When snow flurries briefly fell on Friday, it created a home-team dream tableau, the white flakes dusting buildings bathed in blue light as if the town had ordered up the weather, along with pep rallies and towering banners, to cheer on the Colts in today's AFC championship game.
It's a long way from when coach Tony Dungy first arrived in Indianapolis in 2002 and found himself in a basketball town.
The Pacers and the Hoosiers dominated the landscape, and former Colts coach Jim Mora's "Playoffs?!" rant played on a continuous loop as background music.
PHOTO: AP
Mora's meltdown has been revived in a beer commercial and it seems taken from so long ago that the Colts may as well still call Baltimore home. Women having lunch at a suburban Chili's this week all wore blue and white Peyton Manning jerseys. A "Go Colts" banner hung high on the skyline's tallest building.
There were pep rallies with former Colts players signing autographs at a local mall. Civic leaders were hoping to link this enthusiasm with a bid to host a future Super Bowl in the stadium that is under construction.
Even with such excitement, the gallows humor that cushions losing has not completely given way. This opponent is no laughing matter, though, not after what the New England Patriots have put the Indianapolis Colts through in past playoff games.
Even last season, when the Colts were the AFC's top-seeded team but lost their first game to the Pittsburgh Steelers, does not seem to sting as much as the two playoff losses to the Patriots, particularly the AFC championship game of the 2003 season.
If playing the Patriots again is not their worst nightmare, then the Colts could probably have come up with a long list of preferred opponents.
"It wouldn't have totally bothered me if we were playing Oakland," Peyton Manning joked on Friday at a news conference.
As for New England, he said: "It makes for a good story, with the past history. I, like most players, assumed the Patriots would beat the Jets. Then you look at going to San Diego and I'm thinking, `They'll beat the Chargers.' I had a pretty good idea they'd be in this game."
Manning and most professional athletes are adept at compartmentalizing the past, sticking it in a mental box for review after retirement. It is their way of avoiding the paralysis that would come from giving too much weight to trends and statistics. Mention the previous Patriots victories and members of the Colts are quick to dismiss history, conveniently forgetting that the four most important people in the game -- the coaches and quarterbacks -- are exactly the same.
In a way, of course, the Colts are right. The Chargers crushed the Patriots when they last played in the 2005 regular season, but that didn't help them last Sunday. Still, the Patriots seem to have a special hold on the Colts, disproportionate to the frequency of their games or the margin of their victories.
With the colossus again directly in the Colts' path to the Super Bowl, the public's trepidation has begun to set in even if, as Manning pointed out, the only game that might bear review is the one in November, which the Colts won. That, at least, offered a look at exactly the same roster, coached by exactly the same staff.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Taiwanese badminton superstar Lee Yang broke down in tears after publicly retiring from the sport on Sunday. The two-time Olympic gold medalist held a retirement ceremony at the Taipei Arena after the final matches of the Taipei Open. Accompanied by friends, family and former badminton partners, Lee burst into tears while watching a video celebrating key moments in his professional sporting career that also featured messages from international players such as Malaysia’s Teo Ee Yi, Hong Kong’s Tang Chun-man, and Indonesia’s Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan. “I hope that in the future when the world thinks about me, they will
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS