At first glance, the Indianapolis Colts appear remarkably un-hateable. They are, by all accounts, as hardworking and selfless of a team as there is in the NFL, with an ownership that values character over celebrity. Their city is the epitome of Middle American Vanilla, flying too far below the national radar for us to care enough about forming a negative stereotype for their fans. Quarterback Peyton Manning appears to be the absolute physical embodiment of the politely dominant aura that has formed around that team. Even their blue-and-white jerseys have a certain nondescriptly inoffensive quality. At first glance, there seems to be little to hate.

The problem is, the Colts take this Midwestern pragmatism entirely too far. When Manning is under center and sees a defense that doesn’t correspond to the offensive play call, he simply changes the play to the right one. Now, I am well aware that it seems unreasonable to criticize what is irrefutably a smart tactic, but every time I see Peyton acting like an air-traffic controller, I can’t help but be put off by how over-calculated it all seems. The Colts style of football is like coloring-by-the-numbers when you were a kid. Sure, it probably looks better in the end, but it's not nearly as fun.

This was never more evident than during their infamous ducking of perfection against the New York Jets. While avoiding injury made intellectual sense --and may very well end up proving to be the best-long term decision -- you couldn’t help but get a slightly queasy feeling in the bottom of your stomach watching Manning brood on the sidelines as Mark Sanchez ran around like a 12-year old on a sugar high. It struck at the very core of why we care about sports at all. If all we cared about was the bottom line, we’d spend our time watching the stock market.

In stark contrast to this mechanical near-perfection are the perfectly flawed Saints. Statistically, Dallas Clark is a much better player than Jeremy Shockey, but Clark is not nearly as culturally relevant as Shockey, because people sense something redemptive on both sides about Shockey’s tenure with the Saints. In terms of sheer talent, the Saints defense shouldn’t be able to compete with the best in the NFL, but it can because of the swagger it gets from playing for this city. You can see in Drew Brees’ eyes that he’s still trying to stick it to all those Texas schools that wouldn’t recruit him. With Peyton Manning, all you see is Beautiful-Mind-like numbers floating around.

Should I hate the Colts? Probably not. But New Orleans doesn’t operate on the same coolly intellectual level that caused Jim Caldwell to pull all his starters. My apologies to Archie. Geaux, Saints.

-- NICK PERUFFO
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