Requiem for a cliche

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to pay our last respects to the Peyton Manning Can't Win the Big One Cliché. The Colts’ Super Bowl victory forever cast this stalwart time-filling aphorism into the abyss for eternity.

Other played-out, shopworn sports clichés have come out to say goodbye to the deceased. I see “Run to Set Up the Pass” is here with his wife and kids. As usual, “Giving It 110 Percent” arrived here two hours early. “Big Players Make Big Plays” just slipped quietly into the back row. Unfortunately, “Drive for Show, Putt for Dough” is snowbound in Kansas City.

Sadly, these occasions are too frequent these days. Many of us were recently together for the funeral for Drew Brees’ Birthmark. Traditional New Orleans jazz funeral—man, that second line swinging cajun-style.

You have been a crutch for unimaginative hacks lo these many years, Peyton Manning Can't Win the Big One Cliché. Idle slack jawed couch-bound nutscratchers will have to plumb the depths of their faded imaginations for new obvious, yet vague, statements of supposed profound truth. The Manning Cliché has joined other discarded phrases like his “Elway Will Never Win a Super Bowl” and “Steve Young: Class Act” in Sports Cliché Heaven.

"I'm actually crying because I just found out I didn't get into
the hall of fame. Thanks a lot, Peter King, you fat fuck."

After the initial two weeks of Peyton Is a Choker No More stories, sportswriters will face the unenviable task of coming up with something original. “FBI Serial Killer Profiler Quality Analysis of Player Body Language” certainly seems to be the heir apparent. We can only pray that the trite canards that succeed you will provide ample material for sports bloggers far in the future—or at least until next season.

Fare thee well. As we depart today let us remember these words: “Donovan McNabb is a Fucking Bum; He Has Never Won Shit and He Never Will.”