David Stern, Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Lakers, Metta World Peace, NBA, Ron Artest

End the Era of World Peace

And that settles it.
The NBA – and David Stern specifically – have no spine.
There is no other conclusion to be made regarding the league and the man in charge after they took more than 48 hours to decide that Metta World Peace (the artist formerly known as Ron Artest) should receive a pathetic seven-game suspension for his vicious elbow to the head of James Harden on Sunday.
I read one columnist describe it as an “incident that was as ugly as they come in sports. Vicious, violent and wholly unnecessary.”
Man, that sounds oddly familiar.
Oh, right, World Peace was anything but peaceful during the Malace at the Palace in 2004. He was, however, vicious, violent and wholly unnecessary.
When are people going to get it? Rometta World Peaceatest is certifiably insane. And he has no business in a public forum to display his crazy.
Remember the speech from Nicole Kidman to Tom Cruise in “Days of Thunder” when he’s chasing the taxi cab? After she tries to bail out of a moving vehicle traveling at high speed, he follows her on foot and she breaks it down for him: He’s an infantile egomaniac and he’s scared. Control is an optical illusion that most people learn to cope with. And once you get a glimpse of it, the fear of the unknown sets in.
And Ron Artest is one scared individual.
He thanked his therapist after winning an NBA championship. My immediate question was: which one?
Forget all this crap about emotion and being excited he dunked over Kevin Durant. He violently jacked some dude in the side of the head, knocked him out and didn’t even offer to help him up.
Seven games? How about seven years? Ban this guy – for good.
And I’m a Lakers fan.
I’m also a fan of not wanting to see someone seriously hurt or injured at the hands of a man who’s been suspended 11 times in his career for over 100 games. Everything Artest does is unnecessary, just like his forearm shiver to JJ Barea last year that looked like a wrestling clothesline. I know it was the highly annoying JJ Barea, but still, we have to draw the line somewhere.
Punishment should fit the crime, in both civil and sport arenas.
Except if this was a civil issue, and Artest had a violent history like he does in the NBA, he’d be getting worse than seven games (or the equivalent of 15 days in jail and community service).
But the NBA does not think about morals, justice, right and wrong. It thinks about dollar signs and TV ratings. So it took 48 hours to decide that seven games was appropriate – because that amount of time won’t totally derail the Los Angeles Lakers title hopes.
If you are the Lakers, you can totally win a first round series against the Denver Nuggets without Metta World Peace/Ron Artest.
Can you get past the Oklahoma City Thunder in a potential Round 2? What about the San Antonio Spurs, Los Angeles Clippers or Memphis Grizzlies in the Western Conference Finals? Probably not.
And what looks better for the league? Lakers-Thunder in Round 2 or Nuggets-Thunder? How about Lakers-Clippers in the conference finals? Or Lakers-Grizzlies? Or a classic Lakers-Spurs series? What about the NBA Finals? More fans tuning in to see Lakers-Celtics or Lakers-Heat than, say, Grizzlies-Celtics? Spurs-Heat?
I’m not suggesting the playoffs are fixed. What I am suggesting is the NBA isn’t stupid. It sees the match-ups and it knows the Lakers – even with Artest/World Peace being a washed up has-been – stand a better chance of going deeper into the playoffs with World Peace than without him.
So let’s not pretend the punishment fit the crime and that seven games is supposed to deter The Artist Formerly Known as Ron Artest from doing, well, Ron Artest like things in the future.
There’s crazy and then there’s crazy.
And Metta World Peace is and always has been crazy.
He can change his name, dress up his charitable work, be an advocate for mental health awareness (ironic, since he has none) and pretend he’s not that same guy who charged into the stands eight years ago, but he is.
People who cover him in L.A. routinely mention you can see a different person in Ron Artest each day, you can see his inner conflict. He’s got an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, constantly battling each other.
He doesn’t know who he is. He responds to both Metta and Ron. When you’ve got dueling banjos upstairs, how do you that comes out when someone gets involved in an emotionally contested game against an upstart rival who wants to overthrow your team’s reign as the Western Conference dynasty?
I’ll tell you how it comes out: with one of the most vicious and nasty physical acts against another player I’ve seen since Kermit Washington decked Rudy Tomjanovich decades ago.
And the longer you let him have an opportunity to display his crazy, the more opportunity there is for him to play a game in his mind: how can I top that last one? How can I get more attention?
