In Colts Vs. Jets Bet On The Pundits

As this is being written the Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts are preparing to face the New York Jets for the AFC title. I would suppose most in sports punditry are quietly pulling for the Jets.

If the Colts win and advance to the Super Bowl they are closer to ruining one of our favorite story lines that we keep on the file marked: "Great Underachieving Teams". We keep this file at hand so on slow days we can write about all those great teams and players that should have been greater.

Because if you think fans are never content just cast you gaze up to press row. Perhaps because we fear being labeled soft by our peers we are never happy -- at least one might surmise that from what we write. And we operate by own rules. We can be the three-card monte sharks of journalism.

Exhibit A -- We write about how arduous it is for a team that wins a Super Bowl just to make it back to the playoffs the next year, much less the Herculean feat of getting back to The Big Game. The Buffalo Bills made it to the Super Bowl four straight years, from 1991 to 1994. They came away with four losses -- but no other team made it that far four times in a row. That's of note, correct?

Not at all. Oh the agony! If only the noble Bills had secured but a single victory in four tries they would not be the poster franchise for futility.

See what we did? On one hand we make getting to consecutive Super Bowls seem like creating cold fusion in a bottle, then we talk about a team making it to four in a row as though they were the New Coke of the NFL. And it gets better.

The aforementioned Colts have won a ton of games with Manning throwing all those passes for all those yards, all those touchdowns and all those MVP trophies. You might say, now wait just a goshdarn minute pilgrim, they won a title in 2007. True, but when you look at all that Peyton hath wrought, and only one championship? One? Zoot alors!

The Colts, you see, are the Atlanta Braves of the NFL. The Braves won 14 straight division titles -- a feat that stands astride the building of the Sphinx. Or it would because, you see, they only won a single World Series. But that we could all underachieve like the Braves and the Colts.

Dan Marino is the face of our journalistic standards, though they may be chiseled in Silly Putty. Marino went to one Super Bowl, which was won by Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers. But in his career he tore through the record books, making him not a great quarterback, but the greatest quarterback never to win a title.

We sit in our lofty perch and suppose this fact gnaws as his gut. If it does bother him it is because we keep asking if it bothers him. If he says no, we say he is in denial. If he says yes, he is a whiner. Oh, it can be glorious in the press box.

Joe Namath won one Super Bowl, got his Jets to the AFC title game a year later -- a loss -- and never sniffed major success again. He is in the Hall of Fame. Why not Brad Johnson, who quarterbacked the Tampa Bay Bucs to the holy land? Or Trent Dilfer, who did the same for the Baltimore Ravens? I'll let you work this problem on your own -- email your answer to me at [e-mail].

Barry Sanders of the Detroit Lions left while he was at the top of his game, which is something we say very few stars know how to do. Remember Dallas Cowboy star Emmitt Smith hanging on as an Arizona Cardinal? Jerry Rice as a Denver Bronco? We just sadly shake our heads as their folly.

But of Mr. Sanders? What a mistake to leave when he could still play -- not to mention leaving "money on the table" from a lucrative contract.

But you will have to excuse me, I have to leave to practice for the weekend -- J-E-T-S JETS! JETS! JETS!