Showdown: Clash of the Heavyweights and Fear in America’s Heartland
“If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?”
-Vince Lombardi
There appears to be little doubt, to those with a bent for pro football and some faith in the fact there is a God, that the Catholic Lord is a Patriots fan. The way they rolled through San Diego last weekend was a continuation of the overbearing sense of divinity that has surrounded the organisation over the last half-decade. Improbable plays, unparalleled luck and an unexpected implosion resulted in another immaculate post-season performance from the Patriots side renowned for The Big Win at this time of year.
And those who believe in the Lord’s love of the P-A-T-S Pats also have a new found respect for His sense of occasion and thirst for Big Time Football. And those who wear the horse-shoe are fearful, writhing in the uncomfortable knowledge that the Colts are a star-cross team who did nothing to ingratiate themselves when fleeing Baltimore on the midnight train. Jesus, anyone who has seen Diner knew how important the team was to Bleak City.
With a spade of gold and a hoe of silver even the mountains rock and sway.
That is an old Albanian proverb and it probably makes the nut as well as any bunch of words I can come up with. And probably anyone other than Vince Lombardi…and maybe Howard Cosell. He had a way to build up the heavyweight fights in a language only the truly enlightened can, making eternal titans of names like Ali, Frazier and Foreman, creating giants out of men. But that was three decades ago and we all probably need to move on.
But one can’t help but think of Howard right now. And Vince. Times like these need mighty men with words the right mix of granite and velvet to give the occasion due justice and magnitude.
Ye Gods, what a time to be alive. If the heart holds up and Karma is kind, I am set to witness the most anticipated game of NFL football in the last decade and probably longer and no man worth his two testicles and own sense of decency would miss the Pats-Colts game for all the moose in Montana and probably more.
This Colts-Pats conference finale has been a half-decade in the making and feels as big as Ali-Frazier in The Fight of the Century, England-Germany in ’66 and Hulk and Andre at Wrestlemania III. This is the culmination of an intense rivalry for dominance of the NFL that has seen blood shed, battles fought, winners cast, losers tainted and history written. This is the brawl to settle it all, a goddamn ball busting showdown that will be remembered forever and a day.
To really understand the magnitude of this clash, one has to understand how this rivalry has been borne out of magnificence and dominance and how the script to date has written in such acclaimed winners and such fabled losers that if one had not seen it the results would not be believed. This is a tale of grand warriors and, as Frost eloquently noted, the two diverging roads that have laid vastly different legacies for two men who could rightfully lay claim to the title of great. Both will probably be remembered as same. One will most likely have a caveat attached. At least if the final score were written now.
And that is why Vince Lombardi kept score and that is why the rest of us do as well.
The ink has been laid and the words written. They will be placed in stone this Sunday.
The New England Patriots have been the undisputed victors of the war to date, going down in folklore as winners. In the process, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, quarterback and coach, have been hailed as two of the greatest champions of this or any other time. The Patriots, in five years, have won three Super Bowls and written themselves into history.
They stand before Indianapolis projected like giants in the night, a neon monument of Brady and Belichick and Vince Lombardi and Joe Montana and the Pittsburgh Steelers of the seventies and all the other great football winners laid out like a victory mural on the horizon, marching to the beat of the Four Horseman and their charge.
The Colts, Kim Beazley in their ability to constantly lose when it counts, wait, a stiff upper lip but quivering testicles and crippling self-doubt sliding through their veins, knowing full well history does read all that kindly from Monument Circle or the Slippery Noodle Inn or anywhere else in downtown Indianapolis.
Greats like Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison and Tony Dungy have been made to look like Family Feud guests, goofy and patronized and out of their league. The Colts have done it all…all bar make and win a Super Bowl. And it is this fact that hangs heavy and looms large and is the weighty cross they all must bear.
Over the last five seasons, there have not been two more successful teams in the NFL. In regular season play, the Colts have gone 66-30 over the last six seasons. The Pats have gone 70-26. Divisional championships have been plentiful for both. Both quarterbacks have led the league in every category worth mentioning. Both coaches have drawn together a faithful band of true believers.
But for those who write history, these aren’t the measure of success. The only scale is Super Bowl rings.
That is where the similarities end. And this is where the roads part. The Pats have made the most of their regular season dominance and converted it to three Super Bowls. The Colts have not got past the conference championship game.
Simply, the Pats have stomped on the balls of the Colts until their eyes watered and their collective pancreas exploded. In legacy and in silverware, the only winners are New England. They have owned the Colts like single rich slappers with little hope for anything but pretentious casual relations and a firm belief in inheritances own small dogs with a penchant for high-pitched, queer yelping. Come playoff time, the Pats force the Colts to hurt. Twice, in 2003 and 2004, the Pats have made the Colts weep like children at poetry reading by knocking them out of the playoffs through beatings so vicious that the scars still seem pink-fresh.
This is the last chance for Indianapolis, a team who have been so close so often. This time, they have Adam Vinateri, the clutch kicker who won so many games for New England that he has become more fabled than any other kicker in NFL history. He is the great fear of Patriots. And you have to believe he will play some role in the finish.
But this looks like another chapter of woe for Peyton Manning and the Colts. And another tale of legendary success for Brady, Belichick and the Pats.
History would have it no other way. She gets her kicks like the rest of us.