C’mon Stern, show some fortitude. 

End the era of World Peace in the NBA.
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Bernie Fine, ESPN, Jim Boeheim, Mark Schwarz, New Orleans Saints, Outside the Lines, Syracuse

Truth Has No Agenda

What if I told you that a close friend of ours had cheated on their taxes or used drugs or been involved in any number of salacious acts? Would you believe me? Would you ask for evidence? Would you try to find another source? What if you asked me where I got my information and I could not tell you. What if I told you I swore I would not name my sources? What if you took it at face value and spread the story yourself?
And what if you found out later that none of it was true?
ESPN has a show called “Outside The Lines” where they do some version of a “60 Minutes” investigative journalism thing around sports. They have tried to peel back the layers on hard-hitting stories for years. It has been on the air for over 20 years and won numerous awards.
Last November, the show ran a story by Mark Schwarz about Syracuse University basketball assistant Bernie Fine, who had been accused of molesting two former ball boys during a long period of time as an employee of the school. The show used interviews and statements to support claims that Fine had been following the Jerry Sandusky model of coaching and teaching.
Shortly thereafter, longtime and well respected Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim vigorously came to Fine’s defense. He claimed Fine was a friend and he knew him well enough to know it was not true. ESPN then released a tape, said to be from 2002, where Fine’s wife and one of the ball boy’s spoke about Fine. In the tape she said she knew about Fine and felt powerless to stop it.
Fine was fired. Public opinion, to no surprise, was that Bernie Fine was a disgusting human being and Jim Boeheim should be admonished for defending him, as well as possibly effecting future victims from coming forward.
Fast forward to present.
Two weeks ago, one of Fine’s accusers came forward to say that he had made it all up – in fact, he’d never met Fine. Does it change public opinion? Did ESPN recant their claims? Did Schwarz apologize or recant his story?
Of course not. It is too late. The damage is done.
It has become increasingly clear that in our current culture, all that matters is the moment we are in. We’ve sped up the cycle of digesting news so quickly that before we turn off the TV, we’ve made up our mind. We take whatever we hear as the truth and we go with it. Next story.
Forget for a moment about what this says about us – that we are quick to judge, unforgiving, incapable of admitting a mistake. Think about what this says about our society. The media has become as vicious as any rapid dog or wild animal, so thirsty for headline busting stories that we’ll take whatever we can get.
When did this happen? Was it CNN? Was it “the ticker?
You used to be able to read a story in the paper and it was factual based: Here’s what happened, this is what is known, these are the lingering questions. End of story. When more information became available, there was a follow-up.
Now, well, we live well outside the lines. We do our journalistic work in the dark, in the shadows. We push the limits. We have to break through the 300 stories scrolling on the bottom of your screen, your Facebook updates, your iPhone apps. We have to get your attention. They used to say video killed the radio star. Well what in the name of Joseph Pulitzer is this? Who killed journalism and reporting? Who made us sacrifice the process of moral ethics and integrity?
Case in point: the Trayvon Martin case. The story has been carefully crafted by the media to sway opinion. Why do we need a judge and jury? The guilty are guilty because we say so – and we say so because we’ve been told so.
I honestly have no opinion on this case because I don’t know enough the facts. But take one small sample – the 911 call. What if you found out that the media had altered George Zimmerman’s 911 call? Would it change your opinion or cause you to think differently?
In the altered version, Zimmerman certainly sounds racist, describing Martin only as a race and by the clothing he wore. But if you read the transcript, which you can here: http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/326700-full-transcript-zimmerman.html, it paints a different picture.
NBC apologized for selective editing and fired the producer responsible for making the 911 call by Zimmerman sound racially motivated. They did this a few days before Easter – nearly six weeks after the events occurred and certainly well after public opinion had been formed.
Why did it take so long to do the internal investigation of the editing? The investigation didn’t even begin until March 31, and only after another media outlet essentially called them out on it.
This routinely happens and we are seemingly oblivious. Or we’re just too afraid to say anything for fear that we’ll be labled as something – anything – that makes us look like we support the “wrong side”.
This is scary to me and it should be to you. Because it is very real.
Remember Tom Cruise hammering away on Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men”? What if the pivotal moment doesn’t happen? It’s just before, when Nicholson’s character (Colonel Jessup) says something snarky about “pinning the defendants hopes to a foot locker and phone bill.”
