For days leading up to the Super Bowl, I've had a really hard time trying to predict a winner, but I finally settled on the Giants.

I was initially reluctant to go with New York, because no 9-7 team has ever taken home the title. However, there's a first time for everything, and I think the Giants match up very well with the Pats.

Both clubs seem like teams of destiny, with the Giants benefiting from two punt-return fumbles to beat the 49ers, and the Patriots avoiding overtime against the Ravens because of a missed 32-yard field goal.

The deciding factor for me is that I believe New York will be able to get defensive-line pressure on quarterback Tom Brady, as they did in the Super Bowl four years ago.

That being said, I expect the game to be very close, with a final score in the range of 30-27.

My cat, Van, also picks the Giants, although his reasoning remains a mystery.

Instead of using treats as the lure like I did last year, I placed small piles of his 9 Lives dried food on top of newspaper cutouts of the two teams' helmets. (Actually, my caregiver Heather did all the work, since getting down on the floor is kind of hard when you're in a wheelchair.)

For what seemed like forever, Van just sniffed the food — alternating between piles — until I was about to give up on him.

Then, apparently sensing that my patience was running out, he finally picked the Giants and began munching away.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must say Van and I predicted a Steelers win last year, so our track record could use some improvement.

• It turns out Penn State's football recruiting did take a major hit because of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, as its ranking dropped from potentially in the top 10 to as low as 50th.

But that was pretty much inevitable, and the coaching staff deserves credit for keeping the number of decommitments as low as it was. It's just too bad the guys who left were mostly four-star recruits who ended up at Big 10 rival schools.

Still, as new head coach Bill O'Brien said, this is a special class because the players who ultimately chose PSU did so when it would have been a lot easier to go somewhere else, given all that's transpired in Happy Valley over the past three months.

Because they had a short window of opportunity to work in, the new staff also went after guys who were sort of under the radar — like Georgia quarterback Steven Bench — so it'll be interesting to see how those diamonds in the rough pan out in a few years.

• Sure, nobody likes it when another team's fans invade a stadium, but the antidote to that is to put a winning club on the field so your own fans show up.

Whining about it only makes things worse.

Somebody needs to tell that to Washington Nationals executive Andy Feffer, who informed The Washington Post that the Nats will try to keep Phillies fan away by selling tickets to the May 4-6 Washington-Philadelphia series only to those with credit cards in Maryland and D.C.

"We're trying to build a team here, and nothing irks me personally or the people here more than to see another team's fans — particularly Philly fans — in our ballpark, holding up signs," Feffer said. "That's not the way it should be."

Somehow I suspect this is going to backfire badly, with Phils fans being even more determined to pack Nationals Park.

I can't wait to see Feffer's reaction to that.

Paula Wolf is a staff writer for the Sunday News. Email her at pwolf@lnpnews.com. She also blogs about sports at lancasteronline.com/blogs/w....