Well…it’s been one week since Super Bowl XLIV commenced….and the celebration in New Orleans, throughout the state of Louisiana, and all along the diaspora of the Who Dat/We Dat Nation continues unabated. The fact that Mardi Gras/Carnival is already ongoing right now in the Crescent City is just another excuse that Saints fans don’t need…but what better reason to extend the celebration?

And not even a freak snowstorm or unseasonably cold weather could keep the masses from coming out for the festivities…the Championship parade on Tuesday drew an unprecedented 800,000+ visitors to The Big Easy, and backed up traffic so bad in metro NOLA that even Louis Armstrong International Airport had to delay some flights. “It was like a reverse hurricane evacuation..but with everybody coming into the city,” quoted a city official.

And it wasn’t just New Orleans digging in the festivities, either…Baton Rouge is planning a celebration for its own native son hero, Pick-6 hero’legend QB slayer Tracy Porter (who was raised just across the river in Port Allen); my home city of Opelousas is planning a parade and a name change of a street in honor of WR Devery Henderson, another native son who also happened to attend LSU in college.  And don’t get me started about Drew Brees, who has already had the honors of a Disney parade, leading the “Lombardi Gras” parade, getting a call from Prez Obama (who also was smart enough to pick the Saints to win, BTW), and will probably have enough endorsements to set him up for life. (Oh, and he’s supposed to lead the Krewe of Bacchus parade through uptown N’Awlins tonight, too. Try not to throw out your arm, Drew…save some for the repeat.)

Meanwhile, on the flip side of the scoreboard, the Colts were getting what every Super Bowl runnerup/loser usually encounter…especially one whom had been such prohibitive favorites. Amid all the shock and stunned silence of seeing their Super Bowl dreams go fleeting out the windo as fast as Porter completed his 70-yard Pick-6, there were the screams about whether or not Peyton Manning “choked” another one.  (He’s now 9-9 in postseason games, with only the ring he won in SB XLI against Chicago.) There was the crying about the organization’s decision to deliberately rest their players for the final two games rather than go for the perfect 16-0 season.  (They pulled all their starters in the third quarter against the New York Jets, thusly losing that game and the subsequent game against the Buffalo Bills; it almost came back to haunt them when they ended up facing the same Jets in the AFC Championship game.)

Perhaps that shock of losing was responsible for the abysmal turnout for the Colts return to Indianapolis, with no less than 11 — that’s right, ELEVEN – fans meeting the team plane arrival back in Indy.

But even that didn’t compare to the attempts by the more distraught Colts Fan to rationalize away their team’s defeat…mostly by denigrating the Saints’ victory as somehow tainted.

The main focus of Colts Fan’s ire seemed to focus of the gutty and successful decision of Saints head coach Sean Payton to attempt an onsides kick to start the third quarter. Most folks on the outside looking in saw the move as risky, gutsy, ballsy, and typical of the gambling mood of Payton..and its success indicative of how much he trusted both his offense and defense….and how much he wanted to take advantage of an extended halftime show to keep Peyton Manning and the Colt offense off the field and cold.

That’s not how some Colts fans saw it , though.

One crushed fan named Charles Kellett decided that the bad luck of the Colts was not the result of the Saints being the better team, but because the game was…get this…FIXED. By the officials, and by the brass of the NFL. A sample of what Kellett wrote for a blog called The Bleacher Report:

I did not understand that scowl that Peyton Manning had on his face when he walked into the stadium.  I thought maybe he was tired of the cameras in his face, or that it was a put-on, however, in hindsight, I think he was told that the fix was in for the Saints to win.

[...]

The first two receptions by the Colts had a very clear defensive hold and a pass interference.  No Flag was thrown.  I had a bad feeling when I saw that.  Even with the Colts up by ten I knew something was wrong.  A defensive lineman for the Colts (unnamed) twittered after the game that he went to the refs to report that he was being held consistently and the ref would not even make eye contact with him.  ”Usually when I tell the ref that I’m being held he will ask his number.  Tonight I got no response, not even eye contact.  He would not even look at me!  That makes me think.”  A previous post was “I guess America wanted the Saints to win.”  I think the NFL wanted the Saints to win.

The turning point in the game was really the on-side kick to start the second half.  It was not shown during the game, but a day later they released the replay that showed Baskett with both hands on the ball and he and the ball were on the ground in contact with an opposing player.  That is a recovery right there.  Give Peyton the ball at mid-field and that is a guarantee for at least 3.  13-6 or more likely 17-6.  That changes the game big time.

