Peyton Manning "Da-DA-DA-DUM!" Commentary

Da-da-da-DUM!That's the most famous musical riff of all-time, four notes from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, said to represent bony-knuckled fate knocking at the door, inevitably, finally. Put aside the Metallica used in compiling highlight clips of big hits from linebackers, the gangsta music which backdrops wide Steelers 43 Polamalu jersey
receiver-loving video.Ol' Ludwig's piece will serve as the soundtrack of the week this week, because after Sunday's AFC Championship game, a.k.a. New England Patriots- III, our perception of the NFL will be irrevocably changed.At center stage are the two QBs whose careers have been intertwined since the younger got his shot at starting.First, there's Peyton Manning.(Here's to hoping for his personal psychological welfare that Manning doesn't actually hear Beethoven's Fifth at any point during his much ballyhooed three-day vacation. He'll never get it out of his head.)The burden of fate has weighed heavily on Manning, superstar QB son of a superstar QB. "He can't win the big one," whisper fate's proxies and an echo haunts him in media coverage: "Marino, Marino..." To be fair, the statmaster quarterback is also a media-lapper, loving the attention at least as much as Terrell Owens and seemingly getting more endorsement deals than the rest of the league combined.An oft-repeated cliché in the media-conscious world is "There is no so thing as bad publicity." (Unless your name is O.J. Simpson.) Manning is now finding that media hype is a double-edged sword and that he, Hamlet-like, may be impaled upon it.Forget, if you can through the inevitable barrage, the numbers, because this game is bigger than numbers. The porous Colts run defense, one of the weakest supporting casts Manning has taken into the playoffs, team records, Indy upending the New Englanders 27-20 in Week 9 - it's all out the window. Today, here at RealFootball365, the final word on all the hype. (And it's only Wednesday!)If the Colts win, Manning has loosed himself of one back monkey while coming both literally and figuratively one step closer to clutching the Lombardi Trophy. "Figuratively" is used here because, should the Colts advance to the Super Bowl and lose, at least public perception will still figure Peyton and the Horseshoes to be Bowl contenders.If the Colts lose, Manning's record is forever stained. Indy could romp through the season all the way to beat up, say, the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLII, but trailing an asterisk would read the epitaph, "But he won without going through the Patriots."Da-da-da-DAH!Amidst the overuse of hyperbole from the massive mass of Steelers 43 Polamalu jersey
mass media, rarely do we get such a clear picture of a history-defining moment. Perhaps not since Super Bowl XXVIII (Dallas Cowboys 30, Buffalo Bills 13) has fate, the true 12th man, loomed so largely.Da-da-da-DAH!The knock comes again, and Manning's sole consolation is that counterpart Tom Brady, too, must answer an equally heavy summons.Bringing the classics and the instant classics to life