MIAMI — Oh, you mean there’s a game, too? A
football game, just to break up the monotony of all
those
celebrity-sponsored bashes on South Beach? What will become of all the
Brazilian supermodels?

After tuning in to Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith breaking with tradition and posing together
Friday morning with the Lombardi Trophy, I’m finished with this
animosity-free, distraction-free Super Bowl buildup and ready for some
action. And not the kind of action they’re seeing on South Beach, either.

Here then, friends, are XLI reasons Why The Colts Will Win Sunday:

What? XLI reasons? Save it for the book. We’ve got to stick the ads in somewhere.

OK, X reasons:

I — Peyton Manning vs. Rex Grossman.

Good
kid, Grossman, even rates the Hoosier hometown criticism discount. But
Peyton and Rex? C’mon. As soon as Manning gets over the early nerves –
and yeah, they’ll be there — he’s going to carve up that
familiar-looking Bears defense. Grossman will try to throw deep early,
and he might even have a bit of success early, but it’s hard to imagine
Good Rex won’t turn into Bad Rex once the pass rush starts coming. If
the Colts’ run defense can force its fair share of third-and-longs,
it’s going to be a party.

II — This
isn’t 1985 anymore, no matter how badly the Chicago papers want to
resurrect Mike Singletary, Dan Hampton and Steve "Mongo" McMichael. The
Chicago defense hasn’t been close to the same since it lost safety Mike
Brown in October and, more recently, tackle Tommie Harris in December.
(Which explains why wrong-headed scofflaw Tank Johnson is getting
another last chance.) Granted, they played well in the NFC title game
against New Orleans, but they were beneficiaries of a bout of Bears
weather against a dome-bound team.

III
– The AFC has won seven of the past nine Super Bowls and went 40-24
against the NFC this season. Even more, the Colts won six games this
season against teams that finished with a winning record, and got two
more victories against teams that finished .500. The Bears won three
against winning teams, and two more against .500 teams St. Louis and
Green Bay.

Enough facts?

Yes. Enough.

IV
– The Colts will have more than enough success running the football.
People have overlooked the fact that Indy has run the ball better than
anybody else this postseason. For all the talk the Colts are this
cutesy finesse team, the reason they’ve come this far is because
they’ve toed the traditional post-season line: They’ve run the ball and
stopped the run.

V — Oh, and here’s
why the Colts will have so much success with the run. The Bears will
play a lot of nickel defense, putting Ricky Manning Jr. on Dallas
Clark. That means one fewer big body stopping the run. It wouldn’t
surprise me a bit if a rookie named Joseph Addai emerged as a Super
Bowl MVP.

VI — Chicago’s Devin
Hester will not beat the Colts because the Colts won’t give him that
chance. Hey, boys, we don’t need any heroes, OK? Kick it to Kissimmee,
if necessary. Hunter Smith said during the week a team gets in trouble
trying to do things it doesn’t normally do. Let me help out here: What
the Colts normally do is give up big returns, and Hester normally
produces big returns.

If not Kissimmee, then Orlando.

VII
– Dwight Freeney will have a big day against Bears left tackle John
Tait. He’s been a beast all postseason, and he will continue the
rampage Sunday. The only thing that could slow down the Colts’ speedy
defensive ends: There’s talk of rain coming in Sunday, which could
leave a somewhat sloppier field. And that doesn’t even include the
impact it may have on Prince’s ‘do.

VIII
– The Colts are going to get one of those where-did-he-come-from
performances by someone like Terrence Wilkins, who has spent the week
hearing about Hester. Just a hunch.

IX
– The Bears will have some success on the ground — Thomas Jones is
the kind of cutback runner who gives the Colts’ pursuit-crazy defenders
trouble — but they won’t be dominant enough to keep the Indy offense
off the field. We keep hearing the overly simplistic analysis of this
game as the Colts offense against the Bears defense. Well, that’s what
we heard before the Baltimore game. And it was the Colts defense that
stole the show.

X — The Bears need
turnovers to beat the Colts. And the Colts aren’t going to turn it over
more than once. Manning’s gotten his interceptions out of the way. And
even if a running back fumbles, there’s always Jeff Saturday.

Here’s
my bottom line: It’s time. It’s time for the Colts, whose dream has
been deferred so many times before, to finish the job they started in
1998. They have been through way too much, too many trials and
tribulations, both on and off the field, to let this magical
opportunity slip through their fingers.

"You feel a small window of opportunity,” Manning said the other day. "While we’re here, we sure want to go ahead and win it.”

No worries.

They will.

By double digits, in fact.