Top 20 of the 2000s in Pop Culture

With the advent of the internet, the even higher rise of the paparazzi, and movies getting bigger, more expensive and more popular than ever, pop culture has in a way defined the 2000s. Here is a ranking of all things pop culture: people, movies, tv shows, books, etc. Here we go. By the way, since Pokemon's heyday was from 1998-2001, it sadly misses the list, as it probably would have been far, far up the list.

20.) Bill Simmons


His switch to ESPN was the first step that led to millions of other sports blogs, including the one that I am writing today. Sure, his quality has dropped off considerably in recent years, and he seems to think way too much of himself and his more talented friends, but Simmons' influence cannot be understated. He waved in a new era of sports writing, where talent was less important than relatability and style. Simmons' wit and pop culture prose entertained millions for years and years. The sports pop-culture world now knows what the 'Diane Lane All-Stars', what the 'Ewing Theory' is, and just how maddening Boston sports fans can be.

19.) CSI


CBS is today the leading network for scripted shows by far (this means not counting what American Idol and Dancing With the Stars does to FOX's and ABC's rating) and CSI is the main reason why. It is now the leading scripted franchise on television and ushered in the great era of scripted forensic science shows. Shows like Law and Order and NYPD Blue had been around for years, but they focused on the law, CSI focused on the science, and strangely, nerdy science was more popular. CSI has now branched to other cities and other stars from its premier season in 2000, but its true brilliance is seen by the rest of the CBS drama line-up, with essentially CSI knockoffs in NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, NUMB3RS, Cold Case and more. CSI has become the most bankable scripted show franchise on television and has helped CBS reach the top of the network world.

18.) Random Girls Who Don't Do Anything


I don't even feel like spending time on them, but Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie and Birtney Spears sent the entire decade in the news all the time, and sadly very rarely for anything constructive. They were the four hurricanes that rocked the paparazzi seemingly every day. One week one appears without underwear, the next week another shaves her head. One week the get engaged to ship tycoons with the same name, the next they get married to two losers in the span of eight months. For the 2000s no women were more notorious than these four, the four women that showed that fame could emit from no talent at all.

17.) Lost


Ah, yes the show that is more known for being complex than anything else. Lost really became the most watched cult show ever. It had fans that dissected episodes frame by frame, investigating every moment of the show for evidence of this or that. It became a religion more than just a show, with myths and stories. Are they alive? Are they in heaven? Is this a metaphor? Why can't this island be found considering every island on earth has been found? Whatever the answer will be, and we will find them all out later this year, Lost has become the greatest cult drama of the 2000s.

16.) 24


Back in 2004, when I was in 8th grade, I was asked a question from a friend. It was simple. It was, "Do you watch 24?" I had no idea what this meant. I was in the dark. I quickly found out that not only did most of my thirteen and fourteen year old classmates know what '24' was, they watched it. Everyone watched it. 24 has really seen its popularity and craze dry out the past two years, but for a two year period there was no bigger show in the world. 24 was a perfect set up, twenty-four episodes, all one hour. One day, one problem, one thousand people laying in Jack Bauer's path ready to be slaughtered. Kiefer Sutherland landed the dream job of a lifetame, and made Jack Bauer into the most famous agent in the world.

15.) Deadspin/TMZ


These two sites were launched just two months apart in 2005, and they really changed the world far more than anyone knows. TMZ.com became the mother of all paparazzi sites for celebrities, taking in tips and photos and recorded videos, and even cell-phone transcripts portraying all the dirty things that celebrities do... in the dark. Deadspin essentially did the same thing for athletes, which unearthed the previously untouched subject of what highly paid athletes do in their free time. Amazingly, both things involved inebriated people doing salacious things to young women in dark bars and clubs. Deadspin has at least branched out in pure Simmons style to writing hilarious columns, and even spawned into kissingsuzykolber.com, a site that has revolutionized sports satire. To think just six years ago no one would have ever known what athlete used the alias 'Ron Mexico' when trying to pick up hookers (Michael 'Yes, Damnit I killed Dogs' Vick) or what celebrity disregards the usual social law of wearing things to cover ones vaginal area.

14.) The Black Eyed Peas


In 2003, a group of crazy looking mixed racial fellows and one voluptious woman banded together to release a underrated hit in 'Where is the Love?', and the Peas were born. The Black Eyed Peas took advantage of all the goodwill they earned by brilliantly releasing the song with moral character first, and knocked off hit after hot hit. First came 'Shut Up', then 'Hey Mama', then 'Let's get Retarded', then 'Don't Phunk with my Heart', 'My Humps', 'Pump It!', 'Boom Boom Pow', 'I Got A Feeling', 'Meet Me Halfway', and 'Imma Be.' They evolved from a novelty mixed-racial band that produced a sweet tome to saving humanity, to the best collaborative group of the 2000s. Fergie and the Boys did well, didn't they?

13.) XBOX Live


So, yes, its not technically related to pop culture, but video games are, and XBOX Live is responsible for all the video game developments of the past decade. Halo (and parts II and III) became one of the greatest video game crazes of all time, and mainly due to XBOX Live. All EA Sports games now have live gameplay, because of XBOX Live. Sony had to develop a live gaming system for PS3 to compete with XBOX Live. XBOX won the third generation war (beating the Wii and PS3) with XBOX 360 mainly because of XBOX Live. It is safe to say that the best thing that Bill Gates' brainchild created in the 2000s was a live gaming operation.

12.) Desperate Housewives


The ladies from Wisteria Lane created a huge ruckus when first released back in September 2004, and the drama and controversy has not lessened since. Desperate Housewives is now the most popular scripted show starring women ever. Susan, Gaby, Lynnette and Bree took the tv world by storm, all getting nominated for best actress in season 1. Their story-lines were even more ingenious, as they have been able to keep a show with all women-centric storylines relevant and original for six years now. Marc Cherry never anticipated the success that Housewives has given him, but really, when you put five hot forty-somethings housewives together, you really can't go wrong.

11.) Dan Brown and the Church


Angels & Demons was released in 2000. A minor blip was made on the literary and Vatican radar. The DaVinci Code came out three years later, and the literary world and the Vatican went batshit. It became the biggest religious firestorm in decades, and the biggest book of the decade. It had outrageous accusations that belied the foundation of the world's biggest religion. It besmerched the name of Rome's greatest luminary. It rocked the politico-religious landscape for years, and made Dan Brown millions and the church into a victim. The fact alone that any man can write a book about religion and have it sell millions of copies and it not be named the 'Bible', that was the biggest surprise.

10.) Anchorman


I was going to give Judd Apatow this spot. Then I was going to share it between Will Ferrell and Apatow, but really it's Anchorman all the way. It is the most quoted comedy of the decade. It released the most one-liners ("A whale's vagina", "San Diegans", "Brick, did you kill a guy with a trident"). It gave the world the greatest easy-to-copy voice in Ron Burgundy's deep drawl. I'm pretty sure 90% of Americans who were between 13 and 18 when Anchorman came out know the back-and-forth that crescendo's to the "I'm going to punch you in the ovaries" line by heart. It is the movie that defined comedy in the 2000s. Get some funny people that can ad-lib, and put in Ferrell, and you have yourself an iconic movie that will live forever.

9.) PIXAR


Sure, they got their start with the Toy Story's in the 90's, but starting with 'Monsters, Inc.' in 2001, PIXAR went on a run that was probably unmatched in the decade, animated or not. 'Finding Nemo' is the Anchorman of animated comedies from the decade. 'The Incredibles', 'Cars', and 'Ratatouille' provided nice, cute fun. However, with 'Wall-E' and 'Up' PIXAR entered into the new wave of animation head-first and became legitimate Oscar fodder in categories that do not include the worlds "animated." 'Up' and 'Wall-E' are actual, beautiful, moving films that happen to be animated. 'Finding Nemo' and 'Monsters, Inc.' are actual, hi-larious comedies that happen to be animated. Animation will never have the success that PIXAR had in the 2000s, mainly because PIXAR did it too well.

8.) Beyonce


The best woman artist of the decade checks in at number eight, and this is not at all due to her time with Destiny's Child. She was a 'Survivor', living through Destiny's acrimonious break, and came out as a pop and sex icon. It started with 'Crazy in Love' back in 2003, and evolved through all sorts of styles, from lust and sexuality like 'Naughty Girl', to beautiful introspection like 'Irreplacable.' Beyonce has become an establishment; the Madonna of her day. She is an icon in every sense of the world, and is by far the most powerful woman in music today. Today is she Mrs. Jay-Z, a fashion mogul and a movie star. It is amazing to believe that she was arguably the second most famous Child of Destiny ten years ago.

7.) Arrested Development


Believe me, this is not the last time I will write about this brilliant show, and for good reason. Arrested Development is probably the only thing on this list that did not have huge commercial success. It is the only TV show to be canceled before it hit syndication (100 episodes). It is the best sitcom of the 2000s, by far. Arrested Development lives on over the interwebs, as half of people's usernames on blogs are some Arrested Development joke. Every character was brilliant. Every episode was funny. Every line had some relevance, either be it an obvious funny line, or some background joke related to some other thing in the episodes. Arrested Development was pure sitcom glory. The writing was great, the acting better, the casting even better. They were the perfect family for TV. And they were the only sitcom to really ever write a female character well for the entire run of the show in Matriarch Lucille Bluth. Arrested Development is rumored to come back on the big screen, but the small screen version was sitcom perfection.

6.) Survivor


The show that started the reality era in TV, it is probably the most influential TV show of the decade. The show has now become one blurry mess of tropical islands and dares and Jeff Probst, but when it first came out in 2000, it was the most brilliant idea on TV. Set in Borneo, and won by a dick named Richard Hatch, Survivor captivated the country, drawing 28.3 million viewers. That was an insane amount for a, horror, "reality tv show" back then. All reality shows, especially those like the Amazing Race and Fear Factor, owe it to Survivor for making them profitable. And Survivor still does it better than anyone else, 20 seasons later.

