Super Bowl Commentary, a Week Later

A couple weeks ago, I read an article about how Miami is such a great city for the Super Bowl. South Beach has hot weather and sexy people and is a fun place to be. The article claimed that it was a far superior host to say, Detroit.

I love that it rained during the entire Super Bowl.

I’m genuinely happy for the Colts crew. They’ve been such a good team for so long and now they finally have their rings to prove that they are the best. They won the right way, with a mild-mannered coach who demands respect, and the most brilliant QB of all time. And you never hear about Colts getting arrested.

The only bad thing about the rain at the Super Bowl is that I feel like it subdued the celebration. I wanted to see pure joy in the eyes of Peyton Manning. I wanted to see big cheesey hugs with his wife and family. I wanted to see Archie Manning with a tear in his eyes. I wanted to see Marvin Harrison whoop it up. I wanted to see Tony Dungy and Peyton do a Winning-the-Super-Bowl dance. But I think there’s more to the dampened celebration than the rain.

I think that the years of unfulfilled expectations and disappointing playoff exits weighed so heavily on the Colts that once they finally achieved what everyone had been predicting for so many years, they felt mostly relief from fulfilling their destiny rather than joy from doing something uniquely great. That’s a dangerous frame of mind to be in.

I saw this before when I watched my younger brother Tim play high school baseball. His junior year, he was on a fabulously talented team with state championship expectations. They won a lot of games that season but every victory in the state tournament seemed expected. I never saw them get super excited about winning. Then in the state finals, an underdog team outplayed them and their season ended with a loss. I’m not sure if as a team, they ever really sat back to take the whole experience in. I still feel bad about that. My three other brothers all won state championships and I’m pretty sure they properly celebrated each milestone victory on the way to their state championships. In fact, last year I watched the highlight tape from Kevin’s senior year of football and they seemed to celebrate EVERYTHING. First down? Good block? Tied shoelaces? All cause for celebration.

Expectations are a funny thing. I have not yet perfected the art of having the right amount of expectations in life. Expectations too small? You never accomplish anything. Expectations too big? You go through life disappointed. Finding the balance between getting things done and letting disappointments roll of your back is my personal nirvana.

I’d like to come back to the topic of expectations again.

Rick Reilly in Sports Illustrated said something about people begging Lovie Smith for a “Rexorcism” (benching Rex Grossman because he played so bad for most of the season) and I laughed out loud.

Congratulations Indianapolis Colts! I hope I can get some of you on fantasy team next year!