It’s pretty exciting as a fan, as the names put out there as possibilities ranged from “WHO?” to “OH SHIT NO” so, yay for a name I know that previously coached a pretty successful group of guys. The Ravens defense lead the AFC in sacks – 48 – and ranked third in both scoring and total defense. They were a pretty impressive machine to behold whenever they took the field, and as someone who has watched the Dungy Defense crumble, I think he’ll make a welcome addition.

Welcome to Indianapolis. Try the green bean casserole. It’s delicious.

Oh I have some thoughts on this.

First of all, statistically you have issues that are bigger than your rookie quarterback.  If you think a recently returned from Injured Reserve Manning is going to be down with signing on with a team whose offensive line has more holes in it than the Magic Bullet theory, you should probably consider that.  Your noneffective line allowed Sanchez to get sacked to such an extent you’d think he was Jeff George (I haven’t pwnd George in a while).  It’s simply naive to think you can plug in a super star and make your team work.

I mean, last time I checked, Brett Favre was a pretty good quarterback. How was that Super Bowl he took you to? Oh, right, that didn’t work out. He got hurt, as I recall. Torn bicep in his shoulder?

So from a very practical standpoint, Manning can’t go anywhere without a line of monsters to protect him. He’s got history with Indianapolis and those boys don’t let Peyton take a hit too often, so even though they aren’t the biggest guys around I’d suspect he would want to know what he’s getting in protection from the line.

Second of all, GOD NO. What the HELL. I have about 1000 other expletives that could go in here, but I promised Sarah to limit the eff bombs.

If Manning went to the Jets then there would be two Mannings playing for New York teams and that’d be like matter and anti-matter meeting up, end times for sure. It’s some sort of anathema to me that I can’t fathom as a fan. Not just as a Colts fan ( I get it, they might trade him) but as a MANNING fan. I mean CRAP can’t he go play someplace GOOD? The crappy JETS? For real? Dear GOD just send him to Tampa Bay. At least I love the Bucs and Tampa’s a fun town (right Sarah?).

I think I can’t continue as I will start swearing and now I sort of want a beer. But my take on this, from a purely editorial and over emotional point of view is this.

NO.

*image source Rant Sports NFL ~ Brian Spurlock US Presswire*

The Cowgirls next two games have been cancelled as the school mourns.

This is the second time tragedy has struck the athletic leadership at Oklahoma State, in 2001 a plane crash took the lives of members of the coaching staff of the men’s basketball team.

image by Chris Day

Why is it then, that athletes who play contact sports are playing through broken bones, risking permanent career ending injuries? It’s short-sighted, much less ridiculously short on compassion for them as humans.  I watched the Colts run the gauntlet repeatedly, letting Bob Sanders play “a bit hurt” only to have him get more hurt and then unable to play. Eating up salary, chilling on the bench and then providing zero support when needed.

When I see statements like “Michael Vick’s injury might’ve had something to do with his inaccuracy,” I kind of want to throat punch the person who said it. See how that contributes to their ability to say stupid insensitive things.

Matt Stafford says he’s not injured that badly,  but still, it’s reminiscent of a pianist trying to play with broken fingers.

As the awareness of concussion as a serious issue continues it would seem intuitive that the NFL embrace a more enlightened view of injuries and not expect players to be iron men, but rather treat them as the valuable, HUMAN commodity they are.  As a healthy athlete they are worth millions. Why would you risk breaking them? Personally, I’d want my money’s worth out of them, and benching a star for a week would be worth it if I could keep him around a few more years.

Vick’s status is uncertain for this next week.   Any bets on whether or not he suits up? My guess is, yes.

We had a star. We won games. We WON A SUPERBOWL. And just like that, everyone was a fan. Blue and white would wash over the state of Indiana on any given football Sunday and the news blurbs were nothing more than gleeful tittering about who the Colts were going to smash this week.

Even when we lost, the love didn’t wane because we knew, we KNEW our brilliant team was there and would come back and win it for us.

Then Peyton Manning got hurt, and our world collapsed.

Peyton Manning and front office of the Colts are now hesitant to commit to where we’re all going to land regarding him as our quarterback. The bottom line is, no one knows. You can speculate all day but nobody has a freaking clue what is going to happen, not even Peyton Manning.  We know he wants to play,. You can see it every Sunday as he watches disaster roll up and down the field, ten yards at a time.

The armchair general managers are already planning out how the draft might go and what if we got Andrew Luck plus Manning got better for a year or so because that’d be better than Christmas and Easter with Halloween candy thrown in for good measure.  Theoretically. Or not, it might be bad because Luck might be annoyed sitting around waiting for Manning to hang it up.

Again – no one knows.

The real fans are going to watch Curtis Painter throw the ball. Personally, I’m kind of proud of him. He’s not winning games but he’s trying.

The real fans are going to put on their jerseys and root for their team. There might be less blue and white the rest of this year. There will probably be less when we lose Peyton for good, which is a real possibility.

But those people weren’t fans anyway.

This house will wear their blue and white this Sunday.

GO HORSE !

It was this – breaking news on Indystar.com that Peyton Manning went in AGAIN last night for surgery.

My 63-year-old mother texted me. That’s right. She texted me.

“Manning had another surgery! It’s breaking news!”