5.) The Lord of the Rings


I'll be honest. I have never seen any of the three movies. Really. I have not. I probably never will because there's a hauntingly sweet feeling to be totally blind to something that 98% of the populous has. Yet, I am able to understand its crazy significance. It was the only book-to-movie series that could actually, for a time, knock 'Harry Potter' of the map, and mainly because of Elijah Wood and Orlando Bloom. Those two people, among other orcs, and other random shits, turned the world of wherever Lord of the Rings takes place and turn in into the most popular fantasy land in movies in the decade. The Lord of the Rings crowning moment was the 2004 Academy Awards where The Return of the King one everything in sight, and made enough money to ensure Peter Jackson stays obese for life. I don't think JRR Tolkien would have ever imagined that his brainchild would become the second most famous book series of the last 20 years.

4.) Eminem


Again, I will one day write a much longer tome to the brilliance that was Eminem, but the shady (pun intended), white rapper from South Detroit turned rap upside down, made in the most popular music form of the new millenium, and sold more albums and earthed more controversy than any r&b/hip hop/rap artist in any one decade. From the absolutely perfect 'Marshall Mathers LP' to the more commercially loved 'Eminem Show' to everything else Marshall N. Mathers tried to do in the 2000s, brilliance ensued. He is the guy that made D12 into something, the guy who made 50-Cent a millionaire instead of an oft-shot gangster. He made '8 Mile' into the most known street in the United States west of New York City and east of Los Angeles. The most telling thing about Eminem's industry-wide brilliance is that he is an arrogant white-rapper who has spent the decade insulting every established black person in the industry, and not a single person has taken a shot at him. There is no point of taking a shot at brilliance.

3.) The iPod (and other i-Tems)


It was only nine years ago that no one knew what an iPod was, and the iMac was still the largest Apple creation. Boy did Steve Jobs change things. The iPod has been updated so much in the past decade, that the original version is completely unrecognizable, but it is truly the only portable innovation (excluding the laptop, and I guess, the car) that is world-known and world-used. Who doesn't have an iPod, let alone an iTouch or iPhone. However, Jobs' later, more useful inventions, never had the same amazing impact as the iPod. The iPod revolutionized the music industry from top-to-bottom, from making CDs irrelevant to fixing the Napster problems. The iPod is almost irrelevant now because of the iTouch and the iPhone, but its legacy will live on as Apple continues to rule the non-Computer e-world.

2.) American Idol


It's nauseating now. It's gone a couple years too far (its in year NINE now). The judges are now all in dissary, with Paula already gone (thank GOD!!), and Simon following her (R.I.P Idol), but it is still undoubtedly the most important and relevant show (or anything in video) of the 2000s. American Idol was the perfect match between comedy, drama and reality. It had a funny, caustic, arrogant, prick of a man in Cowell. It had the hip guy. It had the person who everyone could laugh at in vetted disgust in Paula. It had the drama of people going balls out to win a singing contest. It had the comedy of the idiots who couldn't sing for anything. It created stars all over the place. Ironically, few of them were winners, but that's the beauty of Idol. It was a singing contest, sure, but it was more of a pop culture contest. If you could win some sector of pop culture, wether it be actual singing talent (Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson), acting talent (Hudson), hotness (Carrie Underwood), pubescent girls fawning (David Archuleta, Clay Aiken (funny how that one turned out, isn't it)), or even the new media culture of making stars out of people with no talent (William Hyung). American Idol was perfect for its first five or six years. It got huge, huge viewer totals. More people voted for the season three finale than the 2004 and 2008 election COMBINED. American Idol capitalized on Survivor making reality tv legitimate and perfected it into a rare amalgam of everything TV had to offer.

1.) Harry Potter Mania


Books, movies, whatever it may be, Harry Potter could do no wrong. Even though the first three books were all released in the 1990's, the series became huge prior to the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. How huge? There were millions of kids world-wide who stood in line waiting until the stroke of midnight for the release of a BOOK. Not a movie. This wasn't star wars, this was a book. In a world where kids are turning further away from reading, it is ridiculous that a book can have this much impact. It's hard to describe what made the books so brilliant, but they just are. Getting a 10 year old to read 700 pages is about as hard as getting Bill Belichick to laugh, but J.K. Rowling was able to do it. I mean, the woman's a billionaire. She wrote BOOKS for a living, and she has more money than Madonna. The mania transfered quite easily to the big screen, as the movie series started in 2001, and nine years later is still as popular as anything else. The kids who grew up with Harry Potter are all in college now, yet all of us will flock to theatres to see the final two installments that comprise the seventh book. The books have made the lives of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson forever changed. It has made the world of wizardry changed. It has made Lord Voldermort the greatest literary villain ever, and Hogwarts the greatest literary school ever. Harry Potter mania knew no limits. There were the books, which begat dolls, and christmas ornaments, and computer games, and pens, and color books and anything possible. I was there waiting in line one day in 2000 when J.K. Rowling was doing a book signing in New Jersey. I stood outside in line for six hours waiting to meet her. I never did, but we were able to finagle our books to some other people and got one signed. I waited six hours to meet an author, wasn't able to, and didn't complain one bit, and I would do it again. Why? Because it was Harry Potter, that's why.

The Myth of Messi

The UEFA Champions League, Europe's premier sporting competition each and every year, the one with the great theme song (You know the video is coming), is headed to the semifinals tomorrow, but really, in most parts of the world, the real final is being played over the next three weeks between FC Barcelona and Internazionale Milano square off at Milan's historic San Siro (aka, Stadio Guiseppe Meazza), with another clash coming next Wednseday at Barca's even more historic Camp Nou. This may be a semifinal, but in all truth, it is the final. These are the two best teams in Europe, and there is a sense that one is a supreme favorite, and one is a massive underdog, with the former being Barcelona and the sad, latter, Inter Milan. I am here to tell you
that the world is believing the Myth of Messi, and that this is not so easy at it seems.

And Finally, the Beautiful UEFA Champions League Theme.
Goosebumps, that's all I can say, Goosebumps.

The biggest 'Myth of Messi' is really a myth of his team, FC Barcelona, who has captivated the football-loving world the past two years winning everything in sight. Barcelona is loved because they play beautiful soccer, with wide open passing, and passing and even more passing. Barcelona plays a style of soccer that was first popularized in the 70's by Holland's total football, and although Barcelona actually is much better defensively than they are given credit for and even moreso better defensively than the Total Football Holland teams of the '70's, Barcelona plays a style of football that is visually pleasing and critically acclaimed. They are widely seen as the best side in the world because they play great football, and have great talent and great coaching. But really, Inter Milan has almost equal talent, and they have the self-proclaimed "special one" Jose Mourinho as their coach, but they are seen as largely inferior. It all has to do with beauty.

Inter Milan plays defense and more defense in big matches. They have the ability to play attacking football, but Mourinho built a team that suits his favorite style of football, controlling the other teams by not allowing teams to play to their pace, and in Barcelona's case, it means not allowing Barcelona to play Barcelona football. Inter Milan is nearly as good defensively as Barcelona is offensively, yet no one will ever admit that these things are equal in importance. This is a direct parallel to American Football.

In the NFL, the offense first teams are glorified, and are, in all seriousness, overrated. Take the New England Patriots in 2009. They were a team whose defense was league average. Their offense was above average. They were the favorites in 14 of the 16 games they played. The Jets were the best defense in the NFL, but average offensively. The Jets ended up one game worse than the Patriots, but they were only favored in 8 games. People overrated the Patriots, for the most part, because they were great on offense. They underrated the Jets, for the most part, because they played great defense. The 2007 Patriots were hailed as the "Greatest Team of All Time" until their Super Bowl loss because they were one of the greatest offensive teams of all time. Five years earlier, the Buccaneers put forth the greatest defensive season since the advent of the 16 game schedule. They were amazing in the playoffs. They were not even included in the list of Top 20 Teams of All-Time in NFL Networks America's Game rankings. If the 2002 Buccaneers played the 2007 Patriots, universally the Patriots would be everyone's pick, but in reality, they are a close, close match. Defense still wins championships in football, here and across the pond.

Offensive football (back to the futbol version here) was always hailed as the perfect way to play, but now it is hailed as the best way to play, the winning way, as evidenced by Barcelona's run to glory last year in the UEFA Champions League (ending with a utter beatdown of favored Manchester United), and more importantly Spain's triumph in the 2008 European Championship (essentially the all-Europe world cup, however oxymoronic that is). Spain play Barcelona football to an even higher degree, passing effortlessly between four of the best midfielders in the game and two dynamic forwards. They passed and passed their way to glory in Europe. Offensive football is the rage, and it wins. However, let's rewind a little bit more. In 2006, in the last World Cup, Italy won the title. Italy is notorious for defensive football (they invented a style named catenaccio - which is Italian for 'doorbolt') and they were at their brilliant best in the World Cup. In the whole tournament of 7 games, they gave up just two goals, one a penalty kick and the other an own-goal. Defensive football was the reason that Italy won football's greatest prize.

