It was a good Super Bowl.

Started out with the first ever returned kick for a touchdown to open the game and endured drenching rains for its entirety. Now a black head coach has won the Super Bowl, Peyton Manning has finally silenced his critics (at least temporarily) and defense really does win championships – as long as it is attached to a very potent offense as well. It was a delightfully sloppy game with a total of five lost fumbles and three interceptions, one of which was returned for the back-breaking touchdown by the Colts’ Kelvin Hayden.

In 2005, Super Bowl XL ended with much anguish when the Steelers beat the Seahawks and the officiating was a big issue to non-Steeler fans. This year – very few calls were made and perhaps the lone bad call was reversed on a challenge for a Harrison catch. No “what ifs” or “if onlys”, the Colts won 29-17 in a game that likely would have been more lopsided “if only”. And thankfully Prince had no wardrobe malfunctions.

The Chicago players were gracious in their loss and still touted their gains of 2006 and the pride in their accomplishments as they should be. The Colts finally put the stamp of respect on both Manning and Dungy that is undeniable. It was, in retrospect, one of the best Super Bowls in recent memory because it was all about the game and little about anything else. No fights, no coachings screaming at the referees. No constant flow of penalty flags. No cheap shots. It was finally just a football game between two teams playing their hearts out inside the rules and outside the excuses. It was what it is always supposed to be.

So kudos to both teams for both exceeding expectations this season. The Bears enter into the offseason apparently happy with Rex Grossman at the helm though there’s hardly a fantasy football fan that doesn’t wonder what Brian Griese would so with the opportunity. Thomas Jones enters into the final year of his under-paid contract with Drew Rosenhaus as an agent so expect some drama there. With Cedric Benson bowing out on Sunday on just his second carry thanks to a knee injury, maybe Jones is not quite as expendable as some may believe. Benson makes the big bucks but he’s had two knee injuries in the last two years and that makes relying solely on him an obvious risk.

The Colts enter the off-season with most major stars still under contract and the tandem of Dominic Rhodes and Joseph Addai proved as potent as Edgerrin James by himself. While many Super Bowl champs stumble the next year, there’s a sense that won’t happen to this team. From the head coach down to the ball boys, it’s a team devoid of the egotism that often gets in the way.

As we drift into the offseason, NFL football is over other than the Pro Bowl where the most popular uninjured players get a free trip to Hawaii in exchange for a scrimmage that only the youngest players really care about. There’s more left to happen though, what with six teams swapping out head coaches and 11 switching their offensive coordinators. The Cowboys still have yet to replace Bill Parcells and by March we get into the free agency period that will likely provide at least a few notable changes.

Drop by the blog in the offseason from time to time since I’ll be posting something new about each week depending on what happens. Time now to reconnect with your other pleasures in life, the least of which are those people close to you.

And with that the 2006 season draws to a close and the new year begins.

And take time to ponder what Manning and Dungy just proved – success comes to those who just keep trying regardless of what the critics say.

Perhaps there is nothing in all of sports journalism quite like the frenzy leading up to the Super Bowl. After having spent the full year following all the NFL, there’s really nothing to be said in those inane interviews that I or anyone else remotely current on the NFL do not already know. So far I have managed to miss it all, delving into NFL news only in so far as coaching changes are happening and what few details actually pertain to the game.

I made my pick – Colts by ten points. Mainly because the line is seven points and I am honor bound to go above or below the line lest I get numerous emails calling me a waffler (actually worse words are used but you get the picture). Should be interesting and hopefully entertaining. Matching up the X’s and O’s points to a nice win by the Colts who have a decent running game and have been strangely laid back on the passing so far in the post-season. With the Bears weakness being against the pass – particularly wide outs – I would expect the so-far quiet Harrison and Wayne to emerge in a bigger role on Sunday.

The Super Bowl is always fascinating to me in terms of how fans view it. There is nothing quite as pompous and quick to defend their team as the eventual winner of the game. No matter if it was a 60 minute nail biter, the hometown fans are typically assured that their team is truly superior to all others and that lasts at least until the next season when it becomes blatantly obvious that maybe a return won’t happen.

The homers from the losing team are usually fairly gracious if only because they have no real choice. Here’s hoping that there are no officiating calls in question as in 2005 which left a rather sour taste in the mouth of many. But everyone got past that fairly fast if only because the sport, as always, becomes talking badly about the winner and how they did not deserve it. At least this year we will have two entirely new (relatively speaking) teams in question and will get to hear all new homers crow or grumble before the 2007 season steals our attention.

