There will always be that final scene in Miami of Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning, the NFL's two lost souls, finally finding their way to the promised land of pro football immortality -- hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, awash in multicolored confetti and, on this night, an unrelenting southern Florida rain.
Dungy, who lost his son James to suicide in 2005 and who had labored like a gentleman farmer in a sallow field of missed opportunities, became the first black head coach to win an NFL title.
Manning, fast becoming defined as a shameless corporate pitchman who happened to put up the biggest numbers of any quarterback in a generation, finally validated his place in the record books -- shedding the Dan Marino label for the John Elway legacy.
And it is that image and those significant milestones that threaten to overshadow one undeniable conclusion: Super Bowl XLI, between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears, was the worst ever.
It was a washed-out disappointment between two football teams that came into the game with very high expectations and -- in most cases on both sides of the ball -- could not have lived them down any worse.
Let's start with the biggest star of the game -- Manning. He came into Super Bowl XLI with a QB rating of 101.0 for the 2006 season, having thrown for 31 touchdowns with only nine interceptions.
The conventional wisdom is that the Colts of Super Bowl XLI were not the worst Colts team in a Super Bowl, that the Colts of the 1970 season were much worse. Well, that's exactly the point. Not much was expected from the 1970 team. Not true of Manning's Colts. Not true of Manning.