Cruise’s lawyer character is shaken. He knows the punishment for falsely accusing a highly decorated officer of a crime. He isn’t sure for a few moments of whether or not to push forward, not because he doesn’t know the truth – remember, another character had confirmed the Code Red was ordered by Jessup – but because he has to get Jessup to say it. Truth has to be corroborated from all angles – multiple sources agreeing on the events.
But life is not like “A Few Good Men.” The guilty rarely crack and usually have their own version of the truth. The truth is hard enough without those who are tasked with covering the news inserting opinion and altering the story to sway public perception.
People don’t win awards and keep jobs in the business if they don’t make headlines themselves. It’s why we have shifted from a world of SportsCenter and The Sports Reporters to “Around the Horn”, where blowhards like Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless are able to twist and manipulate their beliefs into what is conveyed as factual opinion.
We stop using the words “I believe” or “I think” and start heavily relying on unnamed sources who were perhaps not really ever there to begin with. They hide behind laws and journalistic axioms of not naming their sources – except they are opinion columnists and talking heads, not real journalists.
Which is why the biggest media machine of all – ESPN – has become so powerful. We let it slide. It’s sports, right? It’s not as important as a death or a murder. But it is within how every situation and event is handled that becomes important. It reveals character – and we are currently severely lacking character as a society.
Take yesterday as another example. It is easier to take a blurb about the New Orleans Saints and general manager Mickey Loomis having a suite that had been re-wired that would enable Loomis to eavesdrop on visiting coaches for three years – on the heels of all the other Saints headlines lately – and let the story run wild and free. Report it, but bury this little nugget about 10 paragraphs into the story: “’Outside the Lines’ could not determine for certain whether Loomis ever made use of the electronic setup.”
They could not determine for certain? Then why is this a story? If you could not determine it, then why are you reporting it? Because it makes headlines. Because most people don’t get that far into the story. Because the damage – and the doubt – are done. You made your headline.
There are ethics and standards in journalism (you can read about them here – and yes, there is an intentional irony in me directing you to a Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards). Or at least there are supposed to be ethics and standards.
We are only as good as our credibility and reputation.
But how good is your credibility and reputation when your whole modus operandi is to make the news – like exchanging exclusive rights to air LeBron James’ “The Decision” with advertising and air time to him. ESPN gave up editorial independence and were in the business of simultaneously making news while covering it. We’re lucky the universe didn’t explode at that conundrum.
And while I make light of that and ESPN, news reporting is a far deeper issue that goes mostly unobserved in all aspects. We fail to notice it as it’s happening – but we do nothing to stop it, nor does our government, once we wise up and figure it out.
In the absence of factual truth, any substantiated fact or half-truth with do. We want the truth? Forget about not be able to handle the truth, we can’t handle the patience it takes to actually find out the truth. And these are the things we talk about at lunch with co-workers or at dinner parties with family and friends. To think, we seldom have our facts straight, not because of our own misunderstanding, but because of the manipulation of the corporate and global media.
I just wonder if the damage has been done. This is very dangerous and slippery slope. We need to wake up. The truth has no agenda, which is what makes it so hard to find.
How do we recant as a culture? What if it is too late for us to get our integrity back?
Or do we even care anymore?
If you find out the answer, let me know. I swear I’ll believe you – you don’t even need to share your sources.
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Dwight Howard, LeBron James, Miami Heat, NBA, New Jersey Nets, Orlando Magic, Stan Van Gundy

Murdering the Magic

It has been somewhat fitting that Dwight Howard has played the first eight years of his career with a team nicknamed the “Magic” because nothing could personify Howard more than that.
The word implies so many things. Magic can be enchanting and mystical. It often toes the line of believability. And ultimately, magic proves to be false and misleading.
All of these things describe Dwight Howard, because after a wild 12 hours on Thursday – and taking into account what occurred leading up to Thursday – the magic is gone. And the Magic (at least the Orlando basketball version) are dead. Symbolically, of course.
In perhaps the most odd and compelling post shoot-a-round media conference ever, we got to see the end of an athlete’s aura firsthand.
Roughly seven hours before Orlando’s game against the New York Knicks, Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy confirmed that management had told him that Howard had asked for him to be fired.
