NFL

FOX GETS IT RIGHT ON SUPER NIGHT

THE Giants won the what?

Pats owner Bob Kraft, in the CBS booth with Jim Nantz during the PGA’s FBR/Phoenix Open, Saturday, said jokingly, “We promised Fox we’d keep it close for a half.”

But the Pats did better than that; they kept it close for both halves of Super Bowl XLII, losing 17-14 to the Giants and blowing their chance for a perfect season.

Fox had a good night in that we didn’t miss anything we had to see. That super slo-mo replay of that unreal David Tyree catch with one minute left showed exactly how spectacular it was. No network had a better response to a big play, all season.

And Fox didn’t over-play any angle. And Joe Buck, who is always better when he doesn’t force it, didn’t force it.

Still, there were some odd moments.

The oddest, by far, came with 2:40 left in the first quarter, Giants up, 3-0. Troy Aikman said that during a visit with Tom Brady, during the week, he was left with the impression that Brady’s ankle is injured worse than Brady was letting on. Really? But isn’t that something Aikman might have told us, say, at the very top?

And rather than telling us that Randy Moss is being shut out, couldn’t Fox, in an isolated clip package, have shown us how? Maybe during the halftime on-site studio show? We got our first peek on tape with six seconds left in the third. Yet, when a player showboats, Fox shows it at least twice.

And isn’t it worth asking why, as long as they were unstoppable, the Pats wouldn’t go with Brady to Wes Welker on just about every play?

Some more odds and ends: Good catch, by Fox, showing Jeremy Shockey in a luxury box (as opposed to the Giants’ sideline) looking more like a beach bum than a teammate. . . . Wouldn’t it be easier if Fox told us which of its shows are not viewer discretion advised?

The first quarter ran 27 minutes. The third quarter ran 35 minutes. Halftime ran 32 minutes. . . . And football telecasts without fantasy league stats all over the screen sure look a lot more like football games, don’t they?

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Fox, yesterday, presented a nine-hour, 30-minute Super Bowl pre-game show, starting with a Suped-up “Fox News Sunday” at 9 a.m., apparently for those who previously had no idea what was going on much, much later. In so doing, Fox created for itself an all-day invite to change the channel, to watch anything else.

Only ESPN’s Monday Night Football pregame come-ons, which begin Tuesday mornings, are longer.

Fox’s Super Bowl excesses were such that those who actually paid attention to one of them were encouraged to miss much of the first half. Really.

Saturday, Fox-5 posted a countdown-to-kickoff clock, one that was an hour off. Thus, at 6:05 p.m., Fox’s clock told us that kickoff was, “1 day, 1 hour and 12 minutes” away. That would have made it a 7:17 kickoff when it was scheduled for 6:17. (Kickoff actually came at 6:30.)

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The biggest weasel of Super Bowl Week was Chris Russo. Despite having trashed Pedro Martinez, two years ago, for dogging it – days later, Martinez underwent surgery – Russo, a slow-learner, was at it again, fully implying that LaDainian Tomlinson was gutless, two weeks ago, when he left the AFC Championship with an injury.

Though Tomlinson has no history of dogging it, and Russo never tried to explain what would motivate Tomlinson to sit out a championship game when he could have played, Russo did have a chance to repeat his “Show some guts!” criticisms of Tomlinson when Tomlinson was Russo’s and Mike Francesa’s guest, Wednesday, from Arizona.

Fat chance. With Tomlinson there, Russo spoke in broad terms of how “people like me” were confused; they couldn’t understand why Tomlinson didn’t return to the game.

Russo certainly didn’t repeat his “Show some guts!” spew about Tomlinson to Tomlinson. He could have even replayed, for Tomlinson, either of his NBC “Mad Dog Minute” attacks on Tomlinson for gutlessness. He didn’t sound the least bit confused about Tomlinson during those spews.

In another Francesa/Russo consistency, Russo’s implications that Tomlinson is gutless were made only before and after Tomlinson’s appearance with them. So who, in the end, offered the only hard evidence of being gutless?

phil.mushnick@nypost.com