Exit lines

I refuse to believe this is where they turn out the lights on Peyton Manning.

I refuse to believe, as some people do, that he simply fades to black now, even though he is tired and wounded and betrayed by a body that will no longer do what an incomparable mind commands. His head can still make all the throws, still defeat any blitz, still unmask any disguise of coverage. His arm, sadly, cannot.

The last we saw of him he was all but tottering off the field last Sunday, unable to throw an out route that didn't flutter like a windblown leaf. His latest injury -- a partially torn plantar muscle in his left foot -- had deprived him of the ability to push off on his plant foot. He's also got a banged-up shoulder. He's also got as ribcage as battered as a child's xylophone.

He is hurt, in on other words, and old beyond his years, and clearly coming up on the end. There are serious people seriously saying right now that his backup, the undistinguished Brock Osweiler, has taken his job for keeps. If so, that is an exit too painful to contemplate for one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history, and one of the greatest human beings as well.

Peyton Manning standing on the sidelines while Brock Osweiler plays. Who wants to see that?

And so, I refuse to believe it.

I believe Peyton will be back, just like he came back from the four neck surgeries everyone said was the end of him. I believe he will find some way to make his body do what his mind commands one last time. I believe the Broncos will find a way to run the football a little, which will deprive defenses of the ability to simply sit on the narrowing range of things Peyton can still do, which will give him one last fighting chance to go out the way he deserves.

Which is, as some semblance of the Peyton we all remember. Which is, as something besides what he is now, a faded relic limping toward the finish as Brock Osweiler's understudy.

I refuse to believe that's how it ends for him. I refuse to believe there isn't at least one more shining moment out there to usher Peyton toward the first-ballot induction into Canton that is his clear destiny.

Of course, I used to believe in Santa Claus, too.

A lesson in courage

So what does courage look like?

Legitimate question these days now that we're seeing so much of the opposite in a nation that fancies itself the moral light of the world.

And so today, if you want to see what courage looks -- and sounds like -- take a gander at this. It was the scene in Wembley Stadium in England last night as England and France met in a soccer friendly less than a week after meeting in Paris the night the terrorist jackals launched a frontal assault on human civilization.

Barely four days later, an arch in the French colors of red, white and blue soared over Wembley. Beneath, French and English fans stood together, bellowing La Marseillaise. The French tri-color flew from every corner of the place. Two nations who have fought one another a thousand times across a thousand years stood shoulder-to-shoulder and told the Islamic State what it could do with its dark and barbaric ideology.

And you know the most stirring thing of all?

According to ESPN.com, in light of the attacks last week, fans were offered refunds if they decided to stay away. Less than 100 took organizers up on it. In fact, 10,000 more tickets were sold.

Meanwhile, in the United States, almost 30 governors, including Indiana's, decided to bar Syrian refugees -- men, women and children fleeing tyranny -- from their respective states.

In other words, there would be no room in the inn for these Middle Eastern pilgrims.

In further other words, almost 30 state governors allowed fear and political gamesmanship to subvert the better angels of American nature.

Land of the free, home of the brave?

Sorry, folks. You took a wrong turn. That's on the other side of the Atlantic now.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 10

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature barred from entering 42 states because "We're scared" and "Who knows what's hiding behind that sentence? It could be a terrorist!":

1. The Bengals!

2. (Crickets)

3. I said, THE BENGALS!

4. (More crickets)

5. Because, the Browns.

6. (Knock out Landry Jones so they can get torched by Ben Roethlisberger)

7. Hey, look! The Giants are gonna beat the Patriots!

8. (Yet more crickets)

9. Will the last uninjured player in the NFL please raise his hand?

10. (Thunderous fusillade of crickets).

Beatdown

So what are we to make of Holly Holm beating up the allegedly unbeatup-able Ronda Rousey, and doing it with unbecoming ease?

Well, first of all, the worst part of it was that somewhere Floyd Mayweather was likely doing this.

