DoolittleBrothers

Who do I root for?

I have no particular rooting interest in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Sports being the way they are, that usually is the case for major championships. I’m looking forward to the matchup, but I actually like both teams, but not so much that one could be considered one of my Favorite Teams. In this kind of situation, I usually just wait for the game to start. Inevitably, I’ll find myself pulling for one team or another. This time, however, I’m pretty sure I am going to be rooting for the Colts.

Geography often plays a role in whom I choose to root. In Kansas City, I always rooted against the Chiefs because I never really liked them and, confronted with hordes of unthinking bearers of red, my dislike turned into hate. In Chicago, because I’ve always liked all the teams here except for the White Sox, it’s easy to adopt them as my Plan Bs and to even jump on the Cubs’ side of the North Side/South Side pissing match.

I’ve been to both cities represented in this Super Bowl exactly one time each. About eight years ago, Brian and I dragged our wives to Indianapolis to see a Pacers-Wizards game so that we could see Michael Jordan in person on last time. It was a fun trip, but I found the city to be about as distinctive as a Stop sign. Last year, I went with my in-laws to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl. Now that’s a city. If you like food, drink, music and inhibited good times, I don’t think you can do much better than New Orleans in this country. It’s a city well worth saving, contrary to a vocal minority’s suggestions back when Katrina swamped the Emerald City. There is an essential part of our culture there that simply can’t be replaced.

But I can’t root for New Orleans’ teams just because I love the city. It’s just too far removed and I haven’t spent enough time there. Along those lines, I can’t root against Indianapolis just because the city is a bore. If I had to live there for a few years, it might be different, but that’s just not the case.

No, the deciding factor for my Super Bowl rooting interest has to do with that tagline I slapped on the new header when I re-designed the blog last week, the part about admiring unadulterated genius. I think Brian and I share a tendency to fawn over things that are truly Great. Brian is like a schoolgirl when it comes to LeBron James. I was the same way about John Elway. We both whinnied like hyenas when Missouri beat Kansas in 2007’s Armageddon at Arrowhead. I break down and weep when I get to the closing passages of James Joyce’s The Dead. Etc, etc.

There is one player in this game that will go down as one of the 10 or so best football players that has ever played the game: Peyton Manning. There is ample statistical evidence to start that argument, but I’ll leave that for others. For me, I’ve come to have incredible admiration for the guy from rooting against him. Like Brian, I am a Denver Broncos fan. There may be other teams that Manning has tortured more than the Broncos, but I doubt it. (The numbers don’t actually bear that out, I know.) It’s a Priest Vallon/Bill the Butcher kind of dynamic.

Manning controls the action in a football game like no player I’ve ever seen. It’s like he’s playing one of those old handheld, calculator football games where you could run off half a quarter on one play by hiding on the edge of the screen. He orchestrates everything, sees everything you’re trying to do before you do it, makes all the right decisions and always executes once the play begins. He’s a throwback in that he dictates what plays are run, instead of mechanically walking through the instructions called down by the offensive coordinator. He’s an argument that the most lethal weapon you can have in football is a quarterback who is also your de facto offensive coordinator. Yet, he’s slow and his arm isn’t the most powerful. He gets it done with his head, and makes some pretty amusing commercials to boot.

I don’t want there to be a debate about whether Manning is better than Tom Brady because Brady won three Super Bowls. I think Manning would have won those championships as well, if plugged into those teams. Brady is a great player, but Manning is transcendent. A second Super Bowl title, to go with the gaudy statistics and four MVP trophies, would close off that debate, I would think. So because I think Manning is a Football Genius, and I want other people to see it too, I will be rooting for the Colts to win and for Manning to chalk up big numbers and take the MVP trophy.

Other people might be nauseated by that prospect. Lots of people are rooting for New Orleans because of how much a Super Bowl title would mean to that city. I get that and respect it. For me, though, posterity takes the foreground. Go Colts. My pick (not based on everything I just wrote): Colts 27, Saints 20.