NFL: A Super serving of Mannings

By John McGrath

Scripps Howard News Service

It's a good thing Peyton Manning is so gosh-darn likable. It's also a good thing his dad, Archie Manning, might be a better parent than he was a quarterback — and Archie gained enough renown as a QB to be selected to two Pro Bowls after a College Football Hall of Fame career at Ole Miss.

It's good that in terms of grace, humility, ambition, obedience, talent and stage presence, the Von Trapp Family has nothing on the Mannings of New Orleans.

Because we're about to get sick of them.

As soon as Garrett Hartley's 40-yard overtime field goal decided an NFC Championship Game that'll be remembered as a sloppy classic — or was it a classic slop-fest? — the theme of Super Bowl XLIV became Colts quarterback Peyton Manning's collision course with the team whose first true superstar was his dad.

Except Archie Manning didn't merely play for the Saints. He and his lovely wife raised their three model-citizen kids in New Orleans. He still owns a home in New Orleans. For several years, he was the color-analyst voice of the Saints during radio broadcasts.

And now that New Orleans' wait to watch the Saints in the Super Bowl has ended after 43 years, now the post-game street partying on Bourbon Street is making Mardi Gras look like a think-tank seminar, it will be the professional obligation of Archie Manning's son to put the Saints in their place.

Brace yourself for two weeks of All Mannings, All the Time. The coverage will border on the intolerable, but it might beat the alternative: All Brett Favre, All the Time.

(When the Vikings quarterback took a borderline cheap shot, helmet-to-lower-leg hit Sunday, I thought I was watching the original "Rocky." During one of dozens of cut-away camera shots to Favre's wife, Fox broadcaster Jim Nantz mentioned that her name is "Deanna." I could've sworn it was Adrian.)

Aside from its potential to turn into the Manning Family Reality Show, the Super Bowl matchup in Miami, at first glance, has a made-for-TV flavor: Two quick-strike offenses powered by athletes whose acrobatics are enhanced, on further review, in slow (and slow, and slower) motion. Supe 44 also has got the sort of agreeably contrasting protagonists necessary for a story line.

The Colts, attempting to win their second Vince Lombardi Trophy in four years, are the corporate establishment — the team whose front office went into micro-management mode after it won its 14 games, then chose to abandon a quest at perfection in order to adhere to the bottom line: stay healthy in December, forget about the sniveling romantics in the crowd, and concentrate on winning it all in February.

The Saints are the outcasts, representing a city where the frustration of following mostly inept pro-sports franchises is considered through the real-world perspective of those who've survived worse fates than lost football games. And though it was the 2006 Saints who wore the label of America's Real Team during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — they too advanced to the NFC championship, before losing in Chicago — it was impossible to watch Hartley's game-winning kick split the uprights Sunday without reflecting on all that New Orleans has endured.

Back to the Mannings: Peyton and Archie might be the dominant Super Bowl personalities, but there are other connections between the Colts and the Saints. Jim E. Mora, the father of recently deposed Seahawks coach Jim L. Mora, turned the Saints competitive in the late 1980s. His 1987 Saints won 12 games — earning him NFL Coach of the Year honors — and went on to reach the playoffs three straight times from 1990-92.

When the Saints regressed and fired Mora, he relocated to Indianapolis, where he guided a pair of Colts playoff teams to records of 13-3 (in 1999) and 10-6 (in 2000). But Mora never was able to get past the first round — not with the Saints, not with the Colts — and today is remembered, unfairly, less for his success than the preposterous sound bites he donated in distress.

Despite a forecast that's calling for two weeks of Mannings to precede five hours of Mannings on the Super Sunday pre-game telecast, I would hope there's a moment Jim E. Mora can spend in the spotlight. Who else has dibs on the distinction of having coached both the Saints and the Colts in the playoffs?

As for the game itself, I'm finding it difficult to envision the Colts allowing five turnovers to the Saints, the way the Vikings did on Sunday. I'm thinking Indianapolis 31, New Orleans 20.

Oops, let me rephrase that.

Peyton Manning's current team 31, Archie Manning's old team 20.