Now to the other myth, the one that involves Messi. Messi's recent brilliance (two hat-tricks in eight days, four goals to knock out Arsenal in the Champions League QF) has made Barcelona seem more unbeatable then ever. It's the exact opposite. First, Messi is not the key to beating Barcelona. Stopping Messi is the key to not being blown out; those are two different things. Barcelona's heart, or for a better metaphor, brain is their two midfield wizards Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta (who, not-so-coincidently are both starting midfielders on the Spanish National Team). These two players are brilliant, effortless passers, who hold onto the ball, trap opposing defenses and allow the other players, like little Leo Messi, to roam free. Messi's finishing brilliance also belies what really might kill Barcelona's chances to repeat, the fact that the rest of the Barcelona attack is nowhere near as good as it was last year. One year ago, Messi was still named the best player in the world, but he had two brilliant strikers to share the burden of scoring goals, Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto'o. Now, Henry is in coach Pep Guardiola's doghouse for his lackluster play, and Samuel Eto'o was essentially traded to Inter Milan (oh, the irony?!) for Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who has been a dissapointment. Last year, around this time the top-3 Barcelona scorers had about 90 goals between them, this year 72 with Messi putting in 39 of those. Messi is the Barca attack, and he needs Xavi and Iniesta more than those two midfield wizards need him.

Here is why I am picking Inter Milan to win. First, it sets up a comical finish to the season with coach Jose Mourinho in a Champions League final with a team that he has publicly says he doesn't like to coach (moreso that he doesn't like Italian Football and wants to return to either Spain or England), but moreso because they are the perfect team to beat Barcelona. Inter deploys two brilliant Brazilian defenders (yes, those exist), in Maicon and Lucio, plus has the wild card of 19 year old Davide Santon, a Italian defender that has drawn comparisons to Italian icon Paolo Maldini, and was great at manning up Christiano Ronaldo back in last years Champions League. Then, Inter has the forces at defensive midfield to bother Xavi, and with Iniesta being out, it only makes it easier to bother the brain of Barca's attack. The blueprint to beating Barcelona was forged last year in the Champions League semifinal when Barcenlona played Chelsea.

Chelsea, Mourinho's former club, undertook a most-Mourinho style plan when playing Barcelona at a time when Barcelona had more offensive ability than they do today. They frustrated the whole attack holding them scoreless over the two legs until the 93rd minute when Barcelona finally scored to secure a spot in the final. Chelsea came oh-so-close to beating a better Barcelona team, and Inter is essentially a slightly augmented version of Chelsea, coached by the one man crazy enough to employ what I jokingly called Chelsea's tactic of "having goalie Petr Cech just blast the ball dowfield at all times and make Barca go 100 yards again and again all night long" and do it for 180 minutes. Mourinho considers himself a genius, and if there is anyone that can gaemplan to beat Barca, it is him. Barca is beatable, Messi is stoppable (he is the best player in the world, but in my opinion he is not as important as Xavi or Iniesta for Barcelona, or is he close to being the best player since Maradone as some announcer said the other day). Inter is the team to do it, and it is all because of the "Myth of Messi".

Pre-Draft Power Rankings

It's almost draft time, which means I can finally end my NFL hiatus. It's been a relief to not have to write about a sport that left me scarred, but I'm over all that. It is time to turn over a new leaf and enter into the 2010 NFL Season. So, two days before draft time, which I will christen with a nice running diary for the first ever prime time draft, let's take stock of where the league's teams are before draft time.

32.) Denver Broncos (8-8)

I predicted them to go 2-14 last year. I'm probably going to do that for the upcoming season as well. I guess I was one year off on the Josh McDaniels' screwing up of the proud franchise. The Broncos had four bright spots last year. Orton, Marshall, Scheffler and Defensive Coordinator Mike Nolan. Well, L'il Josh got rid of three of them, and kept the quarterback who pretty much played to his peak last year. The one positive that can be said about what McDaniels did is he collected picks. Sadly, that is countered by McDaniels' inability to pick players, as seen by his misses on Robert Ayers and Darcel McBath last year. I'm sorry, but this upcoming season is going to be a disaster in Denver.

31.) Tampa Bay Buccaneers (3-13)

Above-his-head Raheem Morris is still there. Over-his-head Mark Dominek is still the G.M. Although there are some positives to note, like the hopeful maturation of Josh Freeman, and the continued development of their three-headed 'monst' (not quite a monster) at running back. The defense is now back to the old days in Tampa, such as the times between 1980-1992. To think that Jon Gruden had the team at 9-3 before Monte Kiffin announced that he would be leaving for the University of Tennessee. Since, 3-16, and only going to get worse.

30.) St. Louis Rams (1-15)

I'll assume they add Sam Bradford, and use him here, because he is really the only draft pick that can truly change his teams outlook in 2010. Sam Bradford will be a solid QB. I do NOT think he will ever be a Manning, Brady, Brees good. He doesn't have the smarts. However, he can easily attain a Philip Rivers type level. The rest of the team is getting better, and can probably pull off 3 or 4 wins, which at least puts the Rams ahead of the two below them. However, their old picks, like Howie Long's kid and Jason Smith need to improve, fast.

29.) Kansas City Chiefs (4-12)

If not for the Rams, the Chiefs would be known as the worst run organization in the NFL the past four years. They seemed to have wiffed mightily on their last two top-5 picks in Glenn Dorsey (who was the surest thing of all sure things) and Tyson Jackson. Their defense is in total tatters, as guys like Brandon Flowers did not develop. They still have Crazy as a head coach, and the most overrated QB in recent history in Matt Cassel. It is scary but the AFC West has two of the four worst teams in the league, and neither of them are the Raiders.

28.) Buffalo Bills (6-10)

When Chan Gailey is the new "savior of the franchise" times are surely dark. Their new savior at QB might be Jimmy Clausen, who emits "next J.P. Losman" if I ever saw one. I don't like Clausen at all, but that's for another time. The Bills have some talent, but it is sparing, and it is weak, as in physically. The Bills draft good athletes, but not necessarily strong, durable ones. Their injury woes never seem to stop. Now it finally looks as they have embraced rebuilding, after years and years being suckered into mediocrity by Dick Jauron. If this all works in them being able to get Jake Locker next year, then job well done Chan, job well done.

27.) Detroit Lions (2-14)

They have some pieces, assuming Stafford stays healthy and his o-line doesn't David Carr him again, to win 4-6 games. Jim Schwartz will get that defense playing better. Stafford-to-Megatron will become a top-5 QB-to-WR combo this year. The recent acquisition of Tony Scheffler gives them a nice 1-2 punch at TE, with him and Pettigrew, which drastically helps the o-line. I like where this team is headed. Their rise will coincide perfectly with the Vikings demise. Come 2013, the Lions will be playoff bound, the Vikes will be picking number three overall.

26.) Jacksonville Jaguars (7-9)

I'll shoot them straight to the bottom if they waste a first round pick on a glorified H-Back like Tebow when they have a QB infinitely better than the "sacred one" in Garrard. They need to worry about getting a defense that can stop anybody, and a good o-line. If guys like Eben Britton and Sims-Walker continue to develop, they might have a frisky little offense. On the other hand, that defense needs serious improvement, and it better hurry as the Portland Watch continues.

25.) Cleveland Browns (5-11)

Ah, the most intriguing bad team in the NFL. They ended the year with four straight wins under what was thought to be a lame-duck in Eric Mangini (size-wise, more like a lame ostrich, or emu). However, Holmgren kept him, and now we have the great meeting of the coaching trees. Nearly every coach in the NFL is either in the Bill Walsh or the Bill Parcells coaching tree. They are distinctly different, but equally effective overall. Now, we finally get a meeting of the two. Holmgren is calling the shots, and that means that the QB position will at least be average. If Holmgren lets Mangini do his thing on defense, with new players Sheldon Brown, Chris Clemons and the cavalcade of picks they have, they can be a frisky team in 2010. They are well set up for the future, which is more than what can usually be said about the Browns.

24.) Seattle Seahawks (5-11)

I am holding out hope that they stay competitive in an average division. They don't have huge holes except for the o-line. If they had an average o-line they would be up in the late teens. They have receivers, they have a tight end, they have a QB (Hasselbeck), and they have players on defense like Tatupu and Aaron Curry. The wild card is how they handle Pete Carroll. Pete Carroll is not a huge change from the rah-rah Jim Mora, or even that big of a change from the player's coach in Holmgren, so I don't think it will be too bad.

23.) Oakland Raiders (5-11)

Yes, they are the second best team in the division, and with San Diego a huge wild card, they could just steal it if San Diego has a major non-Rivers injury (if Rivers goes down, it's wide open). They have alot more talent then generally thought. If they have a Gradkowski as a starting QB, they are a possible eight win team, but more likely 6-7. They can, when they want to, play solid pass defense. When they want to, they can run the ball. When they want to, they can pass at an average level. It is all about their will to play. If Cable can get them to play, .500 is in sight.

22.) Philadelphia Eagles (11-5)

Suffice it to say, their offseason was a joke. If you thought Philly fans were angry before, just wait until Kolb's second interception against the Cowboys. They have a solid nucleus in Kolb, McCoy, Celek, Maclin and DeSean, but going from McNabb to Kolb is a step down, at least for now. Also, silently, their defense was very average last year, and they got rid of Sheldon Brown, Chris Clemons, Chris Gocong and Will Witherspoon. Losing Jim Johnson as a defensive coordinator will really hurt now that most of the Johnson guys are gone. The team is building for the future, but that could easily lead to a bleak one in 2010.

21.) Washington Redskins (4-12)

I would be tempted to move them higher, but their o-line is still a mess, and McNabb isn't exactly the spry QB he used to be. He can be very good if he gets protection, but in Washington, that is a major "if." Rookie LTs do often play very well, so there is hope. Their defense is good, but can it stay that way. They also have some Raider in them on defense, in that they, for no good reason, fail to show up on defense some weeks in any shape or form. Mike Shanahan doesn't have a great history of building defenses either. I think they are wild-card contenders, but their real move forward might be in 2011.

