Atlanta, Georgia. Two of the most anonymous teams in the NFL have come to town to decide the Super Bowl. Picture Darlington playing Crewe Alexander in the FA Cup final and you have some sense of the novelty which the Tennessee Titans and the St Louis Rams bring to the party.

Two vagabond teams. The Titans used to do business as the Houston Oilers before they upped and left for hillbilly country.

The Rams used to be the Los Angeles Rams. Neither of them ever looked like amounting to much. St Louis won four and lost 12 last season. Tennessee have lost more than they won for each of the previous five seasons. Vegas offered 200 to 1 on the Rams getting to the Super Bowl at the start of the season. So here they are, in the rehabilitation bowl.

As usual the attention focuses on the quarterbacks and this year they provide more than their share of novelty. Kurt Warner plays for the Rams but he is a walking, talking country music song. Warner is a holy roller Christian type with a personal history that would make a convert out of the hardest cynic.

It took him five years to make the starting line-up in college at Northern Iowa as a student. Just a few years later he was emphatically deposited by the Green Bay Packers onto the scrapheap and took a job stacking shelves in a supermarket in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Then he got a shot at playing a little ball in the arena league, the equivalent of Roy Keane getting selected for an indoor soccer team.

From there he was almost dropped by his team, the Iowa Barnstormers, and was quickly passed over by everyone who saw him - except the needy Rams, who took him on as a back-up in case a plague wiped out their regular quarterbacks.

They banished him to the Amsterdam Admirals to play in the European League. From Northern Iowa to the Barnstormers to the Admirals. The sort of career you don't want your kids to find out about.

How were things going? Well, he once had to postpone a trial with the Chicago Bears to go on honeymoon to Jamaica. While he was there he got bitten on his throwing elbow by some class of varmint and was laid up for two months. The Bears got bored and told him don't call us, we'll call you.

Anyway, Warner went to Amsterdam where he had to walk through the red light district praying in order to get to work. His faith brought a reward. St Louis called Warner back to the US this year paying him the league minimum of $254,000 to step in when the much feared plague descended on their quarterbacks. Strange to say, Warner has compiled the fifth best quarterbacking statistics in history. He has been a sensation.

Add to all this a love story which sees Warner falling for and marrying a separated woman, Brenda (whose son is severely brain damaged, having been dropped as a baby), and Warner begins to radiate not an aura of efficiency but of saintliness.

Brenda was on food stamps when she met Kurt. League minimum of $254,000? It ain't hardship to Kurt and Brenda Warner.

Warner is amiably nonplussed by it all. He always knew, he says, that he was going to make it. He used to bore the socks of is coworkers in the super market when he'd throw a perfect spiral with a toilet roll and tell them he was going back to the NFL.

"I was waiting for the opportunity, just waiting for that door to open so I could prove to everybody that I could do it. I think there are people out there who aren't quite sure yet that I'm for real."

Facing Warner will be Steve McNair, only the second black quarterback to start in a Super Bowl. His arrival here was only slightly less unlikely than Warner's. He was recruited from an obscure football college (Alcorn State) as a quarterback with a flair for the big creative play. Recruited by a team which didn't like big creative plays.

Around Nashville he was about as popular as heavy metal before the Titans ground their way to the play-offs this year. He has adapted to his team's tough scrambling style which doesn't require him to throw many touchdown passes. He is Liam Brady doing the job of David Batty and he has become unapologetic about it.

"There have been a lot of 300 yard per game passers who didn't always win. We're physical on offence and we'll do what it takes to win, whether it's running the ball or throwing the ball."

And there it is. Set up perfectly. Two long-shot, fairytale teams with contrasting styles. A tussle between perennial underdogs. The sort of Super Bowl America detests. A TV network's worst nightmare. And enough human interest to keep the casual observer on the edge of the seat.