Peyton Manning has always been the best. Where have you been?

No one likes the mainstream media, except for the mainstream media.  No fan of any team is ever satisfied with the amount of coverage their team receives or doesn't receive.  Here's a perfect example: Patriots fans think the Colts are ballwashed more than the Patriots.  To us Colts fans, it's the opposite, and the same applies to players as well.

Peyton Manning proved years ago that he is the best quarterback to ever step foot on a football field, but the mainstream media is unwilling to give him his due credit.

If you were to go back in time to when Peyton was still in college and read the press clippings or watch ESPN, you'd see that even back then Peyton got no respect.  He was a highly touted prospect leaving college, a possible #1 pick in the draft.  Instead of talking about his measurables and production on the field, the media was enamored with the fact that Peyton couldn't beat Florida, and by extension couldn't win the big game.  While it's true that he went winless against Tennessee's biggest rival, that's not what the media should have been focusing on in the first place.  They should have been talking about how good of a football player he is.

Fast forward to his first few years in the NFL and these same arguments continued to follow him around.  After just a few short years in the NFL, he was already being labeled a choker and ridiculed for not winning the big one.  No matter how good he played, no matter how far his team went in the playoffs, it was never good enough.  It was always Peyton's fault for losing the big one no matter the circumstances.

Did us Colts fans believe that?  Not for one second.  We knew these claims were bogus from the get go.  Football is the consummate team sport, but for reasons unknown, the media thought it was best to put all of the blame squarely on Peyton's shoulders.

The media stated that for him to be considered one of the all time greats he needed a ring.  Colts fans who have been following Peyton religiously since he doned the blue horseshoe knew that using the number of Super Bowl rings a player has as a metric to measure greatness is absolutely absurd.  One of the strongest arguments against that premise is that there are mediocre quarterbacks who own a ring, and great quarterbacks who don't.  No one in their right mind would claim Trent Dilfer is better than Dan Marino or Jim Kelly.  But yet that's the logic the mainstream media uses.  Clearly that argument is illogical, but they don't care.

Nevertheless, Peyton got his.  By winning that ring the media promoted him from good to great.  Peyton finally won the "big one," and had nothing more to prove for the rest of his career.  Or so we thought.

Nowadays there's a new sentiment circulating the media: For Peyton to be considered the greatest quarterback of all time, or perhaps even the greatest football player of all time, he has to win another ring.  All of a sudden, winning the big one isn't good enough anymore.  You have to win multiple big ones in order to be considered the greatest of all time.  According to the mainstream media, being an NFL record 4 time MVP, Super Bowl MVP, Super Bowl winner, and all but guaranteed to own every record imaginable for a quarterback by the time he retires isn't good enough.  The only thing standing in his way is another Super Bowl ring.  How quaint.

The fact of the matter is none of that really matters.  We shouldn't care that some knowitall out in medialand thinks that in order for Peyton to be the best he needs another ring.  It's a farce, plain and simple.  We know the truth, and that's all the really matters.

Rest assured that one day reality will set in for this entity known as the mainstream media.  Sooner than later, Peyton will end this moot argument regarding who is the best ever.  It very well could happen in less than a month.  If the Colts win the Super Bowl, the mainstream media will most likely begin declaring something we Colts fans have known for years: Peyton Manning is the greatest quarterback of all time.

Peyton is the Rodney Dangerfield of football, he gets no respect, and that's the reality of the situation.  Until the time comes when the media acknowledges Peyton's greatness and stops using foolish arguments to diminish his accomplishments, my statement to them is quite simple: Go pound sand.