The Bears have a chance in this game in the most dangerous way. As they showed against the Saints, turnovers are drive killers and even a defense that gives up yardage can be plenty good to win if they stop points and get turnovers. Speaking as someone who faithfully has predicted and projected every game for the last ten years, it’s pretty easy to hate teams that do that since matching up strengths and weaknesses is meaningless when one team turns the ball over repeatedly. It just slants the game greatly and changes game plans. Eventually it all becomes too much water against the dam as happened to the Saints.

This is clearly being considered the Peyton Manning bowl and rightfully so in many ways. But regardless of what transpires, it won’t change my opinion of him much. Football truly is a team sport and all facets have to contribute. A great quarterback is a benefit to be sure, but hardly alone is enough to win a game. I could go on endlessly on my personal “game theory” of how each contest plays out, but suffice it to say that the only time one player can be enough to win a game is when the opponent is very weak (or the player is Vince Young apparently).

What I expect to happen? Manning is going to want to avoid mistakes but not so much that he changes the way he plays. Both teams will come out slowly with the run just to size up the defense. Both teams will try to insert one or two long pass plays during this time and the success or failure of those plays won’t actually have a great bearing on how the game progresses though it will seem like it does. The Bears are only using Berrian with any real success on deep routes so that’s a little limiting against the good secondary of the Colts while the Bears secondary has been burned by the wide outs. Dallas Clark has done such a great job down the middle when the safeties worry about Wayne and Harrison that it will be interesting to see how the Bears handle him. But I would expect the second half to be productive for Manning and most likely for Wayne and Harrison.

The Bears should be able to run enough to keep the game close at least for a while. The Colts on the road have been remarkably weak over the last two months and though they held Jamal Lewis at bay in Baltimore – hey, who didn’t this year? Thomas and Benson are both better than Lewis.

In the end, I would expect the score to be pretty close at halftime and the Colts to take control via the pass in the second half. The two biggest ways this game changes – the Chicago defense continues to get turnovers or Grossman starts making mistakes since he’s hardly used to the biggest of stages. Let the Colts get up by more than seven points in the first half and the game is over.

Hopefully you’ll be watching the game with friends and family. As involved as I am with the NFL, I always consider the day after the Super bowl as the first day of the New Year. It’s still 2006 until someone holds up the Lombardi Trophy. Looks like the Colts will be the one but the Bears will make it interesting and if the defense comes up big and Grossman remains a positive – this could be a very entertaining game.

Oh yes, in advance of Monday – Happy New Year to you and yours!

AKA – It was different when I was your age.

I have a son who is just entering his teen years and while he has been a great kid and is turning into what I believe to be a great young man, he’s certainly not a clone of me. Nor is he waiting for my instructions on how to live his life. All good in that “big picture” sort of way, but not without the normal bit of parental anxiety.

His hair is now about to the bottom of his ears in a style I once described as “Shaggy from Scooby-do” though that hardly made a dent into his preferences. He still has eyebrows, I guess, though they are seen only when I have the top down on the Jeep. He hasn’t been mistakened for a girl although these days I suppose there is no real standard on the other side of the fence anyway.

After making a few comments about his hair that I, as his father, feel obligated to make, I settled down in the den to watch some TV. It was at that time my wife brought out photo albums including the blue one. The one that had photographs of yours truly when I was at high school. Playing football with friends, maybe eight prom/dance pictures wearing a rented tux or the same pale blue suit. There was one small similarity in those pictures that was noted by my wife – my hair was about as long as his. In a few cases, even longer. But – that was the late seventies.

I also pointed out the numerous pictures from my senior year in high school where my hair was not long and parted in the middle but instead reasonably short and well coiffed. I almost pawned off my longer hair as a small period of fashion until my wife recalled that my head had been shaved the previous summer due to my car accident and had not had time to reprise “Shaggy”.

So now I have lost any leverage I may have had about getting my kid’s hair cut. It’s not like all his friends are not the same. It’s not like a trip to his school to pick him up doesn’t verify he is merely fitting into the grand scheme that evidently even I followed some 30 years ago. Even the girls at his school seem to have longer hair draped around their face fairly often.

So I made a bit of an observation and decided that these kids who are walking through the gates of adulthood are leaving behind their childhood as they prepare for being “grown-up” into whatever they turn into. Made me think that all the years with my son so far have been like his larval stage (and yes, the term grubby has come to mind). For the next several years, I suppose we are treated to his cocoon phase – locked in his bedroom playing music I mostly do not like while wearing his hair like some covering while he develops. I know from experience he’ll emerge at some point be the man I am convinced he will be. A butterfly, moth or even one of those aliens from the movie “Cocoon”, but he’ll come out of his room one day dressed like he means business with better looking hair than I ever had and acting like a man.

And then he’ll leave. I’ll probably miss the cocoon days too, just as I miss the years of his childhood. And maybe, just maybe, I can finally get the answer to the question that plagues me daily now.

“What in the hell kind of music are you listening to?”

Good times…