There's a Super Bowl taking place for a member of the Mara family on Saturday and it has nothing to do with the Giants, Eli Manning or football.
As the Giants senior vice president of player personnel and a critical cog in the shaping of the team's roster, Chris Mara has been immersed in the upcoming NFL Draft (May 8-10) of late, but on Saturday at Churchill Downs he will take a break from football to root on a horse named Intense Holiday in the 140th Kentucky Derby.
Mara, whose life has been as almost as ingrained in horse racing as it has in football, is part of a small syndicate that owns Intense Holiday, who is currently hovering around 20-1 to win the Derby based on early odds.
This will be the 10th Derby Mara has attended, but the first at which he will own one of the competing horses — and the adrenaline coursing through his veins right now is not at all dissimilar to how he has felt before the five Super Bowls the Giants have played in since his late father, Wellington, became owner of the team in 1959.
"I'm crawling out of my skin waiting for this race,'' Chris Mara told The Post. "This is has been much tougher for me than the Super Bowls, because in football at least you played the previous Sunday. With this, you wait and wait and wait. It has kept me up nights the last three or four weeks, because it's such an exciting time.
"This could be the only time this ever happens to me.''
Just as football is, horse racing is in Chris Mara's blood.
His wife, Kathleen, is the daughter of Steelers founder and owner, the late Art Rooney, who was a legendary player in the horse game and owner of Yonkers Raceway, among other tracks. Chris, in fact, used to earn some pocket money as a kid parking cars at Yonkers on race days.
Art Rooney's bookie back in the 1930s was Chris' grandfather, Tim Mara, who was at all the big tracks in New York working as legal bookmaker before the advent of parimutuel betting.
"Art Rooney was one of his biggest clients,'' Chris said. "So it's definitely in the blood.''
Now, what Chris Mara, who recalled his first visit to the track when Wellington took him to Belmont when he was nine or 10 years old, said, "What used to be a hobby of mine has since turned into a passion.''
In years past, he dabbled with some small investments into some horse ownership syndicates, but nothing like this. After the Giants Super Bowl XLVI win in the 2011-12 season, he made a larger investment into a syndicate called Starlight Racing, which buys about a dozen horses each year.
"After we won the Super Bowl in 2012, I said to my wife, 'Kath, this has been a pretty good year for us: We just won the Super Bowl, our daughter [Rooney] got nominated for an Academy Award [as the star of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'']. I think this might be a good time to invest in one of these partnerships,' '' said Chris, whose older daughter, Kate, is also an actress, currently starring in the acclaimed series "House of Cards.''
Kathleen Mara was on board. How could she not be, based on her background?
After some research and numerous conversations with people in the business, Chris bought into Starlight, which is run by COO Donna Barton Brothers, a former jockey who is the woman you will see on horseback on the NBC telecast interviewing the Derby winner moments after its crosses the finish line Saturday.
One of the last conversations Chris Mara had before buying in was with Jack Wolf, one of the managing partners of Starlight.
"When Jack and I were talking, we were kind of interviewing each other,'' Chris recalled. "He asked me what I would bring to the table with the partnership and I told him: 'I'm going to bring you luck.' ''
And so he has.
Intense Holiday was among that first crop of horses Starlight bought with Chris Mara on board, purchased for $380,000 in the summer of 2012, just months after the Giants' Super Bowl win. A year and a half later, the horse is running in the Kentucky Derby.
Chris Mara is not in this for the money. He's financially secure beyond most people's dreams.
"I'm strictly in it for the exhilaration and the fun of it,'' he said.
He said the plan is to fly to Kentucky on Thursday, which means he'll miss the Wednesday draw for post positions — a critical moment in the process — but his day job and the draft, of course, take precedence.
"It's killing me,'' Chris Mara said. "I've got to multi-task.''
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