20.) Arizona Cardinals (10-6)

Yes, Matt Leinart means this much. If Kurt Warner was still slinging it around in the desert, they are firmly in the top-10. Now, Leinart gets a bad rap. He is not bad by any stretch. However, he has certain limitations that will greatly hurt the trump card that the Cardinals used to have, their explosive offense. Even though they weren't as explosive deep downfield in '09, with Warner back there, the threat of a deep pass existed. Leinart simply does not have the arm to get good passes dowfield. Fitz will help keep the offense solvent in the short game. However, the real concern is the defense. The Cards have done a great job recently of drafting young defenders, but losing Karlos Dansby will hurt a lot in 2010. They still have a nice nucleus, but losing hall of fame QBs for untested youngsters usually doesn't go well in year one (See Packers, Green Bay 2008).

19.) Tennessee Titans (8-8)

They are a middle of the road team, no more, no less. With a normal coach, they are a five win team, but Fisher is good for two to three wins. If Young develops, they could possibly threaten for a wild card, but their defense is still young and the chances are that Chris Johnson will not have a 2,000 yard season again (although would anyone be shocked if he did?). Their secondary was in shambles at times last year, headlined by the mysterious dropoff to "suck" for one Mr. Michael Griffin. They are an interesting team to keep an eye on, though, if only for Chris Johnson.

18.) San Francisco 49ers (8-8)

If you are keeping track, yes, they are the highest ranked team in the NFC West. They, right now, are my pick to win their division assuming no team improves drastically in the draft. In fact, the draft can really help the niners as they have two top-20 picks, and if they get an o-lineman like Rutgers' own Anthony Davis, they can really play for a three or even a two seed. I believe in Alex Smith, but more importantly, I believe in Vernon Davis, Michael Crabtree, and Frank Gore. In fact, with Crabtree running amok underneath, Ted Ginn Jr. becomes a perfect complement. The 49ers have built themselves a nice little offense. The defense was very underrated last year. They are a nice sleeper for a divisional round appearance.

17.) Miami Dolphins (7-9)

Bye, bye Ted Ginn and family, hello Brandon Marshall, and the most surprisingly entertaining team just got more surprising. You have Bill Parcells, and the Parcells clone in Tony Sparano, versus serial weirdo Brandon Marshall, should be interesting. Getting Karlos Dansby was a huge move, as inside line backer was a huge weakness and Dansby is as good as they come. Their offense, if Henne develops as I think he will, could be quite good. The AFC East is a monster at the top, and if the Dolphins were in the AFC West or NFC West, they could be threatening the top-10.

16.) Atlanta Falcons (9-7)

Micheal Turner fell off a lot. Roddy White didn't have close to the same year. Tony Gonzalez was a disappointment. Matt Ryan had a real sophomore slump. Their defense was average, and didn't even get more than three games out of top draft pick Peria Jerry, the consensus number two DT last year behind BJ Raji. What did they finish? No, not 5-11, but 9-7. The Falcons may be boring, as they are not explosive, like to run the ball, have a no name defense and are led by a coach named Mike Smith, but they are also dangerous. In a division that is tough, the Falcons are the true wild card. They could continue their descent into mediocrity, or they could become a superpower. I went in the direction that they stay status quo, and make a major move in either direction in 2011. Just a little nugget, since 2005, the reigning Super Bowl Champ has won a grand total of two one playoff game (the '05 Pats beat Jacksonville), while the teams in the reigning champ (so the other three NFC South teams this year), have won five.

15.) Chicago Bears (7-9)

The offseason champions will now try to not go the way of the team they got the title from, the Redskins. In many ways, the Bears offseason was very Redskinian. They signed the perceived best player on the market (personally, I think he was the best player, but people have debated that) in Julius Peppers. Peppers is an ideal 4-3 DE, and Lovie Smith was at one point able to get great production from lesser DEs (Alex Brown, Adewale Ogunleye). He can really excel in the defense. Chester Taylor is another good pickup, as he has good legs for his age, sitting most of the past two years in Minny. However, what stops them from being higher is their not addressing their aging and below-average o-line and their lack of true receivers. They hope Johnny Knox and Devin Aromashadu get better. I have doubts. I know this, though, Cutler won't be that bad again. He can't be. Not in a Martz offense (see Kitna, John).

14.) New England Patriots (10-6)

Surprised? Don't be. The Pats are a team in total flux. On paper, they are a team with a lot of youth that has flown between outright busts (Jonathan Wilhite, Ron Brace), to good but slightly overrated impact player (Jerod Mayo, Brandon Meriwether). They are also a team with great, but aging talent (Brady, Moss). Brady will probably be better personally, but I doubt statistically. Welker was so, so important to the Pats last year. He totally replaced Moss as the lead receiver. There were multiple games (Saints, Dolphins) where the opposition doubled Welker and singled Moss, something unthinkable in 2007. They will really miss Welker for the first part of the season, and it is doubtful that he will be 100% at all in 2010. Their defense has a bunch of aging players and youth that hasn't panned out. It is time to see the Pats for what they are, a nice team that is capable of winning 12 games, but just as likely to win 8.

13.) San Diego Chargers (13-3)

The second "division winner" essentially, as the highest rated AFC West team, the Chargers are in for a bit of a fall. Certainly, their easy division will make them almost locks for the division title, but they may have to sweat in 2010. They were not nearly as good as their 13-3 record, or ten game win streak suggested. They have major, major holes on defense on all three levels. Cromartie's trade and Merriman's continued sucking definitely doesn't help that. Tomlinson is gone, and although his skills have depreciated, teams still had to account for the possibility of running plays. Sproles is not an every down back. In essence, they are a slightly more fluctuable form of the Pats, with an offense that can drop 40 on bad teams easily, but will have a hard time consistently beating good teams.

12.) New York Giants (9-7)

I still have hope. They were piss awful at the end of 2009, but I think that was an abberation. They are nowhere near that bad, but are also nowhere near as good as the team that started 5-0. In reality, the Giants are still the second best team in the NFC East, but need a lot more from their highly touted offseason class of 2009, such as Rocky Bernard, Chris Canty and Michael Boley. Getting Kenny Philips back should help, as should the addition of Antrelle Rolle, but the Giants need their pass rush to start working to its potential. The offense is fine, as they can score on anybody, at least to the level where they should be in each game, depending on the defense. I think the motivation to get over the crash and burn the 2009 Giants undertook is there to make this a dangerous, dangerous team in a hyped, but overrated division.

11.) Carolina Panthers (8-8)

The sleeper of the season. Sure, the lost Peppers, but that is why they drafted Everrette Brown in 2009. Sure, they have a hole at Wide Receiver, but that has never stopped them in the past. Matt Moore looked very, very good last year, almost like a Jeff Garcia circa 2000 type of QB. Their running game is arguably the best in the league, and if DeAngelo and J-Stewart can stay healthy, they can top 2,500 as a tandem. Their o-line is still solid as a rock. Their LB corp is great, and they have players in the secondary. The only wildcard is Moore, and seeing that it doesn't take a lot at QB to make the Panthers into a playoff team (see: 2008), they should challenge the Saints for the NFC South title, or at least be in the thick of the wild card race.

10.) Pittsburgh Steelers (9-7)

Man, Ben Roethlisberger's stupid actions ruined it. I was all set to put the Steelers at number 3, but Ben had to go out and hang around 20 year olds. I have no idea if he did anything, and personally since there is no evidence but testimony from a highly drunk woman, I don't see how he can be suspended, but he will be, and from what I hear the minimum is four games, and it is likely to be eight. I think if it is four the Steelers can recover, assuming they go 2-2 in those four. If it is eight, write them off. They have the ability to go 12-4, or 6-10. The Steelers are a team in flux in 2010. Their defense should rebound, because it always does. If Aaron Smith and Troy Polamalu stay healthy, which they normally do, they can be as good as the 2008 version, but their offense will kill their chances at a division title.

9.) Minnesota Vikings (12-4)

This is assuming Brett Favre comes back, although the jarring silence from Hattiesburgh has me nervous about that proposition. Anyway, if he comes back, I doubt he can be as good as the 2009 Favre, but he can be 80% as good. Peterson will probably rebound, and another year of Harvin and Rice should help the air game even more. However, their defense is what keeps them high. Their defense is still very good, and can dominate games singlehandidly. They are in a really competitive division at the top, and I think they are not the favorites, but I will be shocked if they have Favre and are not in the wild card mix come December.

8.) Cincinnati Bengals (10-6)

Their only move of note was trading for Antonio Bryant, which could help fill a need, but their passing game is not why I have them this high. Their defense, which improved to a top-5 unit in 2009 should get better. They saw what the AFC North was all about, and got on board quickly. They return Joseph, Hall, Jackson, Rivers, Maualuga, and Ndukwe but what makes them possibly special is the return of Antwan Odom who was the sack leader when he got hurt. Guys like Maualuga and Rivers should only improve their LB corp, and Marvin Lewis has done a great job in coaching up guys like Robert Geathers, Jonathan Fanene, Dumata Peko and Frostee Rucker. He has mashed them into a very servicable D-Line. Look for Michael Johnson, a high-risk, high-reward prospect taken last year who came on strong late, to take a step further and solidify the d-line even more. Also, let's not forget, they did win that division last year.

7.) Houston Texans (9-7)

Ah, the perennial "team that will make the leap." They were everyone's darling in 2008 and 2009, but people failed to notice they played in a deadly division, and were still getting better. In 2008 they were a legitimate 8-8 team, unlike in 2007 when they lucked into it. And they did get better in 2009. They were a 10-6 or 11-5 team that just hadn't learned how to win yet. They had the worst kicker in the league who singe-handidly cost the Texans two games. They twice fumbled on the goal-line one yard away from tying their game and sending it into overtime. They have to learn how to win. The two teams I compare the 2010 Texans to are the 1995 Packers and 1999 Titans. The three years preceding those, the Packers were 9-7, 9-7, 9-7 and the Titans were 8-8, 8-8, 8-8. They were the team that continually burned everyone as they failed to live up to being the sleeper. The Pack, from 1995 on, they went on a 11-5, 13-3, 13-3, 11-5 run. The Titans? They went on a 13-3, 13-3, 7-9, 11-5, 12-4 run. The Texans have the possibility to win 11-13 games. As a Colts fan, I am very scared.

