It’s not all that unusual for a team to come into the Super Bowl largely as an unknown entity. Wild-card teams do it. Teams from places such as Seattle or Carolina do it.

But a team from New York? Flying in under the radar? That’s just preposterous. But to a great extent, that’s what the New York Giants will be doing in Super Bowl XLII.

It isn’t so much that the Giants have somehow managed to give the New York media the slip this season. Sure, the tabloids in the Big Apple love to bash Isiah Thomas and the Knicks, but not to the expense of ignoring the Giants.

It’s just that compared to the incredible hoopla surrounding the 18-0 New England Patriots and their ESPN-trademarked “Pursuit of Perfection,� the Giants are chopped liver.

The Giants may as well be the Washington Generals and the Patriots the Harlem Globetrotters: an opponent that conveniently blends into the background so that the real stars, the team everybody paid their money to watch, can shine.

Of course, on the field, the Giants really aren’t that kind of an opponent. They’ve won 10 straight road games and lost by only three points to the Patriots in the last game of the regular season.

But in terms of hype, the Patriots have had an 18-week head start. That’s tough for the Giants to compete with, even with a quarterback named Manning.

Early in the season, it was the “Spygate� scandal. Come on, nobody can out-hype something that has the word “scandal� and has “-gate� on the end of it. And that was in Week 1. The Patriots hype machine has snowballed ever since.

I’m sorry, but Eli Manning (shown, with the deer-in-the-headlights expression) and the Giants have a long, long way to go before he approaches that level of examination.

All this has happened in the first week of Super Bowl hype. Media day isn’t even until Tuesday.

Lock your doors.