Colts win, but I'm still a loser.

I have this thing lately where every time I eat something quickly, I somehow manage to spill a big blob of whatever it is on my clothing. And I'm not talking about wolfing foods down with both hands, or anything. I just mean eating at a slightly accelerated pace because I have an upcoming meeting. Usually, the blob of stain-worthy foodstuff falls right down the middle of my shirt, adding the maximum amount of embarrassment to the situation. Let me tell you, there's nothing better than a guy who already feels like a fat cow having to enter a packed meeting room in a shirt with marinara sauce striped down the middle.

And I thought my kids were messy.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. This is supposed to be a post about the Colts winning the Super Bowl. Yay, Colts! I am, indeed, happy that my favorite team just won a national championship. I can honestly say that I haven't had much luck with that in a long time. I rooted for the Bears when they won their Super Bowl in '84, then cheered on IU basketball as they won a title in '87 and Notre Dame as they won the national title in '88. Since then, I've been able to see a few IU soccer championships, but nothing on a larger stage. So you'd think I'd be overjoyed at the Colts winning the big one, right? And I am, but not as much as I could be.

First off, the actual game sucked. No, I'm not talking about the play on the field--yes, it was sloppy, but that was sort of fun. I'm talking about my viewing experience. With my parents being in town for my daughter's birthday, my wife and I said "no thanks" to the MULTITUDE of Super Bowl parties we'd been invited to, and resigned ourselves to watching the game at home. Keep in mind that I NEVER watch sports when the kids are awake. It's really too much of a challenge to stay in the moment while cleaning up chocolate milk messes and changing diapers. But we decided we'd watch the game in real-time, with my parents and the kids present. Also, we decided to have a make-your-own pizza party for dinner, rather than trying to order out and have to wait three hours for delivery.

Needless to say, nothing about the evening went right. First off, my parents chose not to hang with us for the first half, instead going out with my brother. This is fine, but considering that we would've probably found a sitter and hit our own parties if we didn't think we had to entertain, well, it just left us sitting around. The pizza party was a flop, too. Alecia wasn't able to find any ready-made crusts at Kroger, so we made our dough from scratch. And it sucked. Out of three pizzas we made, only one turned out to be entirely edible. Plus, having to make the dough from scratch meant having to pause the game and head into the kitchen for an hour of frustration and cluelessness. When I finally got the pizzas in the oven and returned to the couch, I was in a foul mood, and succeeded in kicking off a worthless argument with my wife. Honestly, the whole fight was just a byproduct of an exhausting weekend, and contained no valid arguments, so to speak. It was all just a game of "Why are you being so pissy?" "I'm not being pissy, you are!"

We finally got around to watching the game, but by that point, we were behind the live program. Knowing my parents would be coming back around halftime, and probably wouldn't want to re-watch the first half with us, I skipped forward a bit with the remote. Doing this for most football games is no big deal. But in the Super Bowl, it means missing some of the biggest plays of the year and having to rewind after seeing that a TD has been scored to find out who actually scored it and how. It also meant missing some of the commercials (no big loss--they were mostly disappointing). Overall, it just made for a bad viewing experience.

So let's add it up: Bad mood, stupid fight, ruined pizza, crappy viewing experience.

I was still thrilled when the Colts won, but it wasn't like I even had anyone to high five. My parents are Bears fans, and Alecia and the girls could've cared less. It was sort of like, "So they finally did it. Hm." Not quite the trumpets and fanfare that I had hoped for.

Anyway, I know I've spent a page of text whining about a crappy viewing experience when I should be ecstatic that my team won. I am very much looking a gift horse in the mouth and choosing to look on the negative side of things. Some people follow a team their whole lives and never see them win a championship. I know I should be floating on air after the win. It just felt very anticlimactic, I guess. Maybe I'll be more excited as the next season starts and I can see how the team wears the "defending champs" moniker.

Regarding the game, by the way, it turned out much like I hoped it would, despite all of the turnovers. Rex Grossman turned out to be exactly the on-the-field cancer that he'd shown himself to be, doing absolutely nothing positive to help his team win. The Bears D showed up strong but couldn't hang with the Colts offense over time, and Peyton's patience and the opportunistic Colts D eventually wore the Bears out.

There was a little debate on the Internet the day after the game about who should've won the MVP award. I think it went to the right person. Rhodes and Addai had great games running the ball for the Colts, and it was the running game that wore down the Bears. But why do you think the run was so successful? First off, the Bears were playing WAY off the line, trying their best to keep Peyton from throwing downfield and making a big play. That cushion gave the Indy running game a lot of room in which to work. Also, Peyton was being especially smart in his adjustments at the line. It would've been easy for a future hall-of-famer like him to try to carry the team on his shoulders. But Peyton switched off to runs every time he saw an opening to do so. He adjusted away from his own arm and made the calls that gave Addai and Rhodes all of their touches. It was what Peyton had done all through playoffs--using patience and his amazing ability to read a defense to make exactly the right adjustments on each and every play. It really was a great performance by a QB, despite his lack of numbers. I don't think anyone can make a strong argument for Addai or Rhodes winning the MVP without acknowledging that they wouldn't have been able to pick apart the league's number two defense if they didn't have the defense back on its heels thanks to the big gun behind center.

So Peyton and the Colts played it conservatively and relied on their defense to seize opportunities (a la the pick-six) and their kicking game to score points. Yeah, I know Vinatieri missed a FG and XP, but he made what he needed to in order to win. I still had way more confidence in him all season long than I ever had in Vanderjackoff. And once the Colts coaching staff asked Vinatieri to kick AWAY from Devin Hester, he was like a kickoff surgeon, managing to drop the ball exactly where they needed it to be in order to make sure the Bears wouldn't break off another return. I rooted against Adam V. for years, but I love having him on my team.

As for the turnovers I mentioned before, I don't think those ruined the quality of this game, like some other people claim. For one thing, the turnover ratio was only plus two for the Colts, which is a good ratio, but not unrecoverable. And the field conditions did suck, which seemed to effect both teams. The fumbles and INTs didn't really take away from the fact that the Colts came in with a better plan and better execution. If anything, the turnovers kept the score lower and the game closer than it should've been. So they added to the tension and excitement, they didn't make the game unwatchable.

Well, that's pretty much all I have to say about the game. I'm excited that my team won, and hopefully it'll hit me soon and I'll feel the joy I expected to feel on Sunday. If not, at least Dungy and Manning got this monkey off of their backs. They're two guys who are good role models and do everything the right way, on and off the field, and there are too few of those in professional sports. They both deserve to go in the hall of fame some day, and now it's guaranteed that they will.

It will be very interesting to see how the players and coaches perform next season now that they've tasted the bigtime. Remember that both Favre and Elway came back to the Super Bowl the year after winning their first titles (Favre's return was Elway's first win, as a matter of fact). And I would put Peyton in the same league as those two QBs, especially now that he's found that the secret to victory isn't the long bomb, but the FEAR of the long bomb. It will be fun to watch Peyton going for number two next season...