I Drank The Kool-Aid

So I'm at the Colts Pro Shop at the Circle Centre Mall this afternoon, gazing stupidly up at the line of replica game jerseys available for purchase. I had been thinking lately that I would like to get a Colts jersey, now that they had gotten to a Super Bowl. I was previously resistent to a Colts jersey, because of the ubiquity of the damn things, especially in the prime years of Harrison, Manning, and James. Everybody had one of those jerseys, either 88, 18, or 32. You rarely saw anyone wearing one of the other numbers.

(I suspect the reason you only used to see those numbers is that, until very recently, most of the Pink Shirts who pretend to like the Colts when they think they are supposed to like the Colts didn't know who any of the other Colts were, and didn't want to look uncool around their friends even if they did happen to know that #13 belonged to Mike Vander-shank-it.)

Anyway...I've been getting more and more okay with the idea of having a Colts jersey, even though everyone else already has one; I also thought it would be a nice way to remember their first trip to the Super Bowl, whether they win the game or not; and, finally, over the last week or so (knowing that I was going to have today off because I have a great boss), I've been thinking that it would be fun to make finally buying that jersey part of Super Bowl Sunday.

And oddly, as SuperFan as all of that sounds, the more I thought about it, the more okay I was with it. Except for one thing - the number on the jersey. 88 and 18 are just too easy (no 32 to worry about anymore) - and 29 seemed too popular, too. I like 59, but since Cato June will be leaving at the end of this season (he's our best linebacker, and so must be shown the door in keeping with our pattern of defense-building over the last three years), I decided against that. I thought of 21 and 44, fiery sparkplugs from different parts of this season (when they were healthy).

But I could not think of just which of those numbers was the right one. I stood there in the Colts Pro Shop looking up at those jerseys for ten or fifteen minutes, probably - circling the shop and checking out the other merchandise, too (there was an AFC Champions skull cap that was calling my name, but I decided I would be less happy with it if they lost the Super Bowl and that there would be probably be a Super Bowl Champions cap if they won) - until I realized that my eyes kept drifting back to #44. There was no question about the color - white jerseys are not acceptable, so it has to be blue.

Now you know what had to happen next, right? I asked the sales clerk if they had an extra large, blue Dallas Clark replica jersey. She gave me one of those sympathetic "you're a retard" smiles - you know the look Haley gets on her face when she opens the case, peeks in, and sees that it's the million dollar case? Bingo!

So there was my perfect Colts jersey gameday gameplan, in freefall. I hemmed and hawed and then had an epiphany - see if the girl who had helped me before knew of any other XL blue jerseys that they were out of for sure. I tracked her down, posed my question, waited for her to think it over. Her answer was quick, yet oddly ambiguous - she didn't think so, but she wasn't sure. So I could at least narrow down my choices.

I circled the wagons (actually, the cash registers) a couple of more times, then stood before the jerseys once again. Earlier this week when I decided on this gameplan, I had decided on either 44 for Clark or 21 for Sanders, but when I got to the Colts Pro Shop today, there was also 98 for Mathis. This was an interesting option. I like Robert Mathis, he's a great player, and not many Pink Shirts are aware of him. In the end, I went with Sanders, though. I located the girl, walked over to her, and said, "How about Bob Sanders?"

Again with the sympathetic smile - like she had just peeked at the $750,000 case! She knew just like that that they didn't have an XL blue Sanders jerseys...yet when I asked her specifically which ones they did not have, just a moment earlier, she had not known. I don't bring this up as a criticism (they were very busy today, as you can well imagine), just as an interesting bit of trivia.

So, no XL blue Bob Sanders jerseys, either. "You're picking all the popular names, huh?" she says to me. "We have plenty of Manning and Wayne, though." I wanted badly to run her down in the street with some sort of vehicle with an 8-cylinder engine. Finally...I went with Manning. I hated myself very briefly. There's a good way to distinguish yourself from the crowd, John-O, get a Manning jersey. I managed to rationalize it in part because Manning is more likely to be a Colt for longer than most of those other guys.

Now I'm sitting at my computer and writing this blog post, with my Manning jersey on and my little Colts frustration football at the ready. (It's one of those soft little footballs - about the size of a mango, I guess - with a little box inside that speaks phrases when you throw the ball and it hits something. "Touchdown Colts!" "Go Horse!" That kind of thing. It's good for throwing when your team does something stupid.) It's twenty minutes to six and we're about an hour away from kickoff. I'm hoping that this will be the best football game I've ever seen.

Are you ready for some football?