Indianapolis is in pandemonium right now, a day after the Super Bowl favorites, the Colts, were upset in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs by the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Peyton Manning's blaming his offensive line, some in the media are blaming James Dungy's suicide, and Colts fans are blaming... Manning?

Mr. All-America and NFL golden boy Peyton Manning catching the ire of Colts fans...that sentence seems as preposterous as saying a sequel to "Brokeback Mountain" starring Jessica Alba and Jennifer Aniston wouldn't be an instant classic.  That's what you'd think if you never visited the numerous Colts message boards around the internet yesterday evening.

To the contrary, fans everywhere are clammoring for Manning to figure out how to win the big game soon or move on.  One fan on a message board located at http://colts.theinsiders.com suggested that both Manning and Dungy need to be canned soon.

Manning isn't black.  It's a fairly self-evident realization, I know, but one that carries significance for the purposes of comparison to other QBs -- black QBs -- around the league who have caught flak from their fanbase in the past...namely, Daunte Culpepper and Donovan McNabb.  Both QBs have heard mumblings from the public on numerous occasions that question their worth to the team.  Granted, both QBs have performed at less-than-ideal quality in several important games, but overall, neither team could possibly hope to find a better replacement.

Peyton Manning says, "Right back   The real problem here, though, is not in how the fans have
             at ya, Indy fans."                   criticized these QBs; it's in the way those who seek to disprove their criticisms have immediately thrown the race card into the fray and quickly assumed racism must be the root of all evil.

...Ridiculous, considering everyone knows George Steinbrenner holds the championship belt for his expertise in the field of evil-doing.

A team like the Colts, Vikings, or Eagles should be able to hold its head up high when it has a QB of the calibre that these 3 QBs represent, and yet each team now possesses at least a small portion of fans who are disbelieving of the QBs' true value to their teams.  However, only now, with the addition of Manning to a list he probably would rather not be a part of, are we able to see the dynamic of fan criticism without regard to race...that is, of course, unless someone is willing to suggest racism is what spurs on the hatred of a white player.

It is fairly evident, now that 2-time NFL MVP Peyton Manning isn't such a V.I.P. in Indy at the present time, that fans question players' values to their teams based on expectations of complete perfection, and the players' subsequent lack of attaining it. 

The psychological babble I want to use in support of my theory is the notion that we, as humans, are conditioned to remember the negative more vividly than the positive.  Think back to your childhood.  What memory instantly pops into your head when you try to think of some significant memory in your history?  It's probably going to be when your pet hampster became the 1-course dinner for your bulldog Spike, when you asked Jane to the Prom, and she promptly pointed out that your pepperoni pizza face will grease her up too much in the slow dance, or when the nun who instructed you in Sunday school rapped a ruler across your nether region for daring to utter the phrase, "Big ####," in class.

We remember these things because they help us learn to protect ourselves from future misfortunes.  We don't need to remember the positive as strongly because having that situation reoccuring sometime in the future won't be a threat to our safety.

In my vein attempt to steer this blog back to its original point, I wish to draw the parallel between our remembrance of the negative and our inclination to lose faith in the most visible and important player               You'll remember this ruler when   on a sports team.  When we remember the negative over the                                    you're fifty!
positive, our opinions of that player are clouded and biased; it's not rooted in racism. 

Don't get me wrong...there are some racists out there who hate Culpepper and McNabb simply because they happen to be a little more resistant to sunburn (flip through Mark Fuhrman's roladex and you will probably find a few dozen right away), but there are many who are quick to assume that everyone who dislikes these players must be a racist.  Being white obviously didn't protect Manning from the same undue criticism that his black counterparts endure, but I'm betting Rush Limbaugh and the leader of the NAACP won't be making any comments on that fact any time soon.

The bottom line is that the fans who dislike their QBs should stop hating on their own players and instead turn their rage to a much more pressing, urgent matter that is much more deserving of public outlash and cries for change -- why on Earth did Universal Pictures not release a "Brokeback Mountain 2: When Good Girls Go Bad" follow-up?