On February 5, 2012, The New York Giants and the New England Patriots will face each other in the Super Bowl. The title game will be played at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. Indianapolis is now in the spotlight as the center of the football universe. This week, the city has hosted Media Day earlier this week and numerous parties that will culminate with the Super Bowl on Sunday. Some of the questions in Sunday's title game include the following: Will the New York win their 2nd Super Bowl in 4 years or will New England win their 4th title, but their first one since 2005? The odds have the Patriots as the 3.5 point favorite, but everyone else is picking the Giants to win it all. We have to see how the game is going to turn out.
Drama in Naptown
Meanwhile in Indianapolis, there is a soap opera going on. For the past few weeks, this story has been covered by the national media. It's called "Peyton's Place." No, it's not the classic soap opera about a fictional town having plenty of drama with Mia Farrow and Ryan O'Neal. This one is starring Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and Jim Irsay, the owner of the hometown Colts, who had a horrendous 2011 season. Manning had two surgeries on his neck during the off-season, and despite his pleas to play, missed the entire regular season. The Colts lost their first 13 games and finished at 2-14, sharing the same win-loss total with the St. Louis Rams as the worst record in the National Football League. Because of the terrible season, someone had to pay for that and it was servere. On January 2, Irsay fired Vice President Bill Polian, the man who drafted Manning in 1998, and the general manager, his son Chris. On January 17 two weeks after firing the Polians, Irsay gave Head Coach Jim Caldwell his walking papers after three seasons.
Now since last fall, Irsay had his eye on Stanford Quarterback Andrew Luck and want to select him in the 2012 NFL Draft in April. Manning, initially lukewarm to the idea, eventually said that the Colts should pick Luck and a matter of fact, he wanted to be a mentor/tutor for him (this is not the Brett Favre-Aaron Rodgers set up in Green Bay where Favre did not want to help Rodgers.)
Right now, Manning's contract is going to expire in March and the Colts have the option to to sign him to a $23 million contract. However, there is serious talk in the media and online that the Colts will let Manning go and move on with Luck as the starting quarterback. A final decision has not been made yet, but there's so much speculation going on right now, you don't know what to believe.
Final Word
In my opinion, it would be great to see Peyton play (he has been cleared by the doctors to take some snaps- his neck is fine but his arm might not be ready right now)with the Colts in 2012 and tutor Luck on the ins and outs of being a NFL quarterback. However,Irsay might be crazy enough to let Manning walk and throw Luck into the hot seat as the starting quarterback (remember how Troy Aikman was getting battered repeatedly as a NFL rookie in 1989---three years later, the Dallas Cowboys, led by Aikman, with a potent offense and very strong defense, won the first of three Super Bowl titles during the 1990s.) Hopefully, Irsay will do the right thing and keep Manning.
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