Within a few minutes of this discussion, Howard appeared – completely and utterly unaware of what Van Gundy had been sharing with the media – and put his arm around Van Gundy. To say this was awkward or surreal cannot even begin to describe it. It was painful, yet comical – like any Steve Carrell episode in “The Office.” Howard had only heard the last few words, something about Van Gundy being the coach of the team until he was told he wasn’t. Which led to this:
Howard: “Stan, we’re not worried about that, right?”
Van Gundy: “That’s just what I said. We’ve got to be worried about winning games. Are you guys done with me? You talk to him now.”
As Stan exited stage left, the media closed in on Howard.
You know that feeling when someone approaches a group and they were just gossiped about, but the person approaching is all smiles and thinks things are great and everyone in the group just sort of grins because of the comical irony of it all? That might describe it.
Or better yet – it was like Michael Corleone calling out his brother Fredo: I knew it was you – you broke my heart, Dwight.
Except Stan The Man isn’t heartbroken. Howard messed with the wrong man. Van Gundy’s been (symbolically) murdered before, when he was removed as head coach of the Miami Heat in December of 2005 by Pat Riley, with executive producer credits going to Shaquille O’Neal and Dwayne Wade.
Van Gundy disappeared after being stabbed in the back – and the front – by his mentor Riley. He humbly had to suggest he was resigning as coach of the Heat to spend more time with family, despite all evidence that Van Gundy, a basketball junkie, was just as obsessed and driven to guide O’Neal and Wade to a title for the Heat as Riley would have been.
What the whole scene Thursday told us from Van Gundy’s point of view is this: He has done this dance before. He knows how this ends. He won’t be coaching the Magic much longer. But he just doesn’t care this time. He won’t play the company line or protect his conspirators. He’s not going down alone on this one. He’ll be taking Dwight’s rep as a smiling, fun-loving, cape-wearing lovable giant with him.
Additionally, Van Gundy is ensuring that this circus ends. Howard won’t be able to get away with this again, not now. Hell, the entire NBA and basketball world knows what kind of person Howard is now.
Rumor and innuendo are like magic in and of themselves. They could be true or might not be. But once rumors are confirmed, the magic disappears and all you are left with is the cold, hard truth. Coaches have been fired because of superstar pressure on the front office before; Howard is hardly the first to try this move. It’s just that it hasn’t ever unfolded like this before – where the coach knows and tells everyone he knows.
Following Van Gundy’s departure from the media circle, a reporter immediately told Howard what Van Gundy had said. Howard looked floored, but not in an innocent way. More like, “Dear God…they know” – like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Howard asked for the reporters to cite their sources and the media kept telling Howard that Van Gundy was the source – that he’d just confirmed it. This time, Howard has been sold out by his boss and his boss’s bosses. It was a brilliant move by Van Gundy – tell the truth and then leave the scene to let Dwight flail in the wind.
Somehow, Howard looked like he wanted to lie down or needed some Pepto, despite going on for a few minutes to explain that he had not said “nothing to anybody” and adding that he’s just a player and management controls who the coach is.
As a follow-up to that magical act, Howard went out and put up a stinker against the Knicks – eight measly points and eight lackluster rebounds in 40 minutes. He only took two shots in the first half, appeared unaggressive and disinterested most of the game and did not score until the very end of the third quarter.
And thus, the old Dwight Howard, he of capes and crucifix’s, was thoroughly destroyed in 12 hours, undone by the weight of his own lies.
He’s been posing as an NBA super-duper-star. To be sure, Howard is a supremely gifted and talented individual. As a 18-year-old, before jumping to the NBA, he was the valedictorian of his class at Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy and as a seemingly devout Christian, spoke of genuinely hoping that one day, the NBA logo contained a crucifix.
But eight years later, Howard is telling his boss’s bosses to terminate his direct supervisor. Now that’s not very Christian like.
He also played the Magic as a whole through the disingenuous trade demand saga of the last year, then flopped back and forth on opting-in or out of his contract at the trade deadline last month. A report last week stated that Howard finally changed his mind and opted in not because of some deep love that he’s been professing for the city and the fans, but because the Twitter backlash on the whole situation began to wear on him.
Twitter pressure? Really? Really?
How about the pressure of, you know, performing where you should. At some point, someone needs to call out Dwight for his inability to truly dominate games as he should be? He’s averaging 20.6 points and 14.4 rebounds this season, as one of the last remaining – perhaps the only – dominant big man in basketball. He wants to replicate Shaq, but he’s not even in Shaq’s general vicinity. He can’t even buy a ticket to where Shaq’s general vicinity is.