6.) Dallas Cowboys (11-5)

I hate to do it, but they deserve such high billing. They have stayed quiet throughout FA, keeping intact a team with high chemistry and talent. The 'Boys have one of the league's best running games, and a QB that can torch bad to average defenses. Romo still struggles against premier defenses, but their running game can run on anyone. However, it is their defense that puts them in the top-6. Wade Philips churned out the NFC's best defense last year, headlined by the major improvements by Mike Jenkins and Marcus Spears. The Cowboys defense is very, very good and will keep them in every game. The 'Boys are the prohibitive favorites in the NFC East again.

5.) New York Jets (9-7)

Yes, they have suckered me in. Although I understand entirely why Pittsburgh made the Holmes deal, and don't blame them, I am smart enough to admit that the Jets got Santonio in a steal. He will miss the first four games, but even 12 games of Holmes is better than 16 with Cotchery as the number two. Edwards-Holmes-Cotchery is one of the best WR trio's in the league, and Keller finally was ressurected in the playoffs. The big question mark is Sanchez. He seemed to turn the corner in the playoffs, but at times he was horrific in the regular season. He can improve like Flacco did, or he can stay the same like Matt Ryan. The Jets have to hope its the former. The Jets defense is essentially the same. I feel like subtracting Kerry Rhodes is as good as getting Antonio Cromartie, as Cromartie has really regressed since his 2007 heyday. The Jets are the favorite in the AFC East, and yes I struggled to finish typing those words.

4.) Green Bay Packers (11-5)

It took three years, but the Packers are finally as good as they were last season with Favre. Now, I don't think Rodgers will be as good as he was in 2009, because his game was really lucky, in that he had an atypically low interception rate, and so on, but their defense is still as good as anybody's. That defense has players all over it, and with the development of BJ Raji, Clay Matthews (who was already damn good), AJ Hawk, Tramon Williams, etc, they can get even better. Jermichael Finley just complements a great WR trio of Jennings-Driver-Jones that can get yards in bunches. The Packers are very, very good. 13-win good.

3.) Baltimore Ravens (9-7)

The team with the most important offseason, in that they finally got a wide receiver. Their two playoff games showed just how lacking the Ravens were at the WR position, and Anquan Boldin is the perfect receiver for them. All young quarterbacks need a WR that can catch the easy underneath stuff and get YAC like Boldin. He will be surely missed in 'Zona, but surely loved in Baltimore. That defense will always be about as good as it has always been, and with the improvement of guys like Paul Kruger, Antwan Barnes, Tavares Gooden and Dannell Ellerbe can provide a boost to a linebacker corp that has gotten a little innefective at rushing the passer in recent years for people not named Terrell Suggs. Ed Reed back healthy will make them only that much better in the back end, and if Fabian Washington, Foxworth and Ladarius Webb can make their secondary great again. The Ravens are a team that will totally take advantage of the Steelers problems and rise to the top of the AFC.

2.) Indianapolis Colts (14-2)

They did what they needed to, in keeping Gary Brackett and Melvin Bullitt, but it is the return of key guys that can easily make them better than the team that won every game they tried to until Super Bowl XLIV. Anthony Gonzalez's return just adds to an awesome receiving corp, giving the Colts the deepest set of pass-catchers to couple with the league's best quarterback. That's a combination that cannot be overstated. Their defense will get the services of Bob Sanders back, for at least one game, and any Sanders is a plus. Their young rookies that were needed to play a huge role in 2010 like Jerraud Powers and Jacob Lacey will get better. Clint Session and Phillip Wheeler continue to develop. Other than the o-line, and a third Defensive End, which the Colts have made noises that they are targeting in the draft, the Colts have no holes and good depth. Plus, they have Manning, and an angry Manning after that tough Super Bowl defeat.

1.) New Orleans Saints (13-3)

Do I truly think they are the best team? That is debatable. However, they have to get the respect that the defending champs merit. They are the top team in the NFL because they wear the crown as the 2010 season kicks off in earnest on Thursday. They still have Drew Brees and an incredible stable of offensive weapons and a young, good offensive line. Their defense probably won't be as good in 2010, because they weren't that good in 2009, but were able to create a lot of turnovers, something that does not really hold year to year. Plus, Darren Sharper may not come back, and his importance on that defense cannot be understated. However, none of that matters. As much as I hate to admit it, they did win Super Bowl XLIV, and are the top team heading into the draft for that reason.

Story of the Year: 2004

I was going to write about the Red Sox amazing comeback and curse breaking 2004 playoffs. But I felt that I cannot do it justice. That was the single most amazing story of the 2000s in sports, not only the best of a good 2004. It was a story of heart and soul on the field, but so much more off it. Baseball is still the sport that connects to its fans at a level higher than any other. Tom Verducci, the brilliant Sports Illustrated baseball writer (one so good that often other sportswriters call him a 'Twain who happens to like baseball') wrote a brilliant piece about the transcendance of the Red Sox winning in 2004 for his "Sportsmen of the Year" article. I have reprinted it here because it is far, far better than whatever I could have written, and it is far more beautiful and meaningful. Enjoy the work of Verducci, and the work of the Red Sox.

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Meaningful Sox

The cancer would have killed most men long ago, but not George Sumner. The Waltham, Mass., native had served three years aboard the USS Arkansas in World War II, raised six kids with a hell of a lot more love than the money that came from fixing oil burners, and watched from his favorite leather chair in front of the television - except for the handful of times he had the money to buy bleacher seats at Fenway - his Boston Red Sox, who had found a way not to win the World Series in every one of the 79 years of his life. George Sumner knew something about persistence.

The doctors and his family thought they had lost George last Christmas Day, more than two years after the diagnosis. Somehow George pulled through. And soon, though still sick and racked by the chemo, the radiation and the trips in and out of hospitals for weeks at a time, George was saying, "You know what? With Pedro and Schilling we've got a pretty good staff this year. Please let this be the year."

On the night of Oct 13, 2004, George Sumner knew he was running out of persistence. The TV in his room at Newton-Wellesley Hospital was showing Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox losing to the Yankees in Game 2 of the ALCS - this after Boston had lost Game 1 behind Schilling. During the commercial breaks Sumner talked with his daughter Leah about what to do with his personal possessions. Only a few days earlier his wife had told him, "If the pain is too much, it's O.K. if you want to go."

But Leah knew how much George loved the Red Sox, saw how closely he still watched their games and understood that her father, ever quick with a smile of a joke, was up to something. "Dad, you're waiting around to see if they go to the World Series, aren't you?" she said. "You really want to see them win it, right?"

A sparkle flickered in the sick man's eyes and a smile creased his lips. "Don't tell your mother," he whispered.

At that moment, 30 miles away in Weymouth, Mass., Jamie Andrews stewed about the Red Sox' losing again, but found some relief in knowing that he might be spared the conflict he had feared for almost nine months. His wife, Alice, was due to give birth on Oct. 27. Game 4 of the World Series was scheduled for that night. Jamie was the kind of tortured fan who could not watch when the Red Sox were protecting a lead late in the game, because of a chronic, aching certainty that his team would blow it again.

Alice was not happy that Jamie worried at all about the possible conflict between the birth and the Sox. She threatened to bar him from the delivery room that night if the Sox were playing. "Pathetic" she called his obsession with his team. "It's not my fault," Jamie would plead, and then fall on the DNA defense, "It was passed down through generations, from my grandfather to my mother to me."

Oh, well, Jamie though as he watched the Red Sox lose Game 2, at least now I won't have to worry about my team in the World Series when my baby is born.

The most powerful words in the English language are monosyllabic: love, hate, born, die, live, sex, kill, cry, want, need, give, take, Sawx.

The Red Sox are, of course, a civic religion in New England. As grounds crew workers tended to the Fenway Park field last summer after a night game, one of the found a white plastic bottle of holy water in the outfield grass. There was a handwritten message on the side: GO SOX. The team's 2003 highlight film, punctuated by the crescendo of the walk-off home run by the Yankees in Game 7, was chirstined, "Still, We Believe."

Rooting for the Red Sox is, as evident in the daily obituary pages, a life's definitive calling. Every day all over New England, and sometimes beyond, death notices include age, occupation, parish and allegiance to the Sox. Charles Brezeau, born in North Adams, Mass., and an Army vet who was awarded a Purple Heart in World War II, lived his entire 85 year life without seeing the Red Sox win a World Sereies, though barely so. When he passed on, just two days before the Sox won the 2004 World Series, the eulogy noted him as a man who "loved the Red Sox and cheap beer."

What the Red Sox mean to their faithful - and larger still, what sport at its best means to American culture - never more was evident than at precisely 11:40 EDT on the night of Oct. 27. At that moment in St. Louis, Red Sox closer Keith Foulke, upon fielding a ground ball, threw to first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz for the final out of the World Series - and the first Red Sox world championship since 1918. And then all hell didn't break loose. It pretty much froze over.

All over New England, church bells clanged. Grown men wept. Convicts cheered. Children rushed into the streets. Horns honked. Champagne corks popped. Strangers hugged.

Virginia Muise, 111, and Fred Hale, 113, smiled. Both Virginia, who kept a Red Sox cap beside her nightstand in New Hampshire, and Fred, who lived in Maine, were Red Sox fans who, curse be damned, were born before Babe Ruth himself. Virginia was the oldest person in New England. Fred was the oldest man in the world. Within three weeks after they had watched the Sox with the Series, both of them passed away.


