Here I am, eagerly awaiting the AFC Championship Game, where the Colts can finish off step 2 out of 3, finish off the AFC in nice tidy fashion and enter into the Super Bowl where they can be hailed as a dynasty in the making. Winning the Title makes the Patriots irrelevant, as with a Super Bowl Title the Steelers and Colts will have BOTH won two titles since the Pats last hoisted the glittering Lombardi trophy, smearing it with the fingerprints of cheaters. I expected this notion to be met with the excitement of the nation. A non-Patriots juggernaut. The NFL embraces its juggernauts, unless they cheat or run up the score or are cocky assholes or spew arrogance and convicts like the Longest Yard. The Colts do none of these things. They are tight-lipped never the ones providing the bulletin board material (post-Vanderjagt), they are the ones absorbing it. They are the perfect team, one built with a mix of top-flight players (Wayne, Clark, Freeney, Saturday, Brackett, Mathis) and NFL cast-offs and undrafteds (Brackett, Saturday, Garcon, Johnson (who? exactly)). Yet, three days away from the AFC Championship Game, the first for the Colts that does not pit them against the Redcoat Patriots, I am hearing none of these setiments. America, in fact, is not rooting for the Colts, for the great story of a possible new dynasty, but for the Jets, a loudmouth, smashmouth team from the most lovable and hateable cities in America. Is this really happening? Are the Jets the team that America wants? Really, the Jets?
To me, there hasn't been a more loved underdog since the Giants in Super Bowl XLII against the Galactic Empire that was the Patriots. That was completely understandable (moreso since I was a member of those Patriots-hating folk that cheered till my larynx dislodged from its larynx-holder that night). The Patriots were evil. They mercilessly ran up the score. They had a classless dick of a coach, and a Golden-Boy QB (we hate the Golden Boy QBs. If Favre actually shaved well, America would have exiled him to Elba with the retirement roullette that he is playing). They were a hateable team. The Giants were a team that you could rally behind. They were counted out, they were a team whose coach and QB were so far from Belichick and Brady it seemed that they were the epitome of an opening act to the headline. That made sense, this doesn't.
What have the Colts done to take the place that the Patriots held? They never ran up scores, in fact, they are notorious for doing the opposite, sitting on leads and making games closer than they really are (like when leading Seattle 34-3, they called off the dogs and won 34-17). Their coach is the exact opposite of Belichick. He is no evil mastermind, he is no hoodied football satire of Emperor Palpatine. Coach Jim Caldwell inherited the hardest job in the NFL since George Seifert took over for Bill Walsh and his 1988 Super Bowl Champions. Under intense pressure, and with a team that many media "experts" were sure were going to take a step back, he, like Seifert, piloted a juggernaut to a 14-2 record. Seifert capped it off with a Super Bowl win, mercilessly pounding Denver senseless with a 55-10 win in Super Bowl XXIV. If Caldwell tried that type of win over the Jets (like the Jets, the Broncos had the best defense in 1989) he would be labelled as a tyrant. Caldwell piloted the team beautifully, yet he might as well be a hologram, as little mention of his brilliant performance is even mentioned. The only reason I can see for the Colts now being thought of as some evil team that deserves to be ridiculed and rooted against passionately is a reason that is not exactly rational. Media members hated what they did against these same Jets in Week 16 giving up on a perfect season. Media members went batshit, labelling this as the stupidest move since NBC gave Leno the 10:00 PM slot. The Colts might have well just mooned Gandhi's grave for all the criticism the media pounded on that team. Let alone it worked, as the Colts decisevely won their opening playoff game and are healthier than ever before this season. Yet, it was over for the Colts, they were the new Patriots. The team that denied to chase perfection (something that has NEVER ended successfully) were now somehow a team that didn't deserve to win.
Now for the Jets. Why are they suddenly David, why are they 1980 USA Hockey. They have created some perceived slight from that Week 16 game, let alone the fact that if not for the Colts giving up on perfection they would not have made the playoffs. They are a team that was a slightly-above average team all season. They were a team that crushed the dregs of the league (Raiders, Chiefs, Bucs, Delhomme), and lost to any team competent (Falcons, Jaguars, Miami (twice)). They were a team with a loud defense, and a louder mouth. The real mystery is Rex Ryan. First, he was loved for calling out Belichick and then beating him. He was brash, but his team was 3-0, leader's of some new era. When that all went to hell, and they blew back-to-back games to the Dolphins and Jaguars, and fell to 4-6, there was no more cheering. He was now Jabba the Hut. Yet, after two lay-down wins, and two playoff wins, he is not only understandably hailed in New York as the new-Lombardi, but also looked at nationally as some lovable fat tellytubby with a slightly dirtier mouth. He said that the Jets were the favorite in the whole competition, and then had their parade down the canyon of heroes scheduled. These are brash moves usually met with ridicule and scorn, especially as the team prepares to play a unit that has yet to lose a game that it tried to win. However, Ryan's morbid-obese body and even more boisterous nature allowed such callous cock-ery to be laughed off. How does this happen?
Then there is the rest of the team. Kerry Rhodes hilariously compares himself to Ed Reed when saying how he can bait Manning into interceptions (I don't know who should be more ticked off: Manning or Reed). Sanchez has a statistical year that is worse in every way than JaMarcus Russell's 2008 campaign, and he is put on the Namath podium. Bart Scott talks and talks and talks and has yet to make any discernable impact. What is so lovable about this team? Fine, New York loves them, as they should. New York also loves the Yankees, Mets and Knicks, teams that are hated across the country, the Yankees at a level of hatred usually reserved for pedophiles and dog-killers. Yet, the Jets transcend these bounds. Does Rex Ryan's girth and Sanchez's looks really break the shackles holding brash teams from New York in. Should the Yankees hire Don Zimmer, so they get the Jets treatment. And don't say its becuase the Jets are underdogs. That's not it. In the Lakers-Magic NBA Finals, no one wanted the Magic to win because they were underdogs, no it's because they didn't want to see the childish needs of a alleged-rapist be fullfilled (Kobe, for those of you who have forgotten the Kobe rape story in a cloud of Kobe-huggery and smiles). What is it about this Jets team that has allowed Tedy Bruschi, Rodney Harrison and Cris Carter to all overwhelmingly pick them? What is it?
I will never understand the Jets firestorm in the Winter of 2010. The stupidest angle is this whole "The Colts regret the monster they have created by letting the Jets into the playoffs" storyline. There is not one single Colt who truthfully would rather have beaten the Jets and gotten the Chargers in this game. Sure, I want the Chargers for revenge purposes, but I sleep easier knowing that there is a worse team coming into the Luke in three days. That storyline is complete garbage. The Colts did not create a monster, instead they reached out an olive branch, and cleared the Red Sea that was the Broncos, Steelers and Texans, allowing the .500 Jets into the playoffs (Marvin Lewis and the Bengals played the part of Moses beautifully as well). The Jets, nicely, repaid them by taking out the Chargers. Now, as these two teams are about to come to ahead, meeting in that rectangle of a field in front of the Colt faithful, millions of people around the nation will be cheering for a cocky, brash, loudmouth team, and disparaging a class, quiet, workmanlike team. How does this make sense? All I know is that I never expected the Colts to be the hated team, and I never expected a New York team to be the one that got the media's love.
