While executives at the NFL may have been concerned about the conditions in Miami, after years of seeing championship games played in domed stadiums and under pristine conditions, I was personally very happy to see "monsoon-like conditions" hit during the game.
Football has always been a sport that thrives on chaos. If the speed wasn't fast, the stakes not high, or the violence intense, would any of us watch it? Probably not, but when we put the championship game in a domes or only in warm weather conditions, we coddle a game that especially for a championship game, should simply not be coddled, or even polished.
Football's essence is about 11 guys on both teams fighting to establish supremacy over a small field of dirt. It is about the 1967 NFC Championship, or the "Ice Bowl" as it is more commonly called, where the Cowboys and Packers played to a -40 degree wind chill. It is about guys like former Bears line Dick Butkus who once said, "I wouldn't ever set out to hurt anyone deliberately unless it was important - like a league game."
The hardest of the hardcore football fans get this, and for this reason alone, he or she (peace to all of the many female football fans out there) would much rather hear John Madden doing his slapstick yet straightforward "boom" sound effects, than hear the smugness that is Joe Buck.
I'll also say that football isn't about being cute and playing in South Beach during a heat wave. Instead, football is a game which thrives in uncomfortable conditions. Using that logic, football's championship game should never be played in a place where a pina colata is preferred over a beer. Dick Butkus enjoying a pina-colata would be about as unlikely as Jack Bauer enrolling in a non-violent conflict resolution class.
While football can and should be violent and untamed, (which is not to say that there shouldn't be penalties for guys who blatantly attempt to injure) it follows then that football can also be ugly. It is a fact that Rex Grossman so aptly showed us, tripping over a rain-swamped field and going down for the sack, and then fumbling the snap in successive plays during an offensive series in the third quarter that was truly offensive.
Part of Grossman's problems undoubtedly stemmed from the conditions outside, but it certainly didn't help that he was clearly outmatched against Peyton Manning.
But while Grossman's performance was downright awful at various points in the game, not enough credit is going to the Colts defense that during the playoffs has staged one of the largest re-invention in all of sports.
Who would have thought that the worst run defense in the league during the regular season would transform into a unit that would help Manning finally win in the postseason?
Last Saturday local Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon titled his column, "Will Bears' Defense Or Colts' Offense Rule?" Citing the Tampa Bay championship of 2002 and Baltimore's championship in 2000 Wilbon picked the Bears, saying that the team with the better defense would win.
It turns out Wilbon was at least halfway right. As they did in Baltimore, Indianapolis simply beat the Bears at their own game, as the Colts used upfront pressure to throw off the timing of Grossman who on both interceptions was not fully planted for the throw.
It is a stunning accomplishment for a Colts team that proved to be more than a "one-trick pony"
