Super Bowl XLII was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion New York Giants and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion New England Patriots to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for the 2007 season. The Giants defeated the Patriots by the score of 17–14. The game was played on February 3, 2008, at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

The game is regarded as one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history. The Patriots entered the game as 12-point favorites after becoming the first team to complete the first perfect regular season since the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and the only one since the league expanded to a 16-game regular season schedule in 1978. The Giants, who finished the regular season with a 10–6 record, were seeking to become the first NFC wild card team to win a Super Bowl, and the franchise's third overall Super Bowl win. This Super Bowl was also a rematch of the final game of the regular season, in which New England won, 38–35.

The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather than the year in which it is held. For example, Super Bowl I was played on January 15, 1967, following the 1966 regular season, while the most recent game, Super Bowl XLVI, was played on February 5, 2012, to determine the champion of the 2011 season.

The game was created as part of a merger agreement between the NFL and its then-rival league, the American Football League (AFL). It was agreed that the two leagues' champion teams would play in an AFL–NFL World Championship Game until the merger was to officially begin in 1970. After the merger, each league was redesignated as a "conference", and the game was then played between the conference champions. Currently, the NFC leads the series with 25 wins to 21 wins for the AFC.

Jordin Brianna Sparks (born December 22, 1989) is an American pop / R&B recording artist, songwriter and actress who rose to fame as the winner of the sixth season of American Idol. She hails from Glendale, Arizona. Sparks won when she was 17 years old, making her the youngest winner in Idol history and remains the last female to win American Idol. She followed her American Idol victory with the release of her self-titled debut album in 2007, which has gone platinum in the U.S. and has sold over 2 million copies worldwide. Sparks' single, "No Air" is the highest-selling single by any American Idol contestant, selling over 3 million digital copies in the U.S. and Canada. Due to the success of her debut album and its four top 20 singles, she has received numerous awards and nominations including an American Music Award in 2008 and her first Grammy nomination in 2009. In 2009, Billboard magazine's 91st-best-selling music artist of the 2000–2009 decade.

Thomas Earl "Tom" Petty (born October 20, 1950) is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is the frontman of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and was a founding member of the late 1980s supergroup Traveling Wilburys and Mudcrutch. He has also performed under the pseudonyms of Charlie T. Wilbury, Jr. and Muddy Wilbury.

He has recorded a number of hit singles with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist, many of which remain heavily played on adult contemporary and classic rock radio. His music, and notably his hits, have become popular among younger generations as he continues to host sold-out shows. Throughout his career, Petty and his collaborators have sold 60 million albums.

Tom Petty was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida, and attended Gainesville High School. His interest in rock and roll music began at age 10 when he met Elvis Presley. In the summer of 1961, his uncle was working on the set of Presley's film Follow That Dream in nearby Ocala, Florida and invited Petty to come down and watch the shoot. He instantly became an Elvis Presley fan and soon traded his Wham-O slingshot for a box of Elvis 45s. In a 2006 interview on the National Public Radio program Fresh Air, Petty said that he knew he wanted to be in a band the moment he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. One of his first guitar teachers was Don Felder, a fellow Gainesville resident, who would later join the Eagles. As a young man, Petty worked briefly on the grounds crew for the University of Florida, but never attended as a student. An Ogeechee lime tree that he planted while employed at the University is now called the Tom Petty tree.

Kina Kasuya Grannis (born August 4, 1985) is an American guitarist and singer-songwriter. She is half Japanese and half English, Irish, French, Scottish, Dutch and German. Grannis was the winner of the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest. As a result of winning, she earned a recording contract with Interscope Records and had her music video played during the commercials of Super Bowl XLII. She recently won Best Web-Born Artist at the 2011 MTV O Music Awards.

Her progress in the competition was covered in The Orange County Register and The Wall Street Journal. Grannis has also been featured on FOX News Los Angeles, Good Day L.A. and Yahoo!.

Kina grew up in Mission Viejo, California, and it was here where her love for music began. In elementary school, she composed and submitted piano compositions to district art competitions. Soon afterwards, she began playing the violin, an instrument she would play throughout high school. By age 15, she started teaching herself the guitar and it was this instrument with which she fell in love.