Experts at seeing opportunity

The Colts win over Kansas City in yesterday's wild card playoff game at Lucas Oil Stadium demonstrated once again how football is a metaphor for life.  You don't look to every football game you view for inspiration, but sometimes a contest really does renew your sense of human possibility.

Sometimes life presents us with daunting scenarios, such as a 28-point deficit at halftime in an NFL playoff game.  There's only one thing to do at that point: get real sharp.

Earlier this season, T.Y. Hilton had to step up to the task of filling Reggie Wayne's shoes.  He has done so, particularly yesterday, when he logged 13 catches, 224 yards, and two touchdowns.

But for sheer mastery in the art of seizing the moment, Andrew Luck's recovered fumble and subsequent slide into the end zone to bring the Colts within three caused central Indiana to quake from the unison roar of amazement and elation.  (Video at link.)

An NFL team is a lot of things.  Its top management making numbers-based business decisions.  It's the recruitment function.  It's the head coach.  It's the coordination of offense, defense and special teams. It's the camaraderie among players who have woodshedded and gigged together from July's swelter through January's chill.

And it's a sense of duty to legacy. The old RCA Dome will be forever known as the House That Peyton Built, but the continuity, in terms of standards of excellent football, has been established in the big bowl on West Street.  That's how it's done in the Circle City.

Class can still be found in this post-modern world

Peyton Manning calls various Indianapolis reporters to thank them for the way they covered what had been his team for fourteen years.

Let's call it the beginning of an era, if only to lessen the sting

It's official: Peyton Manning is leaving the Indianapolis Colts. Now the next phase of Schumpeter's creative destruction can work its way. The slow building of the next dynasty begins with the NFL draft pick.

Party central

I live in what could be considered the greater Indianapolis area (forty miles to the south), so the electricity is palpable. I didn't actually get to downtown - Super Bowl Village - but I know some folks who did the zip line, saw celebrities and such. (My last trip to Indy was a week ago Wednesday, but I went up to Broad Ripple to have lunch with my sister. Got off I-65 at 11th Street, at the north edge of downtown.)
It's very cool to see and be proximate to. I've been checking out some media coverage from around the nation and the consensus seems to be that the city is doing a world-class job of hosting a huge event.
I guess I'll be rooting for the Giants because of the Manning family connection.
That's another factor adding to the electricity. Peyton has been cleared by his doctors to get back to playing NFL football, but he is known to be dismayed by the way Colts owner Jim Irsay gutted the coaching staff and the management team. So he's pondering his options. Meanwhile, because the Colts had such a cruddy season, they get a first-round draft pick for quarterback and the guy they'll almost certainly go with, Andrew Luck, is in town for the big game. The press is inundating him with questions about how he'd feel being second string to Peyton, or, should Peyton move on, taking the reins of basically a whole new program.
I hope Peyton stays at least one more year. It would be supremely cool to see the Colts roar to glory under the leadership of his mighty arm and strategic eye one more time.

"It's not a real good environment down there right now"

So says Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning about his team's headquarters in the wake of several recent firings, including the Polians, head coach Caldwell, and strength and conditioning coach Jim Torine.

It points up something that all of us free-market champions must admit: Joseph Schumpeter's creative destruction may lead to advancement in general, but it comes with human cost. I would like to read somewhere that these decisions were hard for Jim Irsay to make.