The greatest quarterback of all time was just beginning to celebrate one of his greatest victories and the drumbeat was already starting. After a week's worth of discussion about the importance of Sunday's AFC Championship Game to Peyton Manning's legacy, the storyline for the next two weeks begins to take shape: Manning must win the Super Bowl to cement that legacy and be considered the greatest ever.
Hogwash.
We find ourselves, sadly, in the nothing's-ever-good-enough era of sports. We talk more about who didn't get into the Hall of Fame than about who did. We obsess over every officiating mistake. We wring our hands about a word like "legacy" when it comes to deciding which brilliant player is better than which other brilliant player and by how much. It's paralysis by analysis, where the victim is our ability to enjoy.
So I'm here to say it right now, at the start of two weeks' worth of Super Bowl hype: Manning doesn't need to win this next game to be the greatest quarterback of all time. He already is. The results of one football game on Feb. 2, 2014, won't change that. And we all need to do a better job of appreciating what we're watching.