By MIKE ULMER -- Toronto Sun
  TAMPA -- The same visionary who put Roman numerals beside the words Super Bowl probably decided the best way to heighten the interminable pre-game buildup was to ensure the only turf the two teams would share was a gleaming, dusky football field.

 And so you cannot talk to Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick and Giants head man Jim Fassel at the same time at Super Bowl XXXV.

 Yesterday, a half hour separated the appearance of the two men and yet, if you closed your eyes, you would be challenged to identify who represented the roughneck Ravens and who was the mild-mannered Giants clairvoyant who guaranteed a playoff appearance.

 That the two men are friends was supposed to bring an air of The Odd Couple to the event. But in the end, they are both coaches, both competitive, both intensely well-spoken and far more alike than different.

 Billick and Fassel never have worked together, but they are friends. They talk by phone two or three times a week, swap tales and occasionally, gossip over dinner.

 It is in those conversations that the real nature of both men hits the table. The world might have been surprised when Fassel, back in November, said his Giants would make the playoffs.

 Brian Billick was not.

 "The persona that Jim exhibited in the media, that's the Jim Fassel I know," Billick said. "He wasn't changing his demeanour. He was maybe making it a little more public than before. I think the players will tell you that's the Jim Fassel they know."

 The most enduring image of the Super Bowl countdown will be Billick, the embodiment of arrogance, hectoring the media on how to do their jobs before he had fielded his first question. How, someone asked Fassel, does he get along with such a man?

 "I know Brian real well," Fassel said. "When Brian and I get together, he doesn't come across to me that way."

 That wasn't difficult to believe if you watched Billick yesterday. He sent himself up, and revelled in the descriptions of his arrogance, proud of a persona that he had conjured. "That (the opening press conference) was as much fun as I've had in a long time," he said.

 Billick admitted he was playing the old us-against-you game earlier in the week, pitting his players against the pen-carrying saps who had come to tell their stories. He even playfully 'fessed up about his cultivated aggression.

 "You don't do this job unless you are confident, you're self-assured," he said. "You don't stand up in front of 53 players, millionaires nowadays, and say: 'Guys, follow me, because I kind of think I know what I'm doing.'"

 But to say one man is less volcanic than he shows and one man is more, glosses over the most telling difference.

 Brian Billick is a reflection of his team. He projects a studied cockiness.

 "Billick's attitude and approach to the game is the same as ours," Ravens linebacker Cornell Brown has said. "He has a fire and guys like that."

 Fassel has fashioned a team in his image, cool on the outside, seething just under the surface.

 The Giants dish little dirt. They just play, and that -- in the NFL of 2001 -- makes them an anomaly. Jason Sehorn's volleyball interception and touchdown return in the playoff win over the Philadelphia Eagles might not have happened for a Ravens defender. After knocking the ball away, he would have been too busy dancing.

 Fassel has quarreled with his team, most notably with linebacker Jesse Armstead, over the direction of the Giants. Quarterback Kerry Collins, aimless in three previous NFL stops, has been grounded, not hyped. The world might hate New York, but there is much to like in the New York Giants.

 Yesterday, the best line about the Giants came from the coach himself. It should be required listening for anyone with a clipboard or a set of pads.

 "I said it to the team a while ago," Fassel said. " 'When it's all said and done, I want less said and more done.' "