He's Just Gone
There was a spate of articles in the Star recently about what Peyton is up to.
I didn't read them.
It felt strange and foreign to overtly ignore news about someone that I cared so much about, a player whose every move was of daily interest to me for more than a decade.
At some point, I stopped in and tried to scan one of them, but that felt even more strange.
It probably sounds stupidly obvious, but it just dawned on me that Peyton is gone.
I've known he was gone. I watched the presser. I saw him sign with the Broncos. I watched the draft.
Still, somehow, it had never quite registered until he started actually practicing with the Broncos.
He's gone.
Peyton's still around, I suppose. That's really Peyton Manning playing for the Broncos, throwing passes to Stokely and Tamme in mile-high air. None of that changes the fact that he's gone.
Whoever (whatever?) that replicant in orange and blue is, he's not Peyton Manning. At least, he's not my Peyton Manning. Not anymore.
Apparently, scores of readers gave Mke Chappell crap for the Star writing about Peyton. While I don't understand that specific reaction, I do understand why those people had some reaction, misguided though it was. The stories, the photos, the videos were all terribly unnerving. People are going to be raw about Manning leaving for some time.
I didn't say angry. I said raw.
Peyton is an open nerve. Drafting Andrew Luck may eventually prove to heal whatever wounds the Colts inflicted on the fanbase when they let Manning walk, but until Luck actually suits up and throws a few touchdowns and God-willing wins a few games, there won't be any real progress. Seeing and hearing about Manning in Denver will continue to irritate people around here. They won't always even know why.
My dad said, "People don't watch sports to be depressed."
He's right.
When they pick up the paper or click on Sports Center, they want to escape the real world of pink slips, break-ups, illness and pain for a few minutes. They don't want to have to watch or read about Peyton anymore. Many would rather pretend he's dead than accept the truth that Uncle Jimmy sent him to go live on a farm with a new family and a big field where he can live out his remaining years running and playing in the sun with his friends.
Fans don't care about Peyton's happiness; we care about our own.
I'm still processing what it means that those brilliant quotes and quips serve someone else's team. Forget the audibles and the touchdowns and the comebacks for a momonet. I can't come close to dealing with that. I'm still trying get over the fact that when he says something witty to a reporter, that he's not trying to entertain Colts fans. Who knows? Maybe he is somewhere inside, but somehow, I don't find it entertaining anymore.
I still don't know what to do with my alliengce to a man who did so much for my city. I feel like a voyer if I read those articles about his rapport with new receivers, and I feel like a coward if I don't. I talk about him like he's gone from this terrestial plaine. As Luke and I would joke last year, "At least Peyton isn't alive to see this...".
Only he is alive. And he's still playing.
He's just...
gone.
Well said, I think you pretty much summed it up.
Still, I have checked the Broncos schedule and will be watch all their games that don't interfere with the Colts. I think collectively we as Colts fans owe it to Manning to cheer for the Broncos as a 2nd team until he retires. I just want to see him get at least one more ring.
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If it's tough now, it'll be even tougher when/if Peyton ever wins a Super Bowl with Denver. I'll be really hapy for him to get that second ring, but I'll also feel a little bitter knowing deep down that it should have been, and could have been, as a Colt.
While I agree that reading about Peyton doing well with another team does hurt at first...those colors on that familiar number...18, makes it difficult. I can understand how difficult it would have been for us to continue to post on a site where neither 18 nor 88 are still on the team. I am doing my best to ignore the news right now, as a fan who puts any emotion in to their team and the players on that team (and one of the greatest, most respectable anywhere, ever) would find it difficult to see their ex out and having fun with another.
Yet, I'll come around, and when it comes to it, I am a Peyton fan too. The Colts, of course, will be far and away my favorite team. And when they happen to play Denver and Peyton is playing, I'll hope to the highest that our defense finds a way to stop him. But, if he does well against our D, which he most likely will, I'll hope that our offense was able to find a way to outplay the Denver D. In either case, there will be no doubt in my mind though, I will be applauding Peyton for a strong performance for the rest of his career, much in the same way I did throughout his career thus far.