Colts fans throughout the universe are praying and sacrificing goats but the fact of the matter is, just like when the Pacers were our drug of choice and Reggie Miller was injured – sometimes, SOMEONE ELSE HAS TO PLAY.

What is this going to mean? What about the revenue? What about the fans? Hard to say. But one thing is for sure. No Manning this week. And that’s bad news for Colts fans.

If you need me, I’ll be sacrificing this panda to the football gods. It’s a sad panda, so no worries.

When I lived in Indianapolis, back when tickets were HARD to get to the Indy 500 there was a ritual to obtain them. You had to send in your application for tickets with a check for the amount that your tickets would cost, were you to get them. You could only get the application in the back of the Official Indy 500 Race Program. Which essentially was like some bizarre Hulman inspired paradox as you had to have tickets to attend the event you wanted to get tickets to attend in order to acquire this program.

So we figured there had to be some sort of way to apply to get tickets to THE BIG GAME.

There is.

The information is located rather randomly on the NFL’s FAQ Page. Oh yeah btw if you want tickets to the Super Bowl try this – it’s that casual.

So we decided, heck yes we’d like some Super Bowl tickets at face value. Thus we’ve entered the random drawing.

Wish us luck!

“Did you hear anything about Peyton Manning and Ashley having twins. There was a story that they did but then another story that they wanted everyone to respect their privacy. Do you think something could be wrong?”

My heart kind of fell, because as a mom of twins (as is Sarah), we both know really well that yeah – with twins it’s more likely than NOT that something is wrong. So I let Google be my adviser and started reading every news story I could find.

So here is what I KNOW. The Indianapolis Star CONFIRMS the births, via public record and that’s it. Babies were born.

After reading a lot it seems that even a lot of people in the sports community didn’t know that Peyton Manning was married. Maybe just being a Hoosier, that kind of info seemed common knowledge. I know they’ve always been really private people. But I also know that there is a symbiotic relationship between public figures and the public. We exist to love you, you exist to be loved.

So, sometimes, you gotta throw us a bone.

Now, the Mannings don’t OWE us anything about their personal life. That’s for certain. I do think thought that the frenzied joy of new babies in the Manning dynasty is something a lot of the Manning fans are going to celebrate far and wide. A NEW MANNING MALE HAS BEEN BORN. OMG GET HIM A FOOTBALL!

I’ve been wondering what the middle ground here is? How does the Manning family preserve their privacy yet give us what we all so desperately crave? I’ve created an artists rendering of what this might look like.

You could probably even swaddle newborn pigs in pink and blue blankets and hide the faces, we won’t notice. We’ll just be cooing over the idea of babies.

I have one important piece of information to share with these new twin parents. Just keep this in mind and hold it close to your heart. 45 minutes of sleep = a full night.

Ok I kid. Not about the sleep part that’s legit having twins makes you learn why sleep deprivation is torture.

But congratulations to Peyton and Ashley from one twin parent to new ones. It gets easier.

Someday.

He’s so excited he can’t see straight.

He’s also not very good at it. That’s fine. The boy isn’t all that athletic. Maybe he’ll grow into it. Maybe he won’t. But he’s having fun, and he thinks he’s good and loves it. To me, that’s what it’s all about at this stage in the game.

I will freely admit I had my cell phone out, texting a girlfriend while they were getting organized at the beginning of practice. I had a book, I had my great big old picnic-style blanket spread out, purse half dumped and was putzing around doing this and that. But as practice got going, I set down my phone and sat to watch the shenanigans.

Eight-year-old boys who don’t have a clue how to play soccer trying to practice playing soccer is sort of a hoot.  They’re uncoordinated, they don’t pay attention and I just find there to be something joyous and hilarious about them. They’re playing a game in its least competitive form, and it’s just fun.

So all this parental musing about the nature of sport aside, I notice a kid shoving another kid out on the field. Being a completely judgmental parent, I look around to see whose jerkwad kid this is.

And that’s when I noticed.

Everyone is on their phone except me.

Texting, surfing, talking. They’re doing anything except watching the field. So I sit and observe the parents. Thumbs are flying and smiles spread over their faces as they continue to communicate with their digital world that they’ve brought with them to the soccer field.

They are missing it. They are missing the sucky dribbling and passing. They are missing the boys’ total inability to weave in and out of cones. They are missing the corner shot that knocked a kid down.

They are missing their boys being 8 years old and trying to learn a sport. This moment won’t come back. As a matter of fact, it’s over.

I’m not a perfect parent. I text more than I should and hell if my phone would surf the web I’d be snagging content from it as well. But if I believe sports are important enough for my child to play, then they ought to be important enough for me to pay attention to while they learn.

Get off the phone. Jerks.

I could understand it though. “Sussudio” would kill it for me, too.

No. My two cents regarding this past Super Bowl have nothing to do with any of that, nor with Xtina effing up our National Anthem. I even have to admit that I didn’t quite catch what she did wrong, but my mind went “Wait…..what did she just mess up?” and made my husband rewind.

Not even that was enough to move me to post though.

Maybe it’s my new High Def flat panel TV. Maybe it’s just heightened awareness due to all the beer I had consumed.

But did any of you catch the come hither glances Joe Buck was tossing Aikman? He’s totally checking out Aikman.

What’s up with that? And why does Aikman look so pleased about it?

Yes, I totally grabbed my camera and took a pic of the TV. I was that amused.