Here we are — the big weekend.

Football fans are gearing up for the biggest NFL game of the season. Football widows are counting down the seconds until they can begin to enjoy almost six uninterrupted gridiron-free months of sanity. Bookkeepers in Vegas are simply sitting around counting each and every dollar that’s rolling into town.

Incidentally, my favorite Vegas line this season is a prop bet allowing you to wager whether Eli Manning will have more pass completions than Lebron James will have points this Sunday.

Needless to say, the Super Bowl is a pretty big deal around Casa de Sports Guy. It’s a time to roll out a small smorgasbord of nachos and chili cheese dip, mini tacos, fried cheddar bites with ranch dressing, buffalo wings, some down-home barbecue and pretty much anything else that I spent New Year’s Eve swearing off for the sake of weight loss in 2012.

Those of you nodding in silent understanding with that paragraph are now officially my brothers and sisters in arms.

It was then that I was informed the aforementioned shindig was a pull-ups party.

A what?

For the unenlightened, of which I, myself, was a happily oblivious club member until mere hours ago, a pull-ups party is apparently a gathering of mothers and potty-training age youngsters. Some marketing executive at Pampers or Huggies or some other sinister location deep inside corporate America decided that calling it a party, kicking in some free product and enabling parents to discuss the myriad challenges and frustrations associated with potty-training youngsters was a good idea.

My wife, ever on the lookout for free stuff that we can use to reduce expenses, thought it a good idea. On Super Bowl Sunday.

So now my Super Bowl plans have changed. Yours truly will be surrendering control of the house this weekend and seeking a hideout from which to view the big game. Invitations are welcomed. Someone, please, save me.

In other words, I was dead wrong.

The Patriots are clearly the favorite of the majority. They’ve also been the more consistent team throughout the season. Picking them is the safe play. Choosing the Giants, on the other hand, risks siding with a team that hasn’t always shown up and runs the risk of looking incredibly stupid come Monday morning.