Here's Hoping Colts, Saints Deliver

If the Colts and Saints play in the Super Bowl the way each of them did on Sunday ...

A lot of people will turn off their sets after The Who finish performing at halftime.

And if they're too young to have heard of The Who or just don't like them, they'll turn off the game after Peyton Manning closes out the first half with a 75-yard drive that gives Indy oh ... let's say a 35-3 lead.

Fortunately, games don't replicate themselves, something the Saints can be grateful for after making it to Miami 31-28 in overtime over Minnesota thanks to:

* a Brett Favre interception late in regulation,

* a bunch of fumbles by Adrian Peterson and a critical one by Percy Harvin,

* a coaching gaffe that left 12 players in the Vikings' huddle,

* and a pass interference flag that NEVER should have been thrown in overtime of a conference title game.

In other words, a Colts-Vikings Super Bowl would be much more desirable off Sunday's NFC title game, in which the losing Vikings nearly doubled the yardage of the winning Saints -- 475 to 257. The Colts? They simply put up 24 straight points after falling behind the Jets 17-6. Although you could argue that game was over at halftime, even though the Colts still trailed 17-13, you had the feeling they had won the game with the 58-second drive before the half that got them their first touchdown.

By the seedings, this should be a first-rate Super Bowl.

The appearance by the Saints and Colts marks the first time two No. 1 seeds have met in the Super Bowl since 1993, when it was the Bills and Cowboys. Dallas won that game 30-13, the fourth straight Super Bowl loss for the Bills and Emmitt Smith was the MVP even though it should have been Dallas safety James Washington. (A case then, as now, of folks going with name value -- although CBS actually did interview Pierre Garcon as well as Peyton Manning after Indy's win on Sunday.)

Besides the No. 1 vs. No. 1 matchup, there are other angles that will be addressed and addressed over the next two weeks while the NFL plugs next Sunday's Pro Bowl and the media ignores it. Except to trash it for all the absentees -- including members of the Saints and Colts.

The centerpiece will be Manning. Or rather the Manning family -- no, we can't avoid the stars. Peyton, of course, is the son of Archie, Mr. Saint during the team's dismal early years, the former analyst on their radio broadcasts and now seen weekly commenting on the play of his quarterback sons -- with a lot of face-time to talk about college football.

The only thing that would make this more of a Manning Super Bowl would be if Eli was the QB for the Saints rather than Drew Brees. And we might get as much Eli as Drew on television -- two years ago, Fox had almost as many shots of Peyton watching from his box as Eli drove the Giants to a title over New England as they had shots of Eli on the field. We had a glimpse or two of Eli watching Peyton from CBS on Sunday but only a glimpse -- he is, after all, the lesser of the two and the more self-effacing.

Another centerpiece?

Probably Jeremy Shockey, who played hurt on Sunday and caught only one pass for nine yards. He'll probably complain in the next day or so that he should have been thrown to more often and if he doesn't, he'll be prodded by the media hordes to say so in the week before the game. (One reason Shockey IS a Saint is that he broke his leg two years ago while with the Giants and missed their Super Bowl, complaining loudly afterward that he was "forced'' to watch the game from a luxury suite.)

Just for the record, there are a couple of early lines out making the Colts favorites by 5 to 5 1/2 points. In other words, those folks think New Orleans will play better than it did on Sunday.

We all hope so. And we all will spend the next two weeks analyzing every one of the reasons to like one team or the other. Or finding reasons why to like the Saints.

One more thing.

The one thing we can say about Super Bowls over the last decade is this:

They aren't boring.