"It is the story of hope and faith rewarded," says Red Sox Executive Vice President Charles Stienberg. "You really believe that this is the story they're going to teach seven-year-olds 50 years from now. When they say, 'Naw, I can't do this,' tou can say, 'Ah, yes you can. The obstacle was much great for these 25 men, and they overcame. So can you.' "

What makes the Red Sox undeniably, inforgettably Sportsmen, however, is that their achievement transcended the ballpark like that of no other professional sports team. The 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers were the coda to a sweet, special time and place in Americana. The 1968 Detroit Tigers gave needed joy to a city teeming with anger and strife. The 2001 Yankees provided a gathering place, even as a diversion, for a grieving, wounded city. The 2004 Red Sox made an even deeper impact because this championship was a lifetime in the making.

The Boston team connected generations, for the first time, with joy instead of disappointment as the emotional mortar. This team changed the way a people, raised to expect the worst, would think of themselves and the future. And the impact, like all things in that great, wide community called Red Sox Nation, resounded from cradle to grave.

On the morning after the Red Sox won the World Series, Sgt. Paul Barnicle, a detective with the Boston Police and the brother of Boston Herald columnist Mike Barnicle, left his shift at six, purchased a single red rose at the city's flower market, drove 42 miles to a cemetary and placed the rose on the headstone of his mother and father, among the many who had not lived long enough to see it. At the bottom of the gravestone, below mention of their dates and kids, was a single line: "Darn those Red Sox."

Like snowflakes in a blizzard came the e-mails. More than 10,000 of them flew into the Red Sox' server in the first 10 days after Boston won the World Series. No two exactly alike. They came from New England, but they also came from Japan, Italy, Pakistan and at least 11 other countries. The New England town hall of the 21st Century was electronic.

There were thank-you letters. There were love letters. There were some worded as if the were written to family members, and indeed the Red Sox were, in their own unkempt, scruffy, irreverent way, a likable and familial bunch. How could the faithful not love a band of characters self-deprecatingly self-dubbed the "idiots"?

DH David Ortiz, who slammed three walk-off postseason hits, was the Big Papi of the lineup and the clubhouse, with his outsized grin as much a signature of this team as his bat. Leftfielder Manny Ramirez hit like a machine but played the game with a sandlot smile plastered on his mug, even when taking pratfalls in the outfield. Long-locked centerfielder Johnny Damon made women swoon and men cheer, and with his Nazarene look, prompted a T-Shirt and bumper sticker bonanza (WWJDD: What Would Johnny Damon Do?)

First baseman Kevin Millar, with his Honest Abe bears and goofball personality, had the discipline to draw the walk off Yankees closer Rivera that began Boston's comeback in the ninth inning of ALCS Game 4. Derek Lowe, another shaggy eccentric, became the first pitcher to win the clinching game of three postseason series in one October. Foulke, third baseman Bill Mueller, catcher Jason Varitek and rightfielder Trot Nixon, known for his pine-tar encrusted helmet, provided gritty ballast.

Besides the e-mails there were boxes upon boxes of letters, photos, postcards, school projects and drawings that continue to cover what little floor space is left in the Red Sox' offices. Mostly the missives convey profound gratitude.

"Thank you," wrote Maryan Farzeneh, a Boston University graduate student from Iran, "for being another reason for me and my boyfriend to connect and love each other. He is a Red SOx fan and moved to Ohio to study two years ago. There were countless nights that I kept the phone next to the radio so that we could listen to the game together."

Maryan had never seen a baseball game before 1998. She knew how obsessed people back home were about soccer teams. "Although I should admit," she wrote, "that is nothing like the relationship between the Red Sox and New England."

Nightfall, and the little girl lies on her back in the rear seat of a sedan as it chugs homeward to Hartford. She watches the stars twinkle in between the wooden telephone poles and rhythmically interrupt her view of the Summer sky. And there is a familiar company of a gravelly voice on the car radio providing play-by-play of Red Sox baseball. The great Ted Williams, her mother's favorite, is batting.

Roberta Rogers closes her eyes, and she is that little girl again, and the world is just as perfect and as full of wonder and possibilities as it was on those warm summer nights growing up in postwar New England.

Once every summer her parents took her and her brother, Nathaniel, to Boston to stay at the Kenmore Hotel and watch the Red Sox at Fenway. Nathaniel liked to operate the safety gates of the hotel elevator, often letting on and off the visiting ballplayers who stayed at the Kenmore.

"We didn't have much money," Roberta says. "We didn't take vacations, didn't go to the beach. That was it. We went to the Kenmore, and watched the Red Sox at Fenway. I still have the images of the crowds, the stadium, the feel of the cement under my feet, passing hot dogs down the row, the big green monster, the Citgo sign coming into view as we drove into Boston, telling us we were almost there."

Roberta lives in Virginia. Her mother is now living in a retirement community at 95 years of age, and still judges people by their rooting interests in baseball. "Acceptable in they root for the Sox, suspect if they don't, and if they are a Damnyankee (always one word) fan, hardly worth mentioning," she often quips.

On Oct. 27, two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Boston winning 3-0, Roberta paced in her living room, her eyes turned away from the TV. "Oh, Bill," she said to her husband, "they can still be the Red Sox! They still can lose this game!" It was not without good reason that her mother had called them the Red Flops all these years. "And then I heard the roar," Roberta says.

This time they really did it. The Red Sox really won. She called her children and then everyone she could think of. It was too late to ring her mother, she figured. So Roberta went to see her mother first thing next morning. "Mom, guess what? I've got the best news!" Roberta siad. 'They won! The Red Sox won!"

Kathryn's face lit up with a big smile, and she lifted both fists in triumph. And then the mother and daughter laughed and laughed, just like little girls.

"Is that what I think it is?" The conductor on the 11:15 AM Acela train out of Boston, Larry Soloman, had recognized Charles Steinberg and noted the size of the case he was carrying.

"Yes," the Red Sox VP replied. "Would you like to see it?" Steinberg opened the case and revealed the gleaming gold Commissioner's Trophy, the Red Sox' world championship trophy. Soloman, who had survived leukemia and rooting for the Sox, fought back tears.

"I've only cried twice my entire life," Soloman says. "Once, when the Vietnam War ended, and then when the Sox won the world series."

Everywhere the trophy goes someone weeps at the sight of it. Everyone wants to touch it, like Thomas probing the wounds of the risen Jesus, just to make sure it is true.

Why? Why should the bond between a people and their baseball team be so intense? Fenway Park is a part of it, offering a physical continuum to the bond, not only because Papi can stand in the same batter's box as Teddy Ballgame, but also because a son might sit in the same wooden-slat seat as his father.

"We do have our tragic history," says the poet Donal Hall, a Vermonter who lives in the house where his great-grandfather once lived. The Sox have specialized not, like the Chicago Cubs, in woebegone, hopeless baseball, but in an agonizing, painful kind. Indeed, hope was at the very breakable heart of cruelty. From the 1967 Impossible Dream team until last season, the Red Sox had fielded 31 winning teams in 37 years, nine of which reached the postseason dying a fiery, painful death.

"It's probably the desperatly cruel winters we endure in New England," Mike Barnicle offers as an explanation. "When the Red Sox appear, that's the season when the sun is back and warmth returns and we associate them with that. People stay here all their lives, and get imbued into the spirit of the Red Sox."

If you are born north of Hartford, there is no other big league baseball team for which to root, just as it has been since the Braves left Boston for Milwaukee in 1953. It is a birthright to which you quickly learn the oral history. The Babe, Denny Galehouse, Johnny Pesky, Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner and Aaron Boone are beads on a string, an anti-rosary committed to memory by every son and daughter of New England.

At 11:40 on Oct. 27, David Nathan, a third generation Sox fan, held a bottle of champagne in one hand and a telephone in the other, his father on the other end of the line. David screamed so loud that he woke up his four-year old son Jack, the fourth generation who, along with his brother's daughter, will know a whole new world of Sox fandom. the string of beads have forever been broken.

David's wife recorded the moment with a video camera. Two weeks later David would sit and write it all down in a long email, expressing his thanks to Red Sox owner John Henry.

It was one minute after midnight on Oct. 20, and Jared Dolphin, 30, had just assumed his guard post on the overnight shift at the Corrigan-Radgowski correctional facility in Montville, Conn. The inamte in the cell nearest him was 10 years into a 180-year sentence for killing his girlfriends entire family, including the dog.

Some of the inmates wore makeshift Red Sox "caps" - a commissary bandana or handkerchief festooned with a hand-drawn iconic "B". Technically they were considered contraband, but the rules were bent when it comes to rooting for the Red Sox. A few inmates watched ALCS Game 7 on a 12 inch portable television. Most leaned their faces against the little window of their cell door to catch the game on the cell block TV. Others saw only the reflection of the TV on the window of another cell door.

A Sox fan himself, Dolphin watched as Alan Embree retired the Yankees' Ruben Sierra on a ground ball to end the greatest comeback in sports history. Dolphin started to cry. "Suddenly the block erupted," Dolphin wrote in an e-mail. "I bristled immediately and instinctively my hand reached for my flashlight. It was pandemonium - whistling, shouting, pounding on sinks, doors, bunks, anything cons could find. This was against every housing rule in the book, so I jumped up ready to lay down the law."

"But as I stood there, looking around the block, I felt something else. I felt hope. Here I was, less than 10 feet away from guys who will never see the outside of prison ever again in their lives. But as I watched them scream, holler and pound on the doors I realized them and I had something in common. That night we all could have hope back into our lives. As Red Sox fans, we had watched the impossible happen, and if that dream could come true, why couldn't others."

