Open Letter To Peyton Manning

Dear Peyton,

Thank you for showing us, the loyal fans, who is the M.V.P. of the league. The Denver Broncos questioned the toughness of your team by implying they were soft. It was nice that you demonstrated their arrogance by bitch-slapping the Broncos back to the Mile High City in a 49-24 ass-kicking. That little 2 yard flick to James Mungro set the tone for the rest of the game. It wasn't pretty, but the results were fabulous.

However I am not writing to you to praise you near-diety status among the NFL elite. I am writing you for a far more humble purpose. Here's the deal, I'm part of a small group that likes to play football every other weekend in a small park in Fishers. It's simply a friendly game of two-hand touch as we don't want to hurt ourselves too badly. I'm amazed at how many collisions we still inflict on each other despite the lack of pads. Anyway we usually have one person who is an all-time quarterback. Our all-time Q isn't the greatest passer in the world. Okay he really makes lots of bad to questionable decisions in a game, like Brett Farve against the Minnesota Vikings.

Back to the point our small group would be honored to have you play with us on a Sunday sometime this year. We realize that you will be busy the next few weeks and hopefully you'll have a nice trip to Jacksonville at the end, but sometime during the off season or during a bye week we would be thrilled at seeing a master perform his craft. No cameras would be involved, no radio stations broadcasting the game, just a couple of guys having fun playing the sport they love with maybe a few beers afterwards if you're in the mood. If you want to bring Marvin Harrison, Dallas Clark, and a couple of other friends feel free to. When picking teams we just have to make sure one side isn't loaded up on speed. I might be able to keep up with center Jeff Saturday but to be honest I'm not sure I'm even that fast. Marvin would dust our speediest guy hands down. Then again Marvin leaves most professional players in his dust so maybe it wouldn't be a bad reflection on us.

Oh, I do have to warn you we do have one Idiot Receiver. You know the type, nothing he ever does is wrong. He never runs the wrong route, or the ball was just too high for him to catch, or something similar. He might mouth off, but I know you've handled similar situations. Just put the Idiot Reciever in his place once and let the game go on.

If you're interested in a friendly pick up game please let me know. I'm sure we can work out a time for the master.

Thank you,
Brian