I don't want to relate this too much, but it's really hard not to find the similarity in my life as a sports fan. Many Colts fans out there are also Hoosier fans. In other words, I've been through this before. We lost a leader of that program that did want leave. He was as important to the Hoosier legacy and program, arguably more so than even Peyton has been to the Colts. Well, this could be a whole separate post. The point is, I regularly watched the Texas Tech games and hoped that they could win a few more games and even win the NCAA tourney. In fact, I still have a picture of Coach Knight in my house. Why not, what's so wrong with that??
If you revere, respect, even grow to love a person and neither of you really wanted them to leave or ever showed any lack of loyalty to you or your team, why must you hate them and not want them to continue to succeed? Is that "true" loyalty?? Not for me, in fact, not wanting that that person to do well is a failure in loyalty. As long as Peyton continues be the same kind of person and QB we all respected him for, I will continue to support him in whatever he does. And I hope you will too.
I’m reacting to this in a much different way. Of course, I wasn’t born with “blue blood,” and Indianapolis is not my city.
My earliest reliable memories of professional sports trace back to the late sixties and involve Bobby Orr. I’ve been seeking out transcendence ever since, going from sport to sport, team to team (with some teams, the Habs as a random example, exempted). I remember reading about Archie Manning, and the surprise that the Pats hadn’t selected him with the number one pick. “He’s going to be football’s Bobby Orr,” I thought. I was off by a generation.
The NFL started as my second-favourite league of my second-favourite sport. Perhaps as a consequence of trying to follow the NFL whilst living in a two-channel universe governed by Canadian content regulations, my allegiances were always split between a handful of teams, one of which was the Baltimore Colts of the Bert Jones era. How that eventually transformed into a singular and surpassing focus on the Indianapolis Colts is a long story. (At least, the part about the NHL and the CFL losing my attention, and recounting my itinerant NFL fandom, which included a stop with John Elway’s Broncos, would take time. Otherwise, it’s straightforward: a team I was predisposed to like drafted Peyton Manning.) But, following more than one team will come easily and naturally to me.
I’m still a Colts fan. However, if I were coming fresh to this website, and with a tip of the hat to a transcendent figure from another form of human endeavour, the user name I would choose would be “Kind of Blue.”
Interesting reaction. I guess we are all over the place. My reaction has been pretty much the exact opposite. Before I give that, a little background. I was a Colts fan back when I was a kid and Johnny Unitas was the MAN. The Baltimore Colts were my team. Then somewhere after graduating college (and the Colts not being so good I guess) I pretty much lost interest in pro football. Went many years without watching even the superbowl. I followed the sport in the newspapers, and watched some games, but not really invested. I lived in Seattle when they were good under Chuck Know and rooted for them. At that time however, my obsession was with the IU basketball teams. I lived in the northwest when the Colts moved to Indy and my reaction was - oh, isn't that ironic and interesting. I still would root for the Colts, but never got to see them play and didn't care too much- apparently not many people did! I moved to Iowa and pretty much the same thng. Occasionally I would go back to Indy (my hometown) to visit and listen to part of the Colts game on WIBC(?) as I was driving back west on Sunday afternoon. And I do remember thinking after one of those games- gee this Manning seems to be pretty good. And started to get interested again. And that interest grew and after a couple of more moves left me in Albuquerque I was a full blown fan again (helped, I am sure, by the debacle in Bloomington).
I loved watching the Colts play, there were the disappointments (Pittsburg and San Diego playoff games, not to mention Pats) but really, it was a golden era of success. I don't agree that because Peyton hasn't won multiple super bowls he doesn't deserve to be at least considered the best. It is a TEAM sport and defense counts too.
Anyway, I was very disappointed that Peyton is gone, although I think Luck will turn to be good. I was really disappointed in Irsay's lying to us- he said if Peyton could play, it would be with the Colts, right up to the end. I think he was hoping Peyton couldn't play and didn't count on his (seeming) recovery.
Anyway, I am back in the Northwest and had some interest in Peyton going to the Seahawks just so I could see him full time. But Denver? Well I always liked Denver. My wife is a Denver fan. So it will be easy for me to root for the Broncos. I think Fox is an excellent coach. And I want Peyton to win one, no make that 2-3 more SuperBowls. Then everyone can shut up about that negative on his resume.