On the day after Christmas 2003, Gregory Miller, 38, of Foxboro, Mass., an enthusiastic Sox fan, dropped dead of an aneurysm. He left behind a wife, Sharon, six-year-old twin boys and an 18-month old daughter. Sharon fell into unspeakable sadness and loneliness.

And then came October 2004 and the Red Sox.

Sharon, not much more than a casual fan before then, grew enthralled with the team's playoff run. She called her mother, Carolyn Bailey, in Walpole, Mass., as many as 15 times during a game to complain, exult, worry, commiserate and celebrate. She even made jokes for the first time in months. It was the first time her mother heard Sharon act like the joyful girl she had been before her husband's terrible illness.

The day after the Red Sox won the World Series, Carolyn wrote a letter to the team. In it she said of her daughter, "The Red Sox became her medicine on the road back from this tragedy. On behalf of my entire family - thank you from the bottom of our hears."

Leah Storey of Tilton, New Hampshire, composed her own letter of thanks to the Red Sox. Her father had died exactly one year before the Red Sox won the World Series. Then her 26-year-old brother, Ethan, died of an accidental drug overdose only hours after enthusiastically watching the Red Sox win Game 5 in the ALCS. When the Red Sox won the World Series, Ethan's friends and family rushed outside the Storey house, yelled for joy, popped open a bottle of Dom Perignon, and gazed up in wonder at a lunar eclipse.

"To su, with the memory of Ethan's happy night fresh in our minds, those games took on new meaning," Leah wrote of Boston's run to the Championship, "Almost as if they were being played in his honor. Thank you for not letting him down. I can't express enough the comfort we derived from watching you play night after night. It didn't erase the pain, but it helped."

On Oct. 25, the Sox were two victories away from winning the World Series when doctors sent George Sumner home to his house to die. There was nothing they could do. Every day was a struggle. Leah prayed hard every day for a sweep.

On the morning of Game 4, which stood to be the highlight of Jamie Andrew's life as a "pathetic", obsessed Red Sox fan, his wife, Alice, went into labor. Here it was: the conflict he had feared all summer. At 2:30 PM he took her into South Shore Hospital, where they were greeted by nurses wearing Red Sox jerseys over their scrubs.

At 8:25 PM, Alice was in the delivery room. There was a TV in the room. The game in St. Louis was about to begin.

"Turn on the game." It was Alice who wanted the game on. Johnny Damon stepped into the batter's box. "Johnny Damon!" Alice shouted. "He'll hit a home run." And Damon, long brown locks flowing, did just that.

The Red Sox led, 3-0, in the bottom of the fifth, when the Cardinals put a runner on third base with one out. Jamie could not stand the anxiety. His head hurt, and he was having diffuculty breathing. He broke out in hives. It was too much for him to take. He asked Alice to turn off the television. Alice demanded that they leave it on for the end of the inning. Lowe worked out of the jam, and off the TV went.

At home in Waltham, George Sumner slipped in and out of sleep. His eyes were alert when the game was on, but when an inning ended he would say in a whisper, "Wake me up when the game comes back." Each time no one in the room was certain if he would open his eyes ever again.

The Red Sox held their 3-0 lead, but the TV remained off in the delivery room of South Shore Hospital. At 11:27 PM Alice gave birth to a beautiful boy. Jamie noticed that the baby had unusually long hair in the back of his head.

"Can I check the TV for the final score?" he asked Alice.

"Sure," she said. It was 11:40 PM, and the Red Sox were jumping upon one another in the middle of the diamond. They were world champions.

George Sumner had waited his whole life to see this, including the last three where he was fighting an inevitable losing battle with cancer. He drew upon whatever strenght was left in his body and in the loudest whisper that was possible, he said, "Yippee!" And then he closed his eyes and went to sleep, for the final time.

George Sumner, avid Red Sox fan, passed away at 2:30 on Oct. 29. He was laid to rest with full military honors on Nov. 2, the same day Alice and Jamie Andrews took home a healthy baby boy. They named him Damon.

Ballplayers are not social scientists or curtural historians. Quite to the contrary, they create an insular fortress in which all considerations beyond the game itself are feared to carry the poison of what are known generically as "distractions."

The Red Sox are not from Boston; they come from all corners of the U.S. and Latin America, and flew to their real homes after a huge, cathartic parade on Oct. 30, during which normal life in New England was basically TiVoed for three hours.

There is an awful imbalance to our relationships with athletes, as if we are looking through a one-way mirror. We know them, love them, dress like them and somehow believe our actions, however trivial, alter the outcome of theirs, all while they know only that we are there but cannot really see us.

Howard Frank Mosher of Vermont was in Norther Maine in the summer of '03 for a book signing, during which he discussed his upcoming novel, Waiting for Teddy Williams, a fanciful tale in which the Red Sox (can you imagine?) win the Series; he heard a small group of people singing in the back of the bookstore. It sounded like, Johnny Angel, how I love him....

As Mosher drew closer, he realized they were singing, Johnny Damon, how I love him.... What was going on? he wondered.

"We're performing an incantation," one of these men said. "Damon has been in a slump. We this it's working. He was 4 for 5 last night."

Crazy. How could Damon know this? How could any Boston player know that the Reverend William Bourke, an avid Sox Fan who died in his native Rhode Island before Game 2 of the World Series, was buried the day after Boston won it all, with a commemorative Sox baseball and that morning's paper tucked into his casket?

How could Curt Schilling know that Laura Deforge, 84, of Winooksi, Vermont, who watched every Red Sox game on TV - many of them twice - turned the ALCS around when she found a lucky, 30-year-old Red Sox hat in her closet after Game 3? Laura wore in everywhere for the next 11 days, including to bingo.

"I've only been here a year," Schilling says, "and its humbling to be a part of the relationship between the Red Sox Nation and this team. I can't understand it all. I can't. All I can do is thank God the He blessed me with the skills that can have an impact on people's lives in some positive way."

The lives of these players are forever changed as professionals. Backup catcher Doug Mirabelli, for instance, will be a celebrity 30 years from now if he shows up anywhere from Woonsocket to Winooski. The '04 Red Sox have a sheen that will never fade or be surpassed.

The real resonance to this championship, however, is that it changed so many of the people on the other side of the one-way glass, poets and convicts, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the dying and the newborn.

The dawn that broke over New England on Oct. 28, the first in the life of little Damon Andrews, was unlike any other seen in three generations. Here began the birth of a new Red Sox Nations, sons no longer bearing the scars and dread of their fathers and grandfathers. It felt as clean and fresh as New Year's Day.

Damon's first dawn was also the last in the fully lived life of George Sumner.

"I walked into work that day," Leah Sumner says, "and i head tears in my eyes. People were saying, 'Did he see it? Did he see it? Please tell me your dad saw it.' You don't understand how much comfort it gave my brothers and sisters. It would have been that much sadder if he didn't get to see it."

"It was the best year, and it was the worst year. It was an unbelievable year, and I will tell my children and make sure they tell theirs of the Fall of '04."

The story they will tell is not just the story of George Sumner. It is not just the story of the 2004 Boston Red Sox. It is the story of the bond between a nation of fans and its beloved team.

"It's bigger than money. It's bigger than fame. It's who we are," Leah said. "My father used to say, 'there are three things you must know about me. I love my family. I love blues music. And I love the Red Sox.' "

The #3 Athlete of the 2000s: Peyton Manning

What is there to say that hasn't already been said. What is there to discuss that hasn't already been discussed. Transcendence needs no description. It is fully evident in front of our eyes. Pictures are worth 1000 words, and pictures of Manning, stills or videos, all say the same thing: we are all witness to greatness in its purest form, witnesses to perfection. The position of quarterback will never be played as perfectly as Peyton Manning has played it the last ten years, and as the headline star of the headline sport in the country, Manning earns his spot at number three of the decade for being football's number one.

There are very few totally transcendent athletes in the past ten years. There are no athlete's that can literally bring people to tears with their virtuosity, their sheer brilliance. These words are usually reserved for artists, for painters like Michelangelo, sculptors like Botticelli, musicians like Mozart, or even more recently guitarists like Eddie Van Halen. They are people that elicit the same reaction from observers lucky enough to witness their greatness. It is a simple reaction of, "How in God's name did he do that?". Manning is one of the greatest quarterbacks, obviously, but there were better quarterbacks in the playoffs (Montana, not Brady), and better, more rugged personifications of the leader of men that quarterbacks are so often portrayed as (Grandpa Favre, for one). However, there has never been a better passer, and in a football world where the pass has beaten the run with a club and put it down forever, there is no greater compliment. Watching Manning throw the ball into tiny windows, hitting receivers thought to be covered square in their chest, has been the football equivalent of watching Eddie Van Halen play eruption, or staring agape at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It is beautiful, it is perfect. It is Peyton.

The numbers have to be mentioned at some point. They just have to because they are insane. Of course, excuses from Manning detractors will be made that he plays in a passing league (true, but so does everyone else, and no one else comes close), and that he has weapons (true from the years 2004-2006, before and after he has at most three good players around him). Even considering every point, his numbers for the 2000s are baffling: 160 games played (1st all time for any decade ever), 115 wins (1st), 65.9 Completion Percentage (2nd to Young, 90s), 42,254 yards (by far the most all time), 314 tds (by far the most all time), and a QB rating of 98.2 (highest for any decade). By any measure, he has put up the greatest statistical decade for any QB ever, and some of those numbers, like yards and TDs, he's not even close. In the decade, he threw for 4,000 yards nine times (three more times than anyone else has in a CAREER), and had eight straight seasons (2002-2009) of a completion percentage of at least 65.0, posting one higher than 66.6 (two completions in three attempts, an extremely high rate) six times. He has gotten a QB rating of over 98.0 in six of the last seven seasons, and the only other one was in 2008 when he played half the year on a left knee missing a bursa sac and inflamed, in which he had a rating of 95.0 and was the league MVP. Speaking of MVPs, he won the award four times in the decade, more than any other player in a career, and was runner up one other time. He's also four times had a perfect passer rating of 158.3 (something about as rare as a perfect game in baseball) four times in the decade, including in the playoffs against Denver. He has been the best QB statistically ever, and really his numbers this decade were mindboggling.

