I HOPE YOU'RE SITTING DOWN FOR THIS NEWS: ELI MANNING IS NOT AWESOME

by Andy Kissko, Rivalfish

I try to be humble. I do. Most people that know me would say "Uhh, yeah. I know why. It should be extremely easy for you. Plus it's ironic that you're bragging about your humility, ass" but I'd like to ignore those people for now. I do my best not to say things like "I can pull better looking women than you can", "trust me, I'm a lot smarter than you are", "No, I'll drive because I'm much better at it than you are", "My dad can beat up your mom", or "I can watch The Princess Diaries for longer without crying than you". But sometimes you just have to do a little flexin' on people and keep order maintained. Let the pecking order be known. Show a little muscle. So I'm going to go ahead and say it- "I'm more sick of hearing about Eli Manning not being awesome than you are."

What other city would produce a QB that elicits headlines, HEADLINES, like "Eli is Average!!!!", "So Far Eli Has Been Sorta Iffy"? To quote Cindy Adams- "Only in New York kids, only in New York." Where I come from you write stories about things that are not average. That's what makes people want to read them. Do you know how many NFL players are pretty average? Every single one of those 400 NFL players you can't name. And Eli. So a headline proclaiming this revelation for all of these players is anything but warranted. It would be a waste of time. Except for Eli apparently.

Sure I realize that expectations for Eli are much higher, so his averageness is viewed as a disappointment, thereby making it theoretically newsworthy. Unintelligent media people proclaimed him to be of "regal breeding" for an NFL QB. Let me get this straight- because of who Eli's brother is, he is suddenly a shoe-in to greatness? Peyton's great, yes, but he is great because he is Peyton, not because his Dad was above average. Brett Lindros didn't play for too long in the NHL as I recall, even though his brother was great. Roger Clinton is just the moron brother of (who many consider to be) a good president. Using NYC sports media logic, by definition he should be the heir-apparent to the US Presidency. So why can't Elah (as Phil Simms and Peyton call him) just be the goober brother of Peyton? I ought to correct myself though- Peyton is a goober as well, but Elah is even more of a goober. An uber-goober, if you will.

But Elah's hype isn't just genetic. When he and his regally-family-jeweled daddy thumbed their noses at San Diego and declared themselves too good for even the #1 pick, Eli set his bar even higher. Saying the Chargers were not Eli-ready enough, and were in too small of a market to properly harness what would be Eli's Lombardi Trophy Factory Hype Machine, they left for the greener PR pastures of New York City. The raised the stakes even before entering the biggest market. With the most relentless media. And the least patient fans. Doing that would wind up subjecting knowledgeable sports readers like to you to these pathetic articles of which I am crusading against.

I get that he was over-hyped. Who couldn't predict that this acharismatic aw-shuckser wasn't worthy of that degree of adulation? I also get that the east coast media hype machine, knowing that news is a commodity, pumped out article after article about Elah because they knew that the hungry NYC fans would read it. What I don't get is who honestly bought into half of the hyperbole? Did any of your friends tell you to mark their words- Eli would be a perennial Pro-Bowler? No. We all endured a stupid media, force-feeding wishful-thinking fans an endless stream of tall tales about Eli's Greatness. (I once read that he hired Chuck Norris as his maid, in fact.) Sadly, now that the media has Elah egg on their face, they have to save face and feign shock now that he is average. So now they waste our time twice for the same thing. They took an average player and wasted our time telling us he was insanely talented, then to counteract that, they now have to waste our time to convince us, that he is human after all. Thanks again East Coast sports media. Job well done.

With so much hype he was destined to either flourish or fail. Instead he's done neither. He's a decent quarterback. He'll have three pretty nice games, then a clunker on the fourth. He'll throw two or three TDs, but an interception or two, as well. As a result of his over-fueled east coast hype machine, we are constantly subjected to his Bologna sandwich charisma, and his non-awesomeness screamed in headlines. Why can't he just quietly be average? Thanks to the NYC media he's the only person that is not merely average, but outrageously extreme in his averageness.

Come on though, really, who could have seen his non eventful career coming? Oh right, everyone in the world except people selling articles to NYC fans, and Elah's dad, RoyalNuts.