Anyone with an ounce of decency hates the idea of a woman-beating punk like Mayweather getting the last laugh at any time, but especially at the expense of a woman. The best that can be said of it is that Rousey set herself up for it by claiming she could beat Mayweather in a fight, a plainly absurd notion that ignored what got exposed for all the world to see Saturday night.

Which is, overwhelming as she is when she gets someone on the mat, she's easy pickings for an accomplished boxer.

That was Holm's background and that's why she knocked Rousey cold, and didn't really break much of a sweat doing it. And so one shudders at what would happen if Rousey actually did get in a ring with Mayweather, perhaps the greatest pound-for-pound boxer in the world. The suspicion before Saturday was that she'd last until Floyd landed a punch. That suspicion is far more than that now.

Plainly speaking she was at a loss against someone who could stick and move, not all that shocking considering Rousey's background is mostly judo and wrestling. She's not great against someone who knows how to land a punch. And Holm knew how to land a punch.

It's something all of us (me included) overlooked as we watched Rousey ho-hum her way to one victory after another. In that regard, it very much reminded you of another titanic pugilistic upset, in which a journeyman named Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson one night. As with Rousey, we we were all so entranced by Tyson's utter dominance of a landscape of tomato cans we failed to take into consideration what would happen if someone actually hit Iron Mike back.

What happened was, he went down and out. As did Rousey. And once again we were reminded of the thing that makes sports great: No one is indestructible. Everyone goes down eventually.

Finally four

And now we interrupt a hobbled Peyton Manning hobbling sadly to the bench ... and the Lions taking us back to the days of George Bush the First ... and the New York Football Giants letting the New England Patriots off the hook with several stellar acts of charity.

We interrupt all of that to bring you four names.

 Harvick. Truex. Busch. Gordon.

That's your Final Four in the NASCAR Chase, which, yes, is still going on. There's one race left, at Homestead (Fla.) next week. One of the four names above is going to win the Cup.

Sentiment wants Jeff Gordon, because there is nothing history loves so much as symmetry, and there would be nothing more perfectly symmetrical, history-wise, than for Gordon to win his fifth NASCAR Cup title in the last race of his illustrious career.

Sentiment wants Gordon, and storytellers want Truex. In 12 years as a Cup driver, he's never finished higher than 11th in the standings. He's won only three times in 368 starts. He's stood by his girlfriend the last two years as she's battled ovarian cancer. And he drives not for Penske or Rick Hendrick or Joe Gibbs or Jack Roush, but for a one-car team out of Denver.

He is, in short, the ultimate underdog. Which means if he wins, the story writes itself.

Unfortunately I don't think he's going to win. Gordon, either.

The smart money says it'll be Harvick, the defending champion, because he's dominated all season and he's done it before. My money, though, is on Busch.

Yeah, he's a brat. Yeah, nobody likes him. But if I had to pick one guy to win one race, it would be him. No one in NASCAR turns a wheel the way he does. And no one runs at a checkered flag the way he does.

So: Busch it is.

But I'll be rooting for Gordon. Or Truex.

Losing proposition

So it's come to this now for the Indiana Hoosiers: Faint praise is the element in which they work best.

And they are thoroughly damned by it.

Another week, another Saturday in which they played a top-shelf team off its feet -- and another valiant effort ending in another loss. And now that the losses have mounted to six in a row, and have left the Hoosiers 0-6 in the Big Ten and 4-6 overall, what is the best we can say of them?

That they are the best 4-6 team in the nation. Faint praise that damns again.

They have an NFL quarterback and an NFL running back who shredded No. 14 Michigan for 238 yards yesterday -- the vaunted UM rushing D looked like the phoniest of mirages against Jordan Howard -- and it all came to naught. The Hoosiers had Michigan beaten, and then they didn't, just like they had No. 1 Ohio State beaten and then didn't. Just like they had Michigan State lined up until three touchdowns in the last eight minutes took it away, and just like they had No. 9 Iowa eyeball-to-eyeball before losing by a touchdown.