Except to dwell purely on the numbers is leaving the best part of the transformation Manning has undertaken in the decade out. He's no longer just a stat-monster (of course, the stats are still flying in bunches), but he has become the team. The Colts cannot run the ball. At all. They are below average at run defense, and fluctuate between average and good at pass defense. Those are combinations usually reserved for teams that go 8-8. Manning has led the Colts to 12 wins an astonishing seven years in a row, which is, again, more 12 win seasons put up by a QB in an entire career. For comparison, Brady has only had four such seasons in his career. Warner has had two. Favre comes closest with six. Manning is a stat-monster, sure, but he's also a winner above all, alot like fellow top-5 athlete Martin Brodeur. He has transformed himself into the ultimate winner, a guy that will just not let his team that should hover around .500 do anything worse that 12-4 and have a legitimate shot at a Super Bowl.

The year was 2008. Manning started the season without getting a single snap in training camp and had two knee surgeries to remove an infected bursa sac. The Colts themselves were playing without three of their alleged starting o-lineman, including Jeff Saturday, their star center, and had in their places, a two rookies and a second year sixth round pick. They were playing against the Minnesota Vikings, a team with arguably the best defensive line. Manning was a sitting duck, getting hammered time and time again as his o-line was too battered to keep the Viking's Williams Wall from applying major pressure, and he was too injured to escape their grasp. The Colts were doing nothing on offense because of the patchwork line, down 15-0 in Minnesota in the 3rd Quarter. Manning knew the team could not go down 0-2 on the season, he knew that it was his time to pull a Montana and literally bring the team back from the dead. He did just that, throwing for 200 second half yards, and somehow leading the Colts to a 18-15 win. These types of wins have become commonplace ever since the league decided to all stop blitzing him after his 49 td 121.1 passer rating blitzkrieg in 2004. The league adapted to Manning's brilliance starting in 2005, and Manning brilliance outworked them again. He started to stop putting up 4 tds a game, he started just killing teams instead by outgunning them mentally. Every coach was outworked by a player at the peak of his powers. This Minnesota game would be repeated so many times.



There was the Jets game in 2006 when the Jets had five different leads, but lost when Manning put up two TDs in the last 5 minutes. There was the Broncos game in 2006, when Manning, against a defense that had allowed just two TDs in the first 5 games, put up 28 in the second half to beat the Broncos in Mile High 34-31. There was the 2007 game against Tennessee, when he put up 321 yards against what would become the league's best pass defense to win 22-20 in Nashville. There was the game when he beat the Jaguars, winner of four straight, in 2007 by throwing to Wayne, Clark and Aaron Moorehead and Ben Utecht. There was the 2008 game in Heinz against the best defense to grace a football field since the legendary 2002 Bucs, where Manning put up 240 yards and three tds to beat the eventual champs in their building 24-20. There was the game two weeks later when he led a game winning field goal drive in 30 seconds to beat the Chargers in San Diego (yes, he can beat the Chargers). There was the game in 2008 where he was 29-34 to lead a comeback in Jacksonville in 2008, when the Colts were down 14-, to win 31-24 to clinch a playoff spot and a 3rd MVP. There was the game in 2009 where he held the ball for 14 minutes total and led the Colts to 27 points with 302 yards on just 14 completions to beat Miami in Miami. There was the game against New England where he scalped the Pats to the tune of twenty-one fourth quarter points to erase a 31-14 deficit. There was the game two weeks later when he led another 17 point comeback in Houston. Then he essentially mirrored his 2008 performance with a 23-30, 308 yard 4 td fourth quarter comeback against Jacksonville to lock up another MVP and home-field advantage.

Of course, even before his talent level around him finally caught up, he was busy doing the same thing to less fanfare. There was the 2000 game against the Patriots where he put up a perfect passer rating, bringing the Colts back from down 16-7 in the third quarter against Belichick, winning 30-23. There was the game in 2001 where he outdueled Trent Green in his KC prime in Arrowhead, putting up 28 second half points to win 35-28. There was the game in 2002 where he put up 150 second half yards in a blizzard in Mile High to lead a come-from-behind win 23-20. Then, of course, there was the amazing comeback from down 35-14 with five minutes to go against the defending Super Bowl champions and best defense in the league Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Tampa. And finally, there was the game in 2003 where he led the Colts back from down 31-10 in the third quarter against the Patriots and came up one yard short of winning 41-38. Of course, there was the flawless, mistake-free promise to win the division later that year in Tennessee against a great Titans team. Then, in 2004, when his defense failed him most and allowed 45 points, he put up 472 yards and 5 tds against Kansas City, or when he had a run of 5-4-5-4-6 tds in five straight games. Peyton has been the master in close games, in tight games, in blowouts, in comebacks and in slugfests. He is the master, period.

There have long been doubts and jeers pointed towards Peyton because of his "playoff failures". These did have some merit to them pre-2003, when he lost all his three playoff games. But since, they are ridiculous, and are purely the last grasp that some deranged Brady-fan clings to when falling of Mt. Manning. Since 2003, when he finally had a team with enough talent that an average QB like Jake Plummer could have led them to 10 wins (while Manning led them to 12+), Manning has gone 9-6 in the playoffs, with only Brady winning more playoff games. Manning has, in the last seven years, won a playoff game four times (03, 04, 06, 09), reached three AFC Championship Games, two Super Bowls and won a title. In each of his last four playoff losses, against the Steelers in '05, Chargers in '07 and '08 and the Saints in Super Bowl XLIV, Manning has put up over 290 yards, with the last three each eclipsing the 310 mark. He threw for 402 yards in a loss, where both of his interceptions first touched Colts receivers and bounced off, and a game in which his team was ludicrously banged up (and even a QB like Philip Rivers would have led to about a 7-9 record) and lost in overtime he threw for 310. Then, he threw for 333, the third most ever for a Super Bowl loser. These playoff losses cannot be blamed on Manning. In 2008, and 2009, the Colts don't even sniff the playoffs or the Super Bowl, respectively, without Manning and with a QB like Rivers or Brady. Manning himself won three extra games for those teams. Manning was those teams.

The playoffs are where legends are made, and truthfully, the Manning legend as an all-time great can be built from the playoffs using just two games, the two games that define Manning more than any other, and his two greatest performances to boot. They were both in the highest of pressure situations, and both included comebacks against top defenses. They were the identical cases of the 2006 and 2009 AFC Championship Games. First, the '09 version. Down 11 points to the Jets with 2 minutes to go against the best defense in the league, as well as the best pass defense since the ludicrously good 2002 Bucs unit, Manning displayed probably his best quality game. He unleashed hell on the league's best defense, torching a team that up to that point allowed a paltry 166 yards passing, Manning threw for 377. Against a team that on average allowed 14 points, Manning put up 30, 24 coming in the games last 32 minutes. Against a team that normally allowed 260 total yards, Manning and the Colts put up 460. It was brilliance, it was beautiful, it was total Manning. Never once did he lose his cool, never once did he force anything, never once did he panic. The opportunity was there. The Colts were playing badly at home in a playoff game. Unlike his rival Brady, who two weeks had a similar situation against Baltimore and decided to throw up one of the worst performances in QB playoff history, Manning maned up and decided to stop messing around and just owned Rex Ryan and the Jets.

For More on the 2009 Title Game, check out the earlier post: "The Beatification of Manning" (http://loungingpass.blogspot.com/2010/01/beatification.html)

However, nothing is more Manning than his epic 2006 AFC Championship Game win against the Patriots. Down 21-3 to his biggest rival, backed up to his own 12 with just 2 minutes remaining in the half, Manning put up 35 points on the best defensive mastermind of his generation, ruthlessly tearing through the Patriots flaccid defense to the tune of 349 yards, with 186 of them coming in half number two, which he entered down 21-6. It was the biggest comeback in Title Game history, and it was against the most resourceful defense in the NFL, playing with the pride of a Dynasty to defend. Manning, against the team that had caused him so much heartbreak and agony, and had trounced him time and time again, laid out the heavy machinery and broke Belichick and killed the Pats dynasty. It was the greatest game of Manning's life, and it was a defining one too. Here was a man discounted and blitzed early in his career and in the game, down 21-3. Manning made his comeback, went on to capture the ring and stake his claim on top of the NFL world.

Manning's legacy is not done, nor is it complete. He will have many more years to win another ring and forever silence his critics. He will eventually pass Favre to claim hold of all the major passing categories for a career. He will most likely eventually take his place on top of the Mt. Olympus of QBs, joining or knocking off Joe Montana. However, that is for the future. This is about the past 10 years, and those alone have been something to behold; a decade of dominance and influence. It is Manning's brilliance that made the no-huddle popular. It is Manning's brilliance that has influenced a whole pack of young QBs who wing it around like him, call plays and audible like him, and who throw for 4,000 yards like him. It was his singular brilliance on that Sunday Night in the old RCA Dome that killed the hated Patriots Dynasty. It is his personality and charisma that has allowed himself to transcend the caging helmet of a football player/mercenary and become the leading ambassador for the NFL. Jim L. Mora once said of Manning, "we played greatness today." No, Jim, you are wrong. You, and the rest of the NFL, played greatness for ten straight years.