Triple the Fame

 So the Triplets are where they belong now, or will be after Peyton Manning steps up to give his induction speech tonight. Marvin (2016), Edge (2020) and Peyton (2021), all dressed in gold blazers and bust-ed to a fare-thee-well over there in Canton, Ohio. Talk about hitting the trifecta.

And, oh, do the memories come flooding back ...

Of Marvin pulling in that diving one-handed catch at Tennessee. 

Of Edge relentlessly churning out yards and catching passes and scoring touchdowns as the man who kept defenses honest and made the Colts offense so unfair for seven golden years.

Of a particular sunny Sunday in January, in blood-red Arrowhead Stadium, when Peyton was so sublime those of us who were there figured this was what Skynet would be like if it churned out quarterbacks instead of time-traveling terminators looking to kill Sarah Connor.

Of Peyton again after his rookie year, when he was just this new kid out of Tennessee and the Colts media relations brought him up to Fort Wayne under armed guard.

OK, so not really. It only seemed like it.

What actually happened was all us local media chumps got to sit down with the Future of the Franchise, in a typically proscribed Colts-ian manner. Each of us got two minutes, or something like that, with Peyton. The only thing missing was Colts media personnel  standing over us with stopwatches. 

In any case, I sat down with Peyton and asked him a couple of questions about his rookie year, maybe three, and TIME'S UP, BUDDY. 

"Thanks," I said.

"I said TIME'S UP, BUDDY," one of the Colts media people said.

OK. Again, so not really.

And, look, I'm not trying to give the Colts a hard time here, even if dealing with them was often like dealing with the Kremlin. They are and always have been quite professional. And it's not like media access controlled with an iron fist is a Colts thing; it's an NFL thing. It's what happens when a sport becomes a product -- or, Product.

In any case, access to Peyton or Edge or the famously reticent Marvin isn't what you remember most about those days. What you remember was the sheer joy of watching them play. That day in Kansas City, and a lot of other days, watching the Triplets work was like watching a particularly sophisticated timepiece work.

Every gear meshed. Every play, run or pass, seemed to catch the defense leaning. Every pass route met every pass at precisely the right moment.

Come with me if you want to live. No, not you, opposing D.

And now?

Now they all get to live together under the same  hallowed roof. As they should.