The Sun Will Come Out…

On Sunday, I started my day by badly dinging my ribs playing a flag football game and ended it watching my Noles lose a very winnable game in the NCAA tournament.

Sunday, was not what you would classify as a ‘good day’. Though I did dominate at flag football until my legs stopped working because. I. Am. Old.

The sun was literally shining when I woke this morning and the little gremlin living between my ribs who spent yesterday afternoon stabbing me with a steak knife had been replaced by uncomfortable yet manageable constant ache.

The sun and reduced pain helped with my mood and then around 10am Twitter blew up.

It is official, Peyton has chosen Denver.

It might be my imagination but it seems like the sun added an extra watt or two upon hearing that news.

I have said for a long time, that Tim Tebow as Broncos quarterback leaves me as conflicted as a Log Cobin Republican, so if/when Tim heads to another berg to spread the gospel I will be thrilled.

But it goes beyond that for me. For once, Denver was the chosen location.

Over the last few years, Denver has made most of its (non-Tebow) sporting news as being the flaming car wreck of a town that free agents flee at first opportunity.

Denver has started to get used to rejection. First Jay Cutler’s feeling got hurt and he went running into the waiting, angina-clogged arms of Chicago. Brandon Marshall soon followed, taking his girl choking, tantrum throwing ways to Miami. Then Carmelo decided that he would be better off as the cause of all life’s problems in New York than be the superstar on the best sports team in Denver.

Being the capital of the mountain time zone (the time zone that TV forgot) it is easy to get an inferiority complex as you desperately try to figure out if the new Daily Show starts at 9pm or 11pm. Hear repeatedly that free agents only want big coastal cities, you tend to overlook the unparalleled lifestyle here – sun, mountains, space, relatively low cost of living – and start to wonder if there is something fundamentally wrong with you.

But now, one of the most hyped free agents to have never lived in southern Mississippi has chosen Denver. He turned down New York and California. He decided to not to return to the state where he became a college legend. He declined to take his talents to South Beach.

He likes us, he really likes us.

As a guy who spent countless words ripping into the Vikings for their obsessive chase of Brett Favre, it is only fair to note the similarities: a young quarterback with limitations but some talent, is put on the shelf to bring in a past-his-prime quarterback coming off of an injury.

And it should be noted that experiment ended with a near loss in the NFC title game.

Yes, this could end horribly for the Broncos. Manning could get injured early in the season and never come back but it could also end with Peyton bringing the leadership to a young offense that is desperately needed to make the team a real contender. That is the calculated gamble Elway and company made.

But that is a worry for another day.

After the last several years of our best sports stars telling us “it’s not you, it’s me.” Denver was turning into one of those weepy women on The Bachelor that was sure being one of 25 desperate women throwing themselves at one guy was the truest way to find true love.

Only this time, the woman that always gets rejected was handed the rose.

And now, all that is left is for tabloids to breathlessly track every moment of the new relationship to see if we can buck the odds and live happily ever after.

Tagged as: brandon marshall, broncos, carmelo anthony, denver, jay cutler, peyton manning, the bachelor