Howard ought to be averaging 28 and 15. He could be. But he doesn’t. And he never will.
Because to Howard, it’s all about the show. Wear a cape, win a dunk contest, smile his 1,000-watt smile. Create some drama. Entertain the people. He doesn’t crave a championship; he craves attention. How else could his wish list of destinations include New Jersey (soon to be Brooklyn)? The Nets are horrible.
If Howard wanted to win a title, he’d go to the Lakers or to Dallas or to the Knicks – or just stay with the Magic. But he wants to be the man in a new arena in a new city where there will be gobs of attention paid to Jay-Z’s team once it move’s this fall. At least LeBron James joined up with some good players – Howard won’t even have Deron Williams. Basketball wise it’s a worse situation than the one he’s currently in.
Speaking of LeBron, if LeBron is a such a hated villain for mishandling his exit from Cleveland with the spectacle of “The Decision” and joining a proverbial All-Star team with Bosh and Wade in Miami, then what on earth does all of this make Howard?
It has to be worse. Does it make him a hypocrite? Does it make him shallow? I think it does.
It makes him superficial and egotistical and shows he only cares about phantom recognition for what little he has truly accomplished while riding the coattails of people with the same skill set that came before him and were better. His inherent flaw and weakness is that he thinks he’s better than he is.
In other words, Stan Van Gundy was right to treat him like Fredo Corleone.
Because that is exactly who Dwight Howard is. 
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Bill Parcells, NFL, Peter King, Sports Illustrated

Pity Pandering

We are a sick group of individuals. We’ve got to the point we’re just openly pandering for pity.
Oh, but it’s worse than that – we have to be creative in how we seek each other’s pity. We line up more excuses than a high school freshman before homework is due in Algebra class. We’re like the opposite of stand-up comics, trying out new sappy material on unsuspecting people to get them to feel bad for us.
We are master manipulators and we are one-uppers. We constantly have a retort in the chamber, ready to take on anyone.
If someone talks about money, you’re poorer. If groceries cost you $125 a week, they easily cost me $200. If someone tells you they are tired, everyone else takes offense to this.
“You’re tired? Ha! I worked 62.435 hours this week and put up a new fence in the backyard!”
“Oh…wow…you must be exhausted.”
It’s nauseating and it has to stop. Why can’t we just have conversations that don’t automatically imply that you’re directly talking about anyone other than yourself? We’re all selfish anyway, so what’s the difference?
What happened to the good old days where we used to just feel bad for people based on our own emotions? Now you have to lay it on like you life is a replay of the Labor Day MDA Tele-thon.
And frankly, I’m mad because there are no levels of these pity parties anymore. Because of this, I’m becoming numb to handing out any sympathy what-so-ever.
Case in point to all of this: Sports Illustrated’s senior NFL writer, Peter King.
King, who you’ve probably seen on NBC over the past several years on “Football Night in America”, is a widely respected veteran who writes the “Monday Morning Quarterback” column for SI.com and also does features in SI during football season. He is also heavily entwined with the NFL and is one of the electors for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
This week, King makes a passive-aggressive comment bemoaning the fact that people are upset with the committee over this year’s inductions (and those that were left out, namely, Bill Parcells and Cris Carter).
Now, you want to get mad and defend yourself in print every now and then, I’m fine with that.
But then Tuesday rolled around and King wrote a follow-up column that oozed self-pity seeking narcissism. Literally, an entire follow-up column devoted to poor Peter, by Peter, about how hard it is to select the Hall of Fame inductees each year, how much time he spends on it, how the weight carries a burden on him that increases each time he goes about voting.
First of all, get over yourself. It’s football. A game. I mean, I am as passionate about sports as they come, but crying all over your laptop over the flack you’re catching over the Hall of Fame is a little bewildering and
Really?
This is what our most esteemed football journalist is doing now? I know it’s 10 days after the Super Bowl and things are slow…but really? How egocentric can you be?
King rambles and babbles on and on throughout the column about how the process works (or doesn’t) and he basically supported everyone who’s ever played the game. It’s not his fault Bill Parcells isn’t in the Hall of Fame this year. It’s not his fault Cris Carter goes another year without a gold jacket.
He also justifies that he doesn’t take things personal against candidates and how he’s not holding some grudge that keeps players out.
