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.
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