INDIANAPOLIS – Once upon a time it entered the room flanked by snickers, with a smirk to hold open the door. The Super Bowl, heh, heh. Yeah, right.

Only thing Super about it was you could leave at halftime to beat the traffic, and not miss a thing. The Bud Bowl was more intriguing.

That was back in the days of Chicago 46, New England 10, or San Francisco 55, Denver 10, when the suspense was gone before the queso got cold. One year, Doug Williams threw four touchdown passes in the second quarter, and that was that. Another year, the Bills turned the ball over nine times and lost 52-17 to the Cowboys.

I think the MVP that year was the beer man up in Section 235.

Sunday night, on the other hand, it was Eli Manning. Who was the quarterback who did not complete a record 16 passes in a row.

That was Tom Brady, the losing quarterback, who completed – let’s see – 27 of 41 passes for 276 yards and two touchdowns. It would have been about 30 of 41, except Wes Welker and Aaron Hernandez got the dropsies at the end.

Which, by the way, really was the end. The last play of the game was a Hail Mary into a crowd in the end zone as time expired, and the only thing riding on it was everything.

“These games are always this way,” Giants coach Tom Coughlin said.

“Last minute, fourth quarter ….”

“The game itself speaks for itself,” said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, and for once that was not just happy-talk commissioner-ese.

And the man can take a bow for that, because this is the culmination of his vision of the NFL, where every man’s a king or a potential king. There may be no Lombardi Packers or Noll Steelers in Goodell’s NFL – every team is flawed, even that team hoisting the Lombardi Trophy on Sunday night – but the Super Bowl is actually, well, Super most years. Human sacrifice is out, drama is in.

Consider: If you’d transported Sunday’s game back to, say, the mid-1980s or mid-1990s, it would have gone down in history as perhaps the greatest Super Bowl ever. The Giants jumped out 9-0. Then the Patriots scored 17 straight points. Then the Giants scored the last 12, winning it on one of those signature late drives that tend to become legendary when they happen in the Super Bowl.

You know what, though?

Sunday not only was not the greatest Super Bowl ever, it might not even make the top four in the last decade. Beginning with Adam Vinatieri’s game-winning field goal for New England on the final play of Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, at least five Super Bowls have been decided on either the last possession or the last minute.

There was Super Bowl XXXVIII, when Vinatieri’s field goal with 4 seconds left lifted New England over Carolina 32-29. There was the Ridell Miracle in Super Bowl XLII, when David Tyree’s catch against his helmet set up Eli Manning’s game-winning pass to Plaxico Burress with 35 seconds to play in the first Giants-Patriots matchup. And there was Super Bowl XLIII, maybe the best of them all, when Arizona scored 16 points in the fourth quarter to take 23-20 lead, only to have Ben Roethlisberger hit Santonio Holmes in the end zone with 35 seconds to play to win it for Pittsburgh 27-23.

And there was Sunday – the seventh Super Bowl in the last 11 to be decided by a touchdown or less.

“Another fantastic finish,” Goodell said Monday.

As intended.