That’s fine, truly. But shouldn’t that go without saying? Why do you have to write a column defending yourself? You know what you do when you are Peter King and you’ve built up such an honorable credibility over 30 years of covering the sport? You don’t acknowledge them. You ignore them. What does it matter what Joey from Long Island thinks about you for leaving Parcells out?
Stooping to the level of the rabble just besmirches you, not them. Some people just want to complain, over complain and watch the world burn. And it exposes you as somewhat of a blowhard, frankly, when you defend yourself to this level. To wax philosophic about how important the task of voting for the Pro Football Hall of Fame is unbecoming and pretentious.
But King misses the point in two different ways, actually.  
First, is the bottom line: Bill Parcells should be in the Hall of Fame by now, so should Cris Carter. You are one of the people, as a collective group, who did not put them in.
Again, it’s football. It’s the Hall of Fame. And Bill Parcells isn’t in it.
How would you expect people to react, Pete? He’s Bill Parcells, the Bob Knight or Tony LaRussa of the NFL.
Secondly, King is playing the same hand so many in this country do…something happened that others don’t like, so feel bad for me because I’m being attacked.
We’ve become enablers. We play to the minority more than the majority.
To illustrate this, think of the last time a group of people went out to eat and couldn’t come to an agreement on where to eat because one person out of 10 doesn’t like pizza. Another guy hates hamburgers. Someone doesn’t like fish. And soon enough we’re sitting around at some weird pizza and fish taco place pacifying them.
If Parcells didn’t deserve the Hall, then tell us why. Or, you know, don’t write two columns in a row that belabor the point of how you are not to blame and defend your own honor.
Whatever happens from here on out, I don’t care. After reading King for nearly 10 years, I’m out. He lost me. Not that he cares – he doesn’t even know who I am, so my reading or not reading his columns doesn’t bother him nearly as much as those that are screaming about the Hall of Fame today. But I won’t be coming back. 
It’s the first of many changes I’ll be taking to stop enabling people who take pity on themselves and demand, through a carefully and manically crafted plan of self-absorption, that we take pity on them too.
Just stop it.
We’re so afraid of offending anyone that we say nothing – even when we should be offended (like Nicki Minaj’s horrendous, sacrilegious and terribly offensive Grammy act Sunday). Soon enough, someone in the Celebrity Culture of Sports and Hollywood (yes, it’s got an official name and everything, at least to me) will be telling a sob story that gets us all back on their side.
We should show pity to ourselves, because we really are a sad and pathetic bunch. 
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Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots, New York Giants, NFL, Peyton Manning, Super Bowl XLVI, Tom Brady

Isn’t It Ironic?

I wonder if Peyton Manning enjoys the musical styling of Alanis Morissette? Because if I had to fancy a guess as to what is playing on his iPod during his rehab workouts, this week especially, it has to be Morissette’s “Ironic.”
Because isn’t it ironic – a little too ironic – that the Indianapolis Colts host Super Bowl XLVI this Sunday, a game they never would have received without the shiny new Lucas Oil Stadium, a stadium that would never have been built without Manning transforming the Colts?
Yet when the game kicks off, it’s difficult to predict two things: 1) If Manning will ever play football again, and, 2) If he does get cleared to play football, will it be for the Colts?
It’s technically cosmic irony. It’s like rain on your wedding day, or a traffic jam when you’re already late.
And just to make sure Manning got this message, the football gods aligned the stars so that Peyton’s little brother, Eli, leads his team to the Super Bowl.
Against Peyton’s long-time arch-rivals, the New England Patriots.
Who are quarterbacked by the one man people debate could go down as better than Peyton: Tom Brady.
What are the odds of that?
Super Bowl XLVI also happens to be a rematch between the Patriots and the New York Giants, who four years ago, gave us a thrilling Super Bowl that saw the Giants come-from-behind in the final seconds to topple the then-unbeaten Patriots.
There’s hype and then there’s the Super Bowl. And then there’s a Super Bowl rematch of the Patriots and Giants. Of all the storylines this week, Peyton Manning and his neck are a mere footnote.
But Manning should be more than that to this city, especially now. This city should be kissing his Super Bowl ring. Instead of Tebow-ing, we should be, uh, Manning-ing.
