LITTLE ROCK — On a midwinter day in a Midwestern town that should know better, it became official.
The 2009 sports year is not something remembered in a scrapbook, but something worn around your neck.
It was, all shiny and sad, the season of bling.
It was the story of the year, everyone raising their hand and begging for attention, style over substance, me over we, bling.
Andre Agassi embarrasses himself and the tennis tour for the sake of a best-selling book.
Tiger Woods destroys his public image for the sake of an X-rated private life.
John Calipari is stolen from Memphis by Kentucky to coach its basketball team ... just four months before one of Calipari’s Memphis teams is thrown in NCAA jail ... and everyone cheers.
Brian Kelly leaves an unbeaten Cincinnati team before its bowl game to coach Notre Dame ... and Notre Dame allows him ... and everyone cheers.
Which brings us to Sunday, when the NFL’s best team decided to give itself the best possible chance to win a Super Bowl.
And was booed off its own field.
Because its sturdy, steadfast fans wanted the bling.
The event took place in that bastion of teamwork and sacrifice known as Indianapolis.
But Hoosiers, this ain’t.
It was the 15th game of a 16-game NFL season, the Colts were 14-0 with a chance to become the first team in 37 years to complete an entire season unblemished.
If they pulled it off, finishing with 19-0 record that would include three postseason victories, it would be an historically unmatched mark and rank them as perhaps the greatest team in NFL history.
But you don’t need to be unbeaten to win a Super Bowl.
You do, however, need to be healthy.
So, in the second half of Sunday’s game, with the Colts leading the New York Jets, 15-10, Coach Jim Caldwell benched his best players.
Peyton Manning, out. Dallas Clark, out. Reggie Wayne, out.
As expected, the scrubs blew the lead and lost to the Jets, 29-15. A bit more surprising was the reaction from a town that cared more about the little bling than the big picture.
Fans booed them off Lucas Oil Stadium. Fans inundated the local media with nasty e-mails. Fans angrily burned the lines to local talk radio stations, their dander so heightened that General Manager Bill Polian reportedly cut his weekly talk show short just to shut them up.
The theme of their discontent was, how can the Colts give up on a chance at history?
Because it was the right thing to do.
Sports are not about records, they are about championships.They are especially about championships in Indianapolis, where one of the greatest regular season teams in all sports history has lost its first playoff game in four of the past seven years.
While its understandable that a Colts fan would be momentarily upset at losing a perfect record, that same fan would rip those unbeaten Colts if they didn’t win a championship.
And if you think an undefeated regular season guarantees a championship, then you weren’t there with the New England Patriots a couple of seasons ago.
I was. I watched how the Patriots worked so hard to achieve the then-magical 16-0 record, they were burned out by the Super Bowl.
They erased a 12-point deficit to the New York Giants in the final regular-season game, but the chase for history had left them limping and lost.
They were tied in the third quarter of the divisional playoff game against Jacksonsville. They led by just two points in the fourth quarter of the AFC championship against San Diego. They crumbled in the final minutes to lose the Super Bowl to the Giants.
In the end, the unbeaten record dragged them down like a bad hamstring. Tom Brady was injured. Randy Moss was confused. Bill Belichick couldn’t control it.
The bling blinded.
The Colts are seeing straight.
“The perfect season has never been one of our goals,” Caldwell said to reporters this week. ”You have to look at your objective and keep an eye on what’s most important.”
Sports, Pages 16 on 12/31/2009