DON BEEBE reached the Super Bowl four times with the Buffalo Bills, but always came away without the gaudy winner's ring. The veteran wide receiver is unlikely to depart empty-handed from the Lousiana Superdome tomorrow, a stadium resembling a giant spacecraft from Independence Day, because he now plays for the best team in gridiron, the Green Bay Packers.

The Packers, now dubbed America's Real Team after the rowdy Dallas Cowboys disgraced themselves with drugs and sex scandals, are favoured by Las Vegas bookies to beat the New England Patriots by two touchdowns in Super Bowl XXXI. Most pundits, however, believe that the game in the Big Easy will be much closer because Bill Parcells, the New England coach, is a managing genius beneath that bully-boy exterior.

In one of his recent press conferences, Parcells, nicknamed The Big Tuna after a gullible cartoon character, said that he was using the Patriots' underdog status to motivate his team. But the Patriots are underdogs with good reason. Drew Bledsoe, the Patriots 24-year-old quarterback with a $42 million contract, lost his touch during the play-offs.

Meanwhile, his opposing number, Brett Favre, is red-hot, backed up by a gaggle of fine wide receivers in Andre Rison, Antonio Freeman and Beebe and the tight ends Keith Jackson and Mike Chmurra. New England lacks this depth of talent, not only on offence, but in defence, where the Packers have the incomparable Reggie White.

Green Bay also wins in the popularity stakes because it taps into the mystique of small-town America. Mike Holmgren, the Packers coach, is as likely to abuse his players as Parcells is to open a charm school.

Green Bay, a city of 96,000 is the smallest city in the National Football League. It is also the only big-league sports city where the fans - 1,915 of them own the team. It also helps that they are new faces. "People in the country just want to see some new blood now," Chmurra said.

The Patriots have a lot of history too, albeit more tarnished. When the team clinched the American Football Conference in 1985, fans stormed the field and carried off one of the goal posts on to a motorway, where they hit a live telephone wire. One man was electrocuted and died.

The Packers and the Patriots beat the Carolina Panthers and the Jacksonville Jaguars, respectively, to get here and the NFL is giving itself pats on the back for achieving their long-sought after goal of parity. But some commentators believe that the Panthers and the Jaguars marched as far as they did because the rest of the NFL is rather mediocre.

Behind the hoopla in New Orleans, the NFL has other things on its plate besides gumbo and jambalaya. Falling television ratings during the regular season is a prime cause for indigestion.

But Beebe could not be less concerned by such problems. His mind is fixed on getting a Super Bowl ring.