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?What goes around goes around goes around comes all the way back around? - Justin Timberlake
And in penning those words, Justin Timberlake summarized the 2006-2007 NFL season, and perhaps life itself.
See, this season began with a focus on the Mannings: while not technically the first game on the schedule (that honor fell to Miami vs. Pittsburgh, which at the time seemed like a much bigger deal than you would have perceived it in, say, Week 15), it was the spotlight contest of Week 1: ?The Manning Bowl,? we called it, even though Peyton and Eli wouldn?t directly oppose each other. The Colts won, like they seemingly always do before November, and with one media swarming hug at midfield, our thoughts had moved to Week 2.
But now, in the final game of the season, here we are again, with a glare of attention directly on someone with ?Manning? stitched across the back of their jersey. What went around has, indeed, come around. But in a broader way, the entire Manning family ? the story of the father, and the boys ? is representative of more than football. It?s a story about life.
Any time themes of father and a son intersect a popular sport and a championship, melodrama is sure to flow freely. The Mannings, though, are representative ? currently ? of an entire cycle of American life. You have the working-class-made-good father, who endured professionally in a city few would deem their first choice to make a better life later for his family; you have the eldest son, a study in discipline and commitment, determined to never let down his father, and at a certain level, exceed everything that came before him; the younger brother, of course, can?t live up to that, so he defines himself in a different way, via means that permit his uniqueness. And the final brother, perhaps the closest with the oldest, carved an entirely different path for himself, one that not only permitted uniqueness, but forced it.
No matter what you believe about this game and its ultimate effect on Peyton?s legacy, the Mannings as a family are, as one unit, representative of every major theme of life development you can find.
Rooting for the eldest Manning son, then, is a natural course of action, one simply affirming that some day, the son replaces the father as the star of the family by mastering a final hurdle of his own. A cheer every time Peyton lofts one deep is, in that way, an endorsement for the expected order of things. Where you come down on those passes ? whether you gasp with anticipation before exploding in glee or curse the time in the pocket only to punctuate it with a slammed fist once Dallas Clark hauls it in ? may say as much about you as anything else in the world.
So root for Peyton? or root against him. You?re choosing a broader side than just Bears or Colts, Chicago or Indianapolis, NFC or AFC, defense or offense. You?re choosing a stance on the world, for yourself.
And why wouldn?t you be, in this game? The jersey says Manning. Everything, after all, comes back around to that.
