More Pre-Super Bowl XLI Thoughts (or football-related marital disputes)

I offer a rooting-interest question on the eve of Super Bowl XLI that indirectly (alright, really indirectly) touches on the world of Sports Law Blog.

I am rooting for the Colts, in part because I want to see Manning win a Super Bowl (for many of the reasons I wanted to see Steve Young win one back in 1994-95). And in part because I developed a visceral distaste for the Bears during my freshman year in college. I hit a Chicago-area school the year after the Super Bowl Shuffle Bears and found Ditka too obnoxious and the media too fawning to be bearable (no pun intended). I still have not gotten over that (and I still cannot stand to listen to Ditka). But I digress.

My wife, born and raised in Baltimore, says I should not root for the Colts because of what they did to the city in sneaking away to Indianapolis in the middle of the night, tearing the heart out of a city that lived and died with its team. (Remember the movie Diner, where the woman had to pass a test of Colts knowledge in order for her boyfriend to marry her?). But whatever sympathy I had for the city (and my wife and I did not know each other back then) disappeared when Baltimore threw around a lot of money and a sweetheart stadium package to steal the Browns away from Cleveland, tearing the heart out of a city that lived and died with its team.

Her response is that what the Colts did was different, because they sneaked away in the middle of a snowy night. Baltimoreans went to sleep with a team and woke up without one. I say that is a difference in degree of obnoxiousness, but the crime is the same.

Thoughts as you enjoy the game?

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