Like any good football fan, around 1:00PM yesterday, I was all set: Fantasy football league StatTracker loaded on the computer, beer in hand and scrolling through NFL Sunday Ticket to see which game I wanted to watch, I settled on the Atlanta Falcons vs. Chicago Bears tilt.
Being a Bears fan, this was a natural selection for me. But living around Central Indiana all these years, as the Indianapolis Colts bandwagon grew, part of me reveled in checking in on the Colts trip to Houston to play the Texans. So I did, around 1:20PM.
The Colts were already down.
I had a hunch – just a sneaking suspicion really – that the Colts would sorely miss Peyton Manning, out for “awhile” (in the words of owner Jim Irsay) due to a second surgery on his neck.
And wouldn’t you know it, I was right.
After the Texans 34-7 throttling of the Colts, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Scrolling through my Facebook updates, I saw friends trashing the team, talking about how horrible they were, how it could have been 68-0.
Right on all accounts.
And then I saw this: “This is going to be such a long season…I won’t be able to watch!”
Bingo.
The money line I’d been waiting for. You could almost hear Colts fans across the state hitting the sauce, opening their fourth beer of the day in the early second quarter.
See, a few years ago, I wrote about how the Colts fans were spoiled brats, the whole bandwagon lot of them. Nearly 10 straight playoff seasons, seven straight 12-win campaigns, nine straight 10-win seasons, fans didn’t know how good they had it – or had forgotten had bad it had been.
The last time the Colts were under .500 was 2001 and Manning was in his fourth season, just 25-years old. In fact, 2001 was the only other season other than Manning’s rookie year in 1998 that the Colts were below .500. The last time the Colts won 10 or more games in a season before 1999, when Manning led the Colts to a 13-3 mark? Try 1977, when they were in Baltimore.
Since arriving in Indianapolis in 1984, the Colts had 7 losing seasons in 13 years. They had a few fun years with Jim Harbaugh and Marshall Faulk, but they always felt like punchy underdogs in the playoffs.
But since Peyton Manning came to town, the Colts have been the heavyweight favorites in the regular season. I’ve often argued that most fans just want a team that always has a shot and contends. But the Colts are proving my theory wrong, really.
Perennial contenders, the Colts fan base forgot how bad it sucked to be Colts fans. And I can say this because I’m unattached, unemotionally watching it happen from the sidelines as a fan of another team who doesn’t rival the Colts like the New England Patriots or Pittsburgh Steelers.
The fan base has swollen to include people who can’t name anyone on the team before 1998. They don’t know who Ron Stark is, Billy Brooks or Duane Bickett. The majority of these fans didn’t watch the team in the 1980s and 1990s – I know because the games were often blacked out. They got excited when Eric Dickerson came to town, but when the Colts didn’t win games, they stopped coming.
If you were looking for something to do in downtown Naptown in the late 80s or early 90s, it would have been a Pacers game. Or, wait for Indiana and Kentucky to play college basketball in the RCA Dome (or, as most should remember it, “The Hoosier Dome”).
I can’t remember a single friend from the age of 8-16 who told me, at any point, they were a Colts fan. No one wore their jersey to school, no one went to the games.
And then, in 1999, it happened – they went 13-3 and had a franchise quarterback. Over the last 12 years, the Colts have used their success with Manning to build a new stadium and host the upcoming Super Bowl, bringing in millions of revenue in one form or another. Yeah, he’s worth the money and the roster bonus he earned even if he doesn’t play a down in 2011.
But Manning has masked a flawed franchise for years. Poor draft selections (just see everything from 2007-2011), bad hires (is Jim Caldwell even alive?) and an owner who seems to be going slightly insane (check out his hilarious Twitter feed).
This is what ancient Rome must have been like just before the end. Romans just ticked off at the lackluster leadership and star power: “Well, he’s no Caesar!“
Maybe Manning never plays another game or maybe he plays five more highly productive years and wins another Super Bowl. Honestly, both options are on the table. But that’s not what is at play here.
It’s the city and its fans at stake. This isn’t just an abnormal season or set of six games in which the Colts won’t have Peyton Manning at quarterback. No, Indy, it’s the future.
Take a look around – poor special teams, lackluster and unimaginative offense with a bumbling, aging quarterback and an incompetent coach?
Welcome to how the other half of the NFL lives every week.
The problem is the fan base is built upon guys who’ve started rooting for the Colts in the Manning era and subsequently convinced their wives and girlfriends to watch, to go to games, to tailgate and host Colts parties. At least 30 percent of the fan base is women under 50 – and I have no real way to back that up other than the fact I live here and see it with my eyes.
As a friend told me today, “My girlfriend didn’t want to watch the entire game because it was getting out of hand and she said, ‘I think I’m just a Peyton Manning fan, not a Colts fan.’”
And there you have it – the bulk of the Colts fan base is centered around Peyton Manning and wearing cute No. 18 jerseys.
Take a look at fans in other cities and you’ll see Gale Sayers and Walter Payton throwbacks in Chicago, Dan Fouts in San Diego, Montana and Rice in San Francisco, Bart Starr in Green Bay, Randall Cunningham and Seth Joyner in Philadelphia.
No one’s wearing Earl Morrall throwbacks in Indianapolis. It’s a young fan base that hasn’t aged through time.
Being a fan of a team means you support that team no matter what. Want to curse at their ineptitude? Fine. Hate the GM? By all means, question the draft strategy. Criticize the players for not caring like you do? Well, only if you can back that up. You still have to tune in. You have to take your lumps, otherwise, the big wins and the championships don’t mean as much.
Most (again, not all, but most) Colts fans would tell you the lean years were during Peyton’s career, losses to the Dolphins, Jets, Patriots and Chargers, when the team had a good regular season and blew an opportunity in the playoffs.
Wrong.
The hard times were 1-15 in 1991, 4-12 in 1993, 3-13 in 1997. Those were the bad times, the bumbling times you looked away in horror, wondering desperately if it would ever get better, if they would ever contend. But there weren’t enough fans of the team now to remember that kind of pain because they bought their first jersey or ticket in 1999, 2001 or 2002.
Once Peyton’s done, this franchise will move forward and find a new quarterback. It might take five or six rough years, but they will eventually find a new guy that will be a good player for a decade or so and put the team in position to contend. It happened in Dallas, Green Bay and Pittsburgh. It’s the circle of NFL life.
There was only one Roger Staubach, but there was also only one Troy Aikman. He had a couple bad years early on too. Dallas fans stuck around for the whole thing.
No team can remain that good forever. And there will never be another Peyton Manning.
But there will be Colts football.
Question is for the fair-weathered fans of Indy, will anyone care enough to be around for the truly hard times?
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