I watch the replays of the Saints highlights and in virtually every one of their big plays there were obvious holding calls that were not made.  Penalties:  Saints 3-19  Colts 5-45.  The Colts had only five in their other two post season games.  I think this is why Tony Dungy retired after the loss to San Diego.  That game was stolen by the officials and this one was to.  NFL politics.  The integrity of the NFL is a really big question to me now.  I have in the past, but this one really was blatant and a lot of people had to know to cover it up.  All the analysts were in too.  The TV people were clearly in to cut away and not show certain replays to cover for what the refs were doing.

Sure. The NFL was soooooo biased against Peyton Manning and the Colts for being 5 point favorites that they deliberately threw the game in favor of the Saints. When most of the analysts were pulling for a Colts-Vikings (or to be more direct, a Peyton Manning/Brett Farve) or a Colts-Cowboys Super Bowl. Of course, that explains why those dirty Saints headhunters were allowed to knock out two Hall-of-Fame QBs (Farve and Arizona’s Curt Warner) and why they got those home cooking calls to defeat Minnesota in the NFC Championship game…never mind seven Viking turnovers and an ill-fated pass across his body to the middle of the field by Farve that Tracy Porter picked off to kill the potential game-winning drive by Minnesota late in the fourth quarter. Never mind that Drew Brees managed to get off eight straight pass completions to open receivers in the drive that gave them the lead in the 4th quarter of the big game…or that Manning threw a hurried pass under fire from a Saints blitz that Porter jumped on and returned back the distance. Naaaaah, the better team just couldn’t have won fair and square….it MUST be a conspiracy!!!

Well…at least Kellett is more of a novice blogger, so his enthusiasm can be excused.

Steve Montana, on the other hand, is a more seasoned commentator, so he has no excuses.

Now, at least Montana is man enough to give the Saints some credit for winning..well “up to a point”. But he sees his conspiracy theory in the onside kick call, which he proclaims to be “dirty pool” and a violation of the quietly assumed “gentleman’s agreement” that the team that loses the coin toss at tha beginning of the game must be allowed to receive the ball to start the second half. A sample of his rant, also posted in The ‘Bleacher Report”:

When the Saints won the coin toss and elected to receive the ball to start the game, they made their choice. The other team gets to receive the ball to start the second half, but the Colts never received the ball. It was stolen from them on a cheap and dirty onside kick.

Although it was a legal play by existing NFL rules, there has always been an unwritten rule, a gentleman’s rule that you do not attempt an onside kick to start a half.

At any other time on a kickoff, fine, but when you win the coin toss, you only get to receive the ball to start a half once. You don’t get to break the rack in nine-ball 2 times in a row.

That would be greedy.

Actually, Stevie…no, it wouldn’t. Just because you elect to receive the ball and force the other team to kick off does not mean that you automatically recieve the bal to run plays from scrimmage.  You still have to receive the kick. And the kicking team reserves to themselves the right to attempt at any time an onside kick to gain possession of the ball; when that happens, it is up to the opposing team to recover the attempt. It isn’t cheating if its perfectly legal.

And besides….the risks involved in attempting an onside kick at that time are enormous enough — giving Peyton Manning and the Colts offense a very short field to work with if the attempt had failed — that most teams would not have done it; but I’m guessing that Payton felt that the benefits of “Ambush”-ing the Colts and getting more time for Brees and the offense, as well as keeping Manning off the field and cold, outweighed the risks enough for him to roll the dice.

The fact that it worked makes him look like a genius in the end, and someone who’s not afraid to risk it all for his team. If it had failed, and the Colts gone on to win, he would have been ripped apart for his decision…but that’s football for ‘ya. Just give him credit for having the cojones to make that call…and credit the Saints O for making his decision count by scoring the touchdown to put them ahead, too.

No fixes. No conspiracies.  The better team won Super Bowl XLIV…and they wore black and gold.

Deal with it, Indy, accept it, and prepare for next year.

Oh…and just in case you can’t get enough of Porter’s Pick-6 clincher, here you go:

Tribute to New Orleans Saints CB Tracy Porter’s 70-yard “Pick 6″ that sealed Super Bowl XLIV (includes both TV call by Jim Nantz/Phil Simms for CBS and radio call from Jim Henderson for NOLA local radio station WWL-AM/Saints Radio Network — via YouTube/CBS)