Conclusion: This is a football team that can play with almost anyone now. It just can't beat them. And given what Indiana football has mostly been before, that's progress.

Just not enough.

Just not enough, because the defense still isn't good enough to stop good teams for 60 minutes. It can do it in spurts. It can do it in stretches. But down at the end, when Michigan had to score, the Wolverines scored with unbecoming ease. The two touchdowns it scored in overtime came on passes to receivers who weren't even breathed upon, let alone covered.

And so, here the Hoosiers are: 4-6, a better football team than that, but still 4-6. They could still win out and get to some kind of half-assed bowl game, and if that happens they'll likely destroy whatever matching 6-6 team they go up against. But both their remaining games are road games, at Maryland and at Purdue. Of the two, Maryland seems the more likely team to hand Indiana its seventh loss and knock it out of the bowls.

In which case, it will be the eighth straight year Indiana has failed to play in a bowl. And, of course, the 24th straight year it failed to win one.

Now matter how good a 5-7 team it winds wind up being.

Death in the evening

I never thought about it, to be honest. And that was not because I was naïve or mindless or disconnected from the world in which I lived, from its insanity and its bloodlust and all the thundering consequence of its too-often blind history.

No, in 38 years as a sportswriter -- 38 years in which my job dictated my presence in large, open, public spaces -- I never dwelled on what could happen. I never dwelled on what would happen if this was the day when jackal terrorists hit the Super Bowl or the Final Four or the Indianapolis 500, because dwelling on it wouldn't stop it from happening. And I knew nothing much could stop it from happening, short of becoming the sort of police state that would, in the end, merely fulfill all  the jackals' goals.

And which, in the end, wouldn't keep us "safe" from them anyway. Whatever that word means anymore.

I never thought about it. But, of course, we are all compelled to think about it this morning, in the wake of the jackals' attack on one of the world's grand cities, Paris.

 One hundred twenty-seven are dead this morning, and the jackals are capering in glee. That's because, as always, they hit us where it hurts. Barbarians to the core of their being, they hit what they hate most, which is civilization. And so they struck places where people were just living their lives: cafes and a concert hall and, yes, right outside an athletic stadium, where the national sides of France and Germany were playing a soccer friendly.

Several explosions went off outside the stadium, and everyone inside flinched. The miracle is that's all they did. The game went on. The spectators spectated. It was the only small victory on a night when civilization took one right in the solar plexus.

And today, of course, there will be those who will insist on helping the jackals finish that work. The usual suspects will invoke the usual themes: Close the borders, buy more guns, lock up all the Muslims, send ground troops back into the Middle East. Repeat a lot of the same mistakes that gave the Islamic State life to begin with.

 And if by doing all those things we might -- might -- be able to destroy it ... what next?

Because, in the Middle East, something will always be next. And it will almost always be worse than what came before it.

So what's the solution?

I don't know that there is one, or at least a permanent one. Those things are far above my pay grade. What I do know is this: You do anything you can to fight the jackals without abandoning what made you the nation or nations they so hate. You keep going to the cafes. You keep going to the concert halls. You keep going to the soccer stadiums. You maintain civilization, and you do it without fear.

Yes, that will occasionally make you vulnerable to what happened in Paris. But the reason terrorism is so effective is that nothing you can do -- again, short of becoming the sort of police state that betrays all your principles as a free nation -- can entirely protect you from it. The crazy with the bomb will always find a way no matter how totalitarian you choose to become.

I never thought about it.

I never thought about it even when I stood in line for half an hour going through security at the Super Bowl. Or passed through a metal detector every time I went in and out of the media center at the U.S. Grand Prix. Or sat in packed stadiums and arenas liked a sitting duck.

This is not because I was naïve or mindless or disconnected from the world. It's because, well, screw the barbarians.

Screw 'em.