Maybe it will rain or snow in Miami on February 7th as I’d enjoy seeing which dome-team plays better in a real football stadium, e.g. no roof nor artificial thermostat. Hard for me to root for the Saints even though I worked as an usher for their games at Tulane Stadium in 1969 (walked 4 blocks from our apartment on Broadway Avenue). Awful job and the only way to make money was to sell the intermission passes. Winning Saints are like the winning Red Sox: aren’t we suppose to secretly revel in their persistent even genealogical failure as these patterns are more like our own lives than the achievements of the Yankees or Roger Federer.
The Jets play one quarter of excellent football and three quarters of ‘Colts aren’t killing us yet.’ Minnesota and then the refs in overtime conspire to send the Saints and the disheartening tragedy now known as New Orleans to the Super Bowl (for all of the interest around the SB commercials and the associated cost, couldn’t someone, these 44 years later, think of a more appropriate name for the game. How about ‘Winter Game in Summer Stadium Championship?’

It’s not all sour grapes. I still chuckle at Tom Dempsey’s 63 yard field goal to defeat Detroit in 1970; of course, he left for the Eagles the next year. Whatever happened to Les Kelly, the first pick of their first draft whom the coaching staff converted from a running back to a linebacker. Three years and out. Great fun to recall Billy Kilmer and Danny Abramowicz and Doug Atkins and crew of Aints (but that started after I left home for the Navy).
On Feb. 7, Peyton Manning, the quarterback of the Colts who grew up in New Orleans because his father, Archie, who was the first real QB of the franchise (won NFC Player of the year in 1978 and the only player so awarded from a losing team) settled in NOLA after his career. Could only be true for the City That Care Forgot.
I see the Colts winning by two TDs even though I’ve never forgiven them for abandoning Baltimore. I’ll save that diatribe for another day.