He has transformed this city in ways only people from here can understand. None of this – and by this, I mean the event of the Super Bowl itself – would be possible without Peyton Manning. Cold weather cities do not get the Super Bowl without a new stadium. (For reasons why, see Detroit in 2006 and Dallas last year.) And teams like the Colts, pre-1998, don’t get new stadiums. You get new stadiums by winning – like a lot – because winning 10-plus games a year for a dozen years brings in a ton of fans.
Fans buy seats, food and merchandise. They create an atmosphere. They create a fan base that will sell out said new stadium, even in a year like 2011, when the team goes 2-14, fires it’s coaching staff and organizationally derails. They stay loyal when the owner acts out his life like a Saturday Night Live sketch on Twitter.
The success of the Manning-era Colts led to this moment. In turn, we’ve learned in the last six months that Manning is the Colts, literally, and frankly deserves all the credit for everything they did between 1998-2010.
Peyton Manning masked wild deficiencies of teammates and front office decision makers. He covered for mediocre coaching, less-than-mediocre defenses and a talent discrepancy that, looking back on it, was sometimes as wide as the Grand Canyon.
Think about this: since 2001, only four teams have represented the AFC in the Super Bowl: The Patriots (five times), the Pittsburgh Steelers (three times), the Colts (twice) and the Oakland Raiders (once, in 2002).
The Raiders, clearly, caught lightning in a bottle in 2002. They’ve been horrible ever since. But how on earth did the Colts hang in there with the Patriots and Steelers, perhaps the two most well-ran organizations in the NFL? How did they compete with those two franchises?
Simple: Peyton Manning.
Because it wasn’t the owner – Patriots owner Bob Kraft and the Rooney family that owns the Steelers, are vastly superior to Jim Irsay, his guitar and his tweets. It wasn’t the coaching – Bill Belicheck, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin are all vastly superior coaches that Jim Mora, Tony Dungy and Jim Caldwell. And it certainly wasn’t the general managers and decision makers. The Steelers and Patriots draft really well, sign the right players and do all the little things right. Meanwhile, Bill Polian was asleep at the wheel in the player personnel department for at least five years.
Peyton Manning is so good, so vastly superior that he basically was a one man show. In hindsight, it’s become a chicken and egg question with his teammates. Was Marvin Harrison good, or did Peyton make him good? Is Dallas Clark a great tight end, or did Peyton simply make him great? You get better by association on the Colts when No. 18 is under center.
So was it a good business decision to pay him $28 million in 2011 for not playing a single down of football? Of course not. It was, as I said before, quite stupid. But did the Colts, on behalf of the organization and this city, owe it to him? Hell yes. Consider it payment for services rendered.
Certainly Manning has long been well compensated for his talents as the highest paid quarterback in football for a number of years. But what he did in Indianapolis transcends just the game.
Indianapolis was Naptown. We hosted a few NCAA Final Fours and claim “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” the Indianapolis 500 – as if anyone still really cares about open-wheel racing outside of the month of May – and the Indiana Pacers had a good run in the late 1990s, but that’s been about it.
Since Peyton arrived, the NCAA moved its headquarters to Indianapolis and we’ve hosted more Final Fours than any other city. Other events have come to town, thanks to the hard working folks at the Indiana Sports Corporation. The economic boost and impact will be felt for years. A new stadium was built. To give you the mindset pre-Peyton, we were the middle sized town in the middle of the middle West. This city built a new minor league baseball park before it built a new football stadium.  
To see the city this week, alive with a kind of energy and enthusiasm that is hard to even adequately describe, is frankly amazing. And none of this would be possible without Peyton Manning. And all this, coming from the most staunch Brady-backer.
Now that doesn’t make what is likely to happen in a few weeks any less difficult. The Colts have an incredibly difficult decision to make on Manning and the future of this franchise. And this has to be a business decision. They have a chance to start over with another franchise quarterback. Manning, despite his rosy outlook, might never play another down – and even if he does, he might never be what he once was.
But that conversation can happen after Sunday. After the city basks in the glow of the hosting the Super Bowl.
Thus far, Indy is nailing it. To the point I’m wondering if the NFL won’t come back again in five or six years for another Super Bowl. And in another turn of irony, the weather has been fantastic – leaving me to joke to a friend that people from out of town are going to go home thinking Indianapolis would be a great place to retire: warm winters, friendly people, tons of stuff to do…
Which makes me wonder if we can credit Peyton for the weather as well?
He’s pretty much responsible for everything else happening this week.
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