I personally go to the Mile High Report and the Denvr Post before I read Colts stuff. As Irsay said, it will be "years" before the Colts win, so I am wholeheartedly rooting for the Broncos. (If Pagano is a good coach- and Luck turns out to be what he is projected to be), I don't think it should take so long for the Colts to get back. You can turn around quickly with a good QB.
Still rooting for the Colts, but not so invested. Hope so one day. Until then I enjoy reading about Peyton and looking forward to him winning big. It may seem strange. Maybe t is because Peyton has a lot of class and is pretty unique. I don't know. But I am rooting for him.
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I get the "rooting for laundry” thing (which is really more accurately stated as "rooting for arbitrary geographical boundaries"), and it most definitely has its roots deep in the human experience, but I for one am both a huge Colts fan (and will of course root for them to win against any team, Denver included) and a huge Peyton Manning fan. How can we separate ourselves from the human aspect of sports? Does the person inside the jersey really mean less than the jersey itself? Would automatons with Colts jerseys draped over them still engender loyalty in us as fans? I see nothing wrong with continuing to follow and root for a guy you have invested a lot of time and energy getting to know over the years (at least as a football player, I can't speak to the character of the man). I'll be rooting for Jeff Saturday in Green Bay, and Dallas Clark in Tampa Bay, even Joseph Addai has a soft spot in my heart (even though I may have raged at my television every time he lost 3 yards doing his patented back field scissor kick instead of running through the gap). America's Game is must see TV every season because it gives the human side of the story, same thing with Hard Knocks, it's not just jerseys and helmets, it's people.
Rooting passionately and irrationally for your team is most definitely an essential element of sports fandom, but at least for me it is not the essential element. The person inside the jersey is still a major part of why I choose to invest myself and read blogs like this one months before the season even starts. It’s easy to become wrapped up in wins and losses, especially when our team has succeeded so spectacularly the last decade and a half, but ultimately it’s the human stories that make the wins mean something. Basking in the reflected glory of a home team’s win is nice, no doubt, but caring about the players and wanting to see them succeed on a personal, human level, is far more rewarding in my estimation.
I have to admit, I thought I would be a lot more moved by Manning's progress with, and the fortunes of the Denver Broncos than than I have been, so far. I guess we'll see how that goes once the season gets under way. Getting to the playoffs from the AFC West should be a comparative cake walk, so the chances are good that Manning will still be battling weeks after Andrew Luck's Colts pack it in for the year. I might have to wait that long to really test my Manning-Love.
My first sports thought of the day, is still "x days until Andrew Luck reports."
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"At the end of the day, you are just rooting for laundry."
Alas, I guess if you are a loyal fan of one team, this is true.
"You're not a real Colts fan, if you still root for Peyton."
Well... I'm sorry. I can't quit Peyton Manning. I want to see Peyton win more Super Bowls. I want him to break all Favre's records. I want him to go down in history as the G.O.A.T. But most importanlty, I want to keep being able to watch him play.
Because when he retires or can no longer play... I won't care as much about football.
@DougEngland "At the end of the day, you are just rooting for laundry." "You're not a real Colts fan, if you still root for Peyton." where are these quotes from? I have read this article and all of the comments, but don't see them anywhere.
@LongLiveTheKing18 I wasn't specifically quoting what Nate wrote, as the overall querstion of "are you a real Colts fan or just a Peyton Manning fan" and you can't be both.
@DougEngland I'm with you. For the next few years, as long as Peyton Manning plays, the desire to see him add to his legacy and remove all doubt about his place in history, or at least to force his detractors to move the goalposts a couple more times, will far surpass the desire to see the Colts go 8-8 instead of 6-10 or 6-10 instead of 4-12.
A far as being a "real" fan goes, there are many reasons I follow football. The need to prove anything about myself to other fans is not one of them.
Wow. Couldn't have said better myself. I literally feel the same way. Don't know how to act/react to anything Peyton. @makaveli1376
