And Let Us Never Speak of the Mannings Again
It's still week one and I am so sick of the Mannings. Not only is Peyton in every single commercial out there, but the Eli vs. Peyton matchup was just overkill. How many baby pictures do we have to see of these two? I know the name of the Manning's mother and she isn't even handing out Chunky Soup. This is ridiculous. And the sad part is there was actually an exciting football game on Sunday night. Too bad no one was paying attention.
The Colts/Giants game was a really good Sunday night game -- a nice change over last year's Texans vs. 49ers games. These are two playoff contenders -- some even think Superbowl contenders -- coming into tonight and watching these teams duke it out with each other was exciting. It was a close game the whole time.
Unfortunately, I don't think anyone at NBC knew that. How many shots did we see of Archie and Olivia Manning watching the game? Too many, that's for sure. What was worse was hearing John Madden go on and on about how hard this was for their parents to watch. Why? It's a game. It's not as if their opposing fighters in a civil war. Plus, they aren't playing against each other. It's not as if one brother is a linebacker and the other is a quarterback. Now that'd be interesting.
This sucked for the Mannings just as much as it sucked for us. Both the quarterbacks, and the entire team, had to field questions about this arbitrary matchup while trying to focus on an impotant opening game. And of course, the first question Peyton was asked after the game was about his brother. He gave some lame answer about how he's proud of Eli and how he loves him that sounded more condescending than it would have if he just rubbed it in.
We've got 16 weeks left of the regular season and we've already been OD'd on Manning -- really, I have the shakes and have been vomiting. Not only do we have to see Peyton and Eli, but their father is all over the place too. They're the Kennedy's of football except for the fact that none of them are dying. Believe me we'll be hearing about the fallout from the Manning vs. Manning matchup for weeks. And if both teams do well during the regular season, we'll have to hear about the potential Manning vs. Manning Super Bowl. By the end of the season, we'll have heard so much about them, that when we close our eyes to go to sleep, we'll still have an image of Peyton in our head -- maybe the one of him with that fake mustache.
There are other quarterback stories in the NFL now. Bigger ones. But we'll have to listen closely between talk of the Mannings. There's Carson Palmer's impressive return. There's Trent Green's nasty concussion. There's the fact that Tom Brady is still the man to beat at QB. However, you won't hear much of those -- unless one of those guys have a NFL quarterback brother we don't know about.
