Man, did I have one vicious nightmare Sunday night.  It was one of those really vivid ones, the kind where you wake up and you have to take a minute to re-acclimate yourself with your surroundings and then remind yourself that you were dreaming because everything seemed so real. 

It was three-fifteen in the morning, and I was sitting on our couch, eyes locked in on the television, unable to look away.  My eyes were not only fixed in a stare, but were wide with disbelief as I watched the horrific events unfold on the screen in front of me.  It was too awful to be true, yet there it was, the undeniable truth being broadcast for the world to see.  A truth that sent chills down my spine and waves of nausea through my body. (That actually could have been the Indian food, but I'm pretty sure it was the 'truth'.) 

Some nightmares are so frightening, so disturbing that they haunt your mind well after you wake up, and this was one of them.  In fact, the pictures - the images - that I saw on that television screen were so shocking that even after I woke up in a cold sweat the next  morning, dropped Mrs. SportDork off at the train station and ate my daily bowl of oatmeal, I couldn't shake them from my mind.  The graphic images were just too real, too vivid to be ignored.  How could I remember so many of the details?  How could the line between reality and creations of the mind become so blurred?  I had awoken confident that it had only been a figment of my imagination, but as the hours passed, doubt began to creep further into my mind.  The doubts started to erode my belief that it had all been a bad dream, like the elements slowly eroding the bottom of a water heater over time, compromising the tank until it begins leaking from the bottom, much like the sanity leaking from my head while wrestling with this terrifying nightmare.  (Our water heater just crapped out.  Thus the unlikely water heater analogy.)

I knew there was only one way to put the demons to rest.  I had resisted the urge all morning, in large part because I knew that my next course of action would only represent an admission that I was no longer certain where reality ended and this other world began.  I knew it would mean that I had let the voices in my head get to me, and once I started listening, there was no telling when I would stop.  I walked over to my computer, launched Internet Explorer, and pulled up the website.  My heart raced with anticipation as the page loaded.  In only seconds, I would either confirm that I had simply been haunted by an awful nightmare that bore no relation to reality, or I would discover that what I thought had been a hellish nightmare from hours before that still filled my head was no nightmare - it was a stark reality that could not be denied, one that I had in fact witnessed.  Hands shaking, I steadied myself as the page appeared.  My eyes took in the information before me, and in an instant, everything I knew of this world came crashing down around me as I let out a scream and struggled to comprehend how my nightmare could have become reality.  I quickly refreshed the page, but there it was again - confirmation that I was living my worst nightmare.  The words were simple, the font non-descript, but the message - the message will haunt me for the rest of my life:

ELI MANNING TAKES GIANTS TO SUPER BOWL.

Awesome.

I'm begging you - please make it stop.  Just let me turn on the TV two Sundays from now and see Brett Favre warming up for Super Bowl XLII.  I know - he and his wounded quail overtime interception are the primary reason the Packers didn't make it to the big game, and Eli outplayed the seasoned veteran in the biggest game of his young career.  But I'd rather watch Favre sling it around on the big stage than Manning "manage" the game any day.  And more importantly, would you rather have:

a)  Two weeks of Deanna Favre breast cancer stories sprinkled with some Brett Favre pain killer addiction/"will he or won't he retire?" special interest pieces,

OR

b) 'Round the clock "The Mannings are the first family of football" stories accompanied by nausea-inducing childhood home movie clips?  

Please.  I can't handle another home video of Eli crying in the front yard because Peyton gave him a wedgie.  I just can't do it.

Here - you decide.  Would you prefer two weeks of this:

Or this?

I rest my case.

On a loosely related note, I came across this guy while looking for pictures of Deanna Favre.  While breast cancer is certainly not funny, the thought of this idiot walking around the parking lot before a game is.

Wouldn't the hat get in the way?

How 'bout that Philip Rivers?  He may be a d*ck, but he's one supremely talented, courageous d*ck.  Given the opportunity, I think he would have switched his bad leg for L.T.'s "bad" leg, and yet Rivers was the one running around the field on Sunday, gutting it out, while L.T. was chilling on the bench behind his tinted visor, protected from the elements by a giant hoodie.   Let me make sure I've got this straight.  Rivers tears his ACL against the Colts and has arthroscopic surgery on the Monday after the Colts game, which is also six days before the AFC Championship game.  The surgery is needed in order to clean out the joint because it is "catching," and without it he will have no chance of playing.  Six days after surgery, which by the way did nothing to repair his torn ACL, just cleaned out a joint so it wouldn't "catch," he's out running around the field and outplaying Tom Brady in the biggest game of his career.  Following the game, he's expected to undergo re-constructive surgery as soon as possible for his torn ACL, which will be followed by about six months of rehab.  All I can say is, you go, Philip.  Talk all the trash you want.  You the man.

I read that Tom Brady has been spotted walking with a limp.  I think it's either because a) he's jealous of Rivers and his heroic performance, so he's decided to create his own mysterious leg injury, allowing him to steal hero status from Philip after a win in the Super Bowl, or b) he had too much sex with Gisele Sunday night after they won the AFC Championship Game.

You know what?  Forget that stuff I said about Rivers.  I take it all back. 
Tom, you the man.

Next Week - The SportDork Super Bowl Spectacular!!