Fair, balanced, and fired up!

Now that was some football game tonight in Indy, but I think one writer for the AP might have deviated a bit from his company's stylebook:

Not only was it a win for Manning, the All-Pro, All-Everything son of Archie, it was a riveting, back-and-forth showcase of two of the NFL's best teams, best quarterbacks, and yet another example of why football is America's favorite sport.

Cool, I guess if I ever get to cover a wild buzzer-beater in college basketball, I can throw in a sentence like, "Despite sloppy play by inexperienced players, the wild finish reaffirmed why many so many people prefer NCAA basketball to the pros." He does do his best to build suspense during the recap:

Then, the game plan changed because it had to, and the game morphed from another Manning meltdown into something much more.

It was. It was so much more than a football game. I was sure of it as I watched the game and petted my cat. So what happened?

He led the Colts on an 80-yard drive late in the first half for a field goal to make it 21-6. In the third quarter, he was at his cruel best, dissecting an exhausted Patriots defense for a pair of long drives and scores.

Yes, that crazy-eyed killer Manning, the guy that seemingly every company in America wants (and has hired) for their TV ads — he always does his best work while coldly throwing a ball between competing millionaires. His cruelty left the Patriots "a tired, desperate, defeated team in the end." Or one that was putting together a pretty decent last-minute drive before their quarterback made a mistake.

Then again, I should probably cut the guy some slack. Lord knows how many dispatches he had to slave away at, writing from football stadiums in the middle of nowhere, to work his way up to cover a game that actually matched the hype.