I, Archie Manning, have finally been avenged.

I, Archie Manning, have for years now waited in the shadows, waiting, waiting, waiting. TO CONQUER!! All those years not making the playoffs, running for my life, beaten down by big, manly, bear-like men, having to seek solace night after night in the arms of New Orleans best transvestite hookers...My pride stepped on, just like my right ankle, because my right guard had a tendency to trip me up because he was so damn quick and I was so damn slow.

I had 3 sons, just like Vito Corleone. Cooper, the impetuous one, chose to reject my legacy, chose to play Wide Receiver. The Gods punished him, and it was just. Peyton, the whiny weak one. I wrote him off. Eli, the Michael to Peyton's Fredo. He was the chosen one. He went to Ole Miss, followed exactly in my footsteps. He would win me back my glory.

But no! Peyton! I knew it was you! You have won me back my honor! I no longer dream of taking you out fishing and coming back alone. I thought you were whiny and weak, which you were, but you were also brainy and obsessed. You trained and trained and trained like a circus elephant until the neurons in your head snapped and just kept snapping. You beat the odds, didn't you, my lovely middle child, because, as they say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and again. That and the thousands of dollars I gave to the NFL Referee Retirement Association to actually call pass interference every once in a while. I didn't look at it as a gift, but rather as an investment. In our future.

I, Archie Manning, am avenged! ye Gods, having smiled so smilingly down upon me, now I can come out of the closet in peace and go live with my Salvadoran lover off the coast of the Biminis, just as I so long have dreamed.