The lead SportsCenter story teased during Monday Night Football was the Colts not trying for perfection and taking their first loss of the season by letting their second-stringers get pummeled by the Jets on Sunday.  I’m annoyed by this for several reasons, which I will address here to continue 7IS’s proud tradition of pointing out that Indianapolis would be a minor league city even in Canada.

First, did anyone really think the Colts were going to go 19-0?  Wouldn’t they probably need to be a good team to do that?  If the Patriots couldn’t do it, why would a team with barely any playoff success be able to do it?  Yes, the Colts won that one Super Bowl, beating Ditka’s Walter Payton/Mike Singletary Bears.  But they’ve basically had a regular season bye for the last decade by way of the piss-poor expansion-filled AFC South, so they were bound to get lucky once.  And they’d already been beaten by the Patriots this year, except for Belichick’s chicanery.

Maybe game number 15 is a little early to start resting starters, even with nothing to play for but a chance at history.  There’s not really a baseball equivalent for a perfect season — the closest analogy to this Colts thing I can think of would be a team that’s already clinched a playoff spot pulling a pitcher who had a no-hitter going.  But the reason I think the Colts were dumb here to sit their starters has nothing to do with the perfect record.  The reason they’re dumb is they might’ve helped a half-decent team into the playoffs and given them an extra push of momentum, a team they might have to play in three weeks.  The Arizona Diamondbacks had nothing to play for on the last day of 2007, but losing their last game kept the Fluketober Rockies alive.  Those same fluketober Rockies swept the Diamondbacks in the Worst NLCS Ever.  So if the Jets go back to Indianapolis in a couple weeks, remember I called the upset. (Well, just as long as they don’t invite Joe Girardi back to practice.)