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Manning v. Brady matchup: Umm, heard of it?
01/19/07
by Clay

I don't know if you guys have heard or not, but Peyton Manning's Colts and Tom Brady's Patriots are playing each other in the AFC Championship Game this weekend. It hasn't really gotten that much attention. Sort of under the radar. I can't even keep this paragraph going any longer.

It's that time again, when otherwise sane football fans don't even want to turn on the television. Yep, Manning and Brady are playing and the entire country is being bombarded with more than a week's worth of hype. By kickoff we'll have been told thousands of times that this is a heavyweight fight, a horse race of epic proportions, a career-defining game and whatever other inane cliché gets trotted out here.

That's because the country has chosen sides. You're either a Manning guy or you're a Brady guy. There's no in-between. On top of that, it's gotten to the point where not only do you root for Manning or Brady, you hate the very soul of the other guy.

Personally, I'm a Manning guy. Have been since the day he signed with the Tennessee Vols. After his most recent playoff loss last year, I even went so far as to suggest that Manning needed to remake himself with more street cred so people didn't take as many shots at him.

But my hate for Tom Brady has been more gradual. I actually rooted for him to win his first Super Bowl. He seemed like a nice guy, an underdog, and he didn't have a crazy wife like Kurt Warner's. This counted for a lot.

Then Brady got way too fashionable. He started showing up for postgame interviews wearing zip-up cashmere sweaters and those paper-boy hats from the 1920s that were supposed to be cool, but were never actually worn anywhere outside of the big cities on the East Coast. Next, came the way too well-manicured facial hair that seemed designed to play to a bad-boy image without actually making him a bad boy. In the words of my friend Junaid, "I was never buying that facial hair. Not at all. Not for one minute."

Along the way, Brady somehow collected a coterie of rabid defenders who couldn't wait for the slightest inkling of disrespect to be shown before they'd scream at you about how awesome Brady is. You know who these guys are; you're probably friends with one or two. You'll be sitting watching a game not featuring the Patriots and say something completely normal like, "What a run. Give me a beer." And apropos of nothing, Brady guys will be like, "God, Tom Brady is so awesome."

It's a little creepy. Almost like these guys wouldn't be satisfied unless they could let Tom Brady have sex with their girlfriends, or wives, while they gave him high-fives over her back.

It was about this time that I started rooting against Brady -- when it became impossible to watch football highlights, get on the Internet or read the newspaper and actually find someone who wasn't driven to hyperbolic excess whenever Tom Brady was mentioned. Now my hate for Brady has reached epic levels, because sometimes as a fan you can be defined as much by who you dislike as who you like.

On top of that, I was rooting hard against New England this past weekend because, honestly, I hate the Patriots, too. I don't like their smug coach in a hoodie with his fake hugs and fake smiles. I don't like their golden boy quarterback, and I don't like the way the Patriots win games that otherwise shouldn't have been won.

In fact, there's not a single player on the New England Patriots I remotely like.

I promise when San Diego's Marlon McCree intercepted that pass in the fourth quarter and ran up the field, I was screaming for him to just get down, because I knew the game couldn't end like that. That someway, somehow the Patriots were still going to find a way to win. And of course they did. Scoring 11 points in the final five minutes of the game.

I even sympathized with LaDainian Tomlinson as he stormed the field and attempted to get into a fight with a member of the Patriots. He was just doing what millions of fans across the country already wanted to do: Knock that smug look off the face of Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the rest of the Pats.

That's because it seems as if the Patriots win every game by a field goal or less. And then we fans have to sit around and hear about how amazing and transcendent Brady and the Patriots are for yet another week. How we should all be in awe of their magnificence.

It's all the more annoying that the Patriots make the inexplicable somehow become ordinary. Get stopped on third down? How about a head butt from the opposing team for a first down? Get intercepted on fourth down late in the fourth quarter? Don't worry, the other team is going to fumble. Punting from deep in your own territory? Have no fear, the punt returner is going to fumble and then, for some reason, instead of simply falling on the ball, is going to try and pick it up and run.

Resulting in another turnover.

The Patriots are like those extremely deadly vampires from Coppola's Dracula. Not only do you have to kill them, you have to climb into the casket, chop off their heads and burn their bodies while chanting incantations. Otherwise, I promise, they'll find a way to win.

