecutive victories. First team to go 16-0 in a regular season. Hall of Fame offensive lineman in John Hannah, newly inducted linebacker Andre Tippett and several potential future inductees (Brady, Belichick, Junior Seau, Randy Moss, Rodney Harrison) on the current roster.

Giants – Three previous Super Bowl appearances with two victories. Coach Bill Parcells’ coaching tree produced Belichick and former assistants Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel. Greatest linebacker of the modern era in Lawrence Taylor. Michael Strahan is certain to join Taylor and 1980s star Harry Carson in the Hall of Fame.

I say it’s a push. The Giants don’t have that third Lombardi Trophy, yet, but their glory days coincided with a decade in which the Bears, Redskins and 49ers all did special stuff. The Patriots haven’t encountered that level of competition, but they’ve stayed at the top in an era when the league employs a salary cap to prevent it from happening.

There’s no question who is the better team on paper tonight. But there was no question when the Patriots shocked the Rams (XXXVI) or the Giants befuddled the Bills (XXV), either.

After too many years of being forced to watch the other team’s games thanks to NFL broadcast regulations, there’s no escaping that other team.

It’s on. And because this might never happen again, it’s on for all time.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].