FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — There will come a time, maybe a few years down the line, when the truth will come out and real feelings will bubble from beneath the surface of the politically correct company line being toed by the Colts.
There will come a time — particularly if the Colts beat the Saints Sunday in Super Bowl XLIV — when Peyton Manning will come clean and admit that the dreadful decision by Colts’ management to pass on perfection tainted what could have been a historic ride.
As the Colts have won their two playoff games, the national outrage that ensued over Colts president Bill Polian and head coach Jim Caldwell giving up on a potential undefeated season and rest the star players against the Jets has subsided.
Certainly, dispatching the Jets, who were a central figure in the story, in last Sunday’s AFC Championship game allowed the Colts and their fans to exhale deeply. Because there was immense pressure on the Colts to beat the Jets, whose season they could have ended nearly a month earlier.
But simply getting to the Super Bowl is not enough for this Colts team, not enough to validate that appalling decision of surrender last month.
And winning it will only serve up one of the most spectacular “what if?” questions we’ve ever seen in sports.
What if the Colts, with a 15-10 lead over the Jets late in the third quarter of their Week 16 game, kept Manning, Reggie Wayne and Dallas Clark in the game, put the Jets away to get to 15-0 then dusted off the weakling Bills the following week?
The Colts may well win the Super Bowl next Sunday and become one of the great teams of all time, because it would be their second Lombardi Trophy in four years. But a Colts win won’t elevate them into the precious rarified air where the 1972 Dolphins have resided for almost 40 years. A Colts win won’t make this one of the most memorable moments in sports history.
To this day, those Dolphins, who went 17-0 en route to a Super Bowl VII victory over the Redskins, remain one of the most iconic teams in sports history.
The Colts’ decision to mail in the last 20 minutes of that game against the Jets with Curtis Painter at quarterback cost them a chance at being forever remembered like that Dolphins team. It cost them a chance at being one of the mythical teams in sports history.
Ask 10 sports fans 10 years from now who won Super Bowl XLIV and maybe five of them will be able to correctly answer the question. Ask those 10 sports fans that question 10 years from now had the Colts gone 19-0 and all 10 would have that accomplishment burned into their memory.
Because they’re in the moment, in the process of trying to win this Super Bowl, those thoughts are not prominent in the Colts’ minds, nor should they be. But eventually they will be.
Eventually, should the Colts beat the Saints and finish 17-2 (they mailed in that Buffalo game after the loss to the Jets), they’re going to forever rue that fateful decision by Polian and Caldwell, who wrongly robbed their players of a chance at immortality.
You can bank on there being a time when Manning, whether it’s at a press conference, on a golf course or at a cocktail party, admits how sick he is that his superiors denied him of the chance to stamp himself and his team into the annals of greatest sporting accomplishments ever.
“Until any player in here is the head coach, you follow orders and you follow them with all of your heart,” Manning said after that game. “That’s what we’ve done as players. We follow orders.”
Manning’s expression and body language that day as he stood on the sideline was one of disgust.
The Colts can sweep that Dec. 27 decision under the carpet like an unseemly family problem, but if they win Sunday, it’ll always be with them.
It’ll represent a smudge on the shiny Lombardi Trophy in their trophy case.
It’ll always have the Colts, their fans and sports fans everywhere wondering what might have been.
mark.cannizzaro@nypost.com