But back to my contention that all football fans are either Brady guys or Manning guys. I've come up with a highly scientific outline to define what camp fans are likely in, via 10 characteristics that define each fan base. Here goes:

Brady's fans

1. Tend to live on either coast with a sprinkling of Ann Arbor fans from Brady's days at Michigan. Think about this: Can you really see Brady playing for Jacksonville or Tennessee or Kansas City? Neither can I. Brady is definitely a bicoastal guy. So are his fans.

2. Lots of women. They love the idea that he's such a metrosexual pretty boy who likes to wear turtle necks, get manicures and doubtlessly sleeps with one of those silk eye masks.

God, what do the women see in him?

3. Guys who wear cologne and have ice-skated before.

4. Latte drinkers. Just try and picture a Manning fan sitting down with a cup of coffee in a trendy coffeehouse. You can't, can you? In fact, most Manning fans couldn't even pronounce or spell latte.

5. Like Enya. Is there any other football player whose fans are more likely to sing along when Only Time comes on? The answer is no.

6. Would ironically wear a cowboy hat.

This might be an insult to New England fans everywhere.

7. Are convinced that Manning is an over-hyped choke artist and whiner who constantly blames his teammates whenever he loses, has never won any big game of note, and only gets attention because of his family name.

8. Rollerblade ... possibly in spandex.

9. Hate every moment of Peyton Manning's innumerable television commercials and wonder how a rich kid who was the overall No. 1 draft pick, with an All-Pro quarterback as a father, has somehow been embraced as a man of the people.

10. Pay more than $10 for a haircut. You could open a hairstyle magazine and point to any Brady fan's coif. In fact, Brady fans even know what the word coif means.

Manning's fans

1. By and large are Southern. Where I live, in the state of Tennessee, Peyton Manning could still be elected to any statewide office. Probably without campaigning. And while there are still SEC fans who hate Manning because he regularly beat their teams, there are many more who are fans of the Manning family. In general, the southland is Manning country.

2. Not very many women. I asked my friend Katy who she rooted for. Her first question was, "What is Tom Brady going to be wearing, a uniform or a towel?" Guess who she picked.

C'mon ladies. C'mon. C'mon.

3. Guys who wear mud-encrusted boots and T-shirts. I spent the day on a construction yard in northern Kentucky recently. Just to see, I asked the crew during lunch who they rooted for, Brady or Manning. To a man they all picked Manning. Other than construction crews in New England, I think this trend would continue. For whatever reason, Manning has more common-man appeal.

4. Have killed something in the past month. Hunters are Manning people. I don't know why this is, they just are.

5. Walk or run awkwardly. Brady seems effortless when he plays football. Manning makes football look like it hurts. He sort of stands with his hands downcast and always hanging mid-chest (it's like Montgomery Burns meets the NFL). He twitches and gesticulates and always looks like his chest and ribs are perpetually two feet in front of his head. Add in the fact that his shoulders and feet are never still and Manning looks like the first-grader whose parents just took him off Ritalin. At no point on the field does he look comfortable. Not even in the moments immediately after he throws touchdown passes.

6. Would wear cowboy hats without irony.

Dare I say?

7. Believe Tom Brady is only three plays away from never having won a single Super Bowl and is the overrated creation of a media hype machine that demands an heir to Joe Montana.

8. Pay less than $10 for a haircut. This means Manning's fans are often without sideburns, occasionally model awkward bowl cuts, or are subject to other hairstyle maulings. If you don't believe me, just pause the television at any moment when the crowd is shown in Indianapolis this weekend. There will be a bevy of hairstyles on the men ... almost all bad.

9. Are certain that if Manning were in Brady's place, he would have done even better. The general feeling is that Brady's an OK quarterback, but has always had the better team.

10. Would never stand in line for a bar or club. Once inside their chosen establishment, if you can't throw peanut shells on the floor they immediately leave.

Honestly, if you're bored right now at work, write down the names of each of your friends and assign them to the Brady or Manning camp. Then check your hypotheses to see whether or not you're correct.

This can probably work for people who aren't even big football fans. I guarantee once you start doing this you can pull it off without any difficulty whatsoever. Feel free to send in your own rough approximations of each fan base to me, but no matter what, be ready come Sunday for the Colts to win by double digits. 34-21. Book it.

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