SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – They step inside the door and suddenly it is clear where you are, and what the Giants are really up against in six days. The Patriots don’t walk into rooms as much as they occupy them, and there is no greater room in football than the Super Bowl.

And it is their room, until someone proves otherwise.

“It is a privilege,” Bill Belichick said, “just to be here.”

Funny, he must have left his black helmet and cape back on the plane, back at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. He wore a conservative gray suit and a thin smile rather than his Darth Vader outfit, but there was no mistaking who was standing at the podium at the Westin Kierland Resort last night.

“Mr. Belichick is here,” one of the NFL’s PR men whispered.

Mr. Belichick and the gentlemen from New England did what we knew they would do last night, leaving our notebooks dry and the Giants’ bulletin boards empty. Belichick talked about fond old days with the Giants, and all the hours that he and Tom Coughlin used to spend talking about various football philosophies.

Tedy Bruschi was happy to see the Super Bowl again, after a stroke nearly ended his career the last time the Patriots made it this far. Kevin Faulk talked about how it never gets old to be playing in the NFL’s showcase event. So did Mike Vrabel.

“It never gets easier, or harder,” Vrabel said. “Just better.”

Especially when you are the Patriots. Especially when you’ve made this your room, your showcase, your personal invitational, four trips here in seven years, three championships already, this time bringing an 18-game winning streak along, an unbeatable Iron Horse steaming toward forever.

“This is a one-game season,” Belichick said. “We don’t care about last season or next season or anything else we did this season. I’m not saying it’s insignificant, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s basically useless to the task we face right now.”

They don’t talk about themselves because they don’t need to talk about themselves, what they’ve done, who they are. Yesterday, in the morning, football’s most confident team bid farewell to football’s most confident fans, Pats faithful filling the lower bowl at Gillette Stadium as snow fell from the sky and joy rose from the field.

“It was a romantic setting,” Belichick said. “A chill in the air. Snow falling. Almost like some of the playoff games we’ve played there.”

It was a minor lapse into a nostalgic place but soon he was back, praising Eli Manning, praising Jerry Reese, praising just about everyone who works at Giants Stadium from the Maras and the Tisches to the ticket-takers. Back to basics. Back to business. Back at the Super Bowl, the laboratory that spawned Belichick’s genius the first time, in Tampa, 17 years ago, then sustained it during every succeeding trip ever since.

The Giants arrive today. There will be just as much interest. There will be just as many people greeting their arrival. And theirs is a season that merits significant praise. But what’s clear is this: They are the guests here. They are the visitors. They are the challengers, bowing into the ring as they square off with the champions, underdogs not only because of what Vegas says but because of who they’re up against.

“We have to be great to beat them,” Tom Brady would say.

But the Giants have to be perfect, and the more you see the Patriots, the more time you spend around them in their room, the more you understand. Look, there have other unbeatable forces that have been beaten, other unassailable marvels that have met their astonishing matches.

The Soviets lost to the United States in hockey, eight years after the Yanks lost to the Russians in basketball. Duke beat a steamroller known as UNLV once when nobody believed that was possible. Dan Gable walked into the final college wrestling match of his life with a 181-0 record, and walked off the mat 181-2.

“When you’re the underdog,” Larry Owings, Gable’s vanquisher, said a few years ago, “the last thing you worry about is being the best of all time. You just want to be the best for one match.”

Or one game. The Giants will get their chance to overtake the room, but for now it remains the Patriots’ room. Until proven otherwise.