R.I.’s Matt McCarthy stars in his 30-second “New Flavor Pitch" commercial for Doritos.

Most people think the Steelers or the Cardinals will win the Super Bowl. However, Matthew McCarthy, thinks he might win.

“I think our chances are pretty good,” says the Rhode Island native.

Actually McCarthy’s chances are one in five. Frontpagefilms, which he founded with two friends, is a finalist in the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” contest. Some 2,000 entries of proposed Doritos commercials have been narrowed to just five, one of which will appear in the Super Bowl, determined by online voting, which ends tomorrow: www.crashthesuperbowl.com.

“Even if ours is the best,” McCarthy says. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to win. People need to vote.”

For making it to the finals, McCarthy and his partners have already won $25,000 and a trip to the Super Bowl.

“We’ve already won as far as I’m concerned.”

Take a good look at McCarthy’s photo. Does he look familiar? The 29-year-old was born in Providence and grew up in the Rumford section of East Providence. He graduated in 1997 from La Salle Academy in Providence. But, most notably, McCarthy plays the cable guy on the Verizon Fiber Optic Service commercials, which have been running for several months.

“They ran the commercials in New York during every break during the Olympics. All of a sudden people were recognizing me every day when I left my place. Every time I was on the subway or on the sidewalk, people stared at me. They tried to figure out how they knew me.”

McCarthy is delighted to be doing what he’s doing, but it wasn’t always his plan. After graduating from Fordham University in 2001 with a degree in communications, he struggled to find a job, which he eventually found at MTV. Glamorous it wasn’t. He scheduled commercials for the network.

“It was like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle. That is a thankless job.”

But it was just the right kind of job to get McCarthy inspired to do something else.

“Doing that job put the fire under my feet to start pursuing comedy. I decided I had to start doing comedy and I was sick of people telling me to do it.”

McCarthy kept his day job for a while longer. During that time, he took comedy-writing classes and did open-mic stand-up wherever he could. He connected with other comedians, and heard about commercial auditions, including for the Diehard Battery in 2007, which prompted McCarthy to quit his job of six years.

The casting people, McCarthy says, “went nuts over me.”

All those nights of performing stand-up comedy at tiny and largely empty bars in New York, McCarthy says, paid off.

“That’s why I’m so good at auditions. I’m used to performing in empty rooms.”

It was at the filming for the Diehard commercial in Los Angeles that McCarthy worked with Pete Holmes, a New York comedian with whom he was friends, and with whom he would start Frontpagefilms, along with Oren Brimer.

“Pete and I were the positive and negative ends of a battery. He was positive. I was negative.”

McCarthy did not participate in theater in high school or college. His only performance experience before two years ago was on an athletic field.

“At Fordham I was the mascot for two years. I was the ram. You’re behind that big mask and people don’t know who you are. Who is going to get angry at a giant stuffed ram dancing around?”

Most of McCarthy’s family is still in Rhode Island. His mother and father live in Bristol. His brother lives in Pawtucket. And his sister lives in Boston.

McCarthy is different, and not just because of where he lives.

“My father is a lawyer. My brother is a lawyer. My sister is a lawyer. I’m just some shmoe who tells jokes in New York.”

McCarthy is now waiting to see if his most recent joke will be taken seriously: “New Flavor Pitch.” The 30-second spot features McCarthy making a sales pitch to a group of Doritos executives. He’s proposing a new flavor of chips, Beer Doritos.

“A few years ago Doritos had Quest Doritos, which was like Mountain Dew-flavored Doritos. I don’t know if that’s true, but we thought that. Then we thought of Beer Doritos.”

Each bag, according to the commercial, contains the equivalent of 16 ounces of beer. This is what McCarthy says as he’s making his presentation, eating a bag of the new chips. At the end of the spot, he’s drunk and nearly naked, wearing only a tie and underpants — which is the way the whole world may see him.

“That’s fine. I swam in high school. I was the captain of the swim team for two years. I’ve worn Speedos in front of many people, and I was in much better shape then.”

The “New Flavor Pitch” commercial, McCarthy says, is very low budget.

“There’s no way we spent more than $12. The only cost was doctoring a fake bag of Doritos.”

The other finalists in the Doritos contest clearly involve bigger budgets. But that doesn’t bother McCarthy.

“What makes ours look the best is we have a huge laugh. None of the others has a huge laugh and a pay-off at the end. Ours is memorable and quotable.”

The quote is, “You don’t know me!” That’s what McCarthy utters in drunkenness at the end of the commercial.

“People will say that at their office the next day. The other commercials are just well produced. I could see them during the Super Bowl, because they look well done, but their content is lacking.”

If McCarthy’s commercial wins the contest, it will air during the Super Bowl. And if after the Super Bowl, USA Today declares it to be the best commercial in the Super Bowl, McCarthy and his colleagues would receive $1 million from Doritos.

“That would be outrageous, if we beat Pepsi, Coke, McDonald’s, the world.”

brourke@projo.com