If a Super Bowl-less Peyton Manning isn't a true champion in your eyes, what do you say about Ted Williams, Marcel Dionne or Karl Malone?
UPDATED: 2007-01-21 01:18:16 MST
By STEVE SIMMONS
The notion Peyton Manning requires a Super Bowl win -- or at the very least a win today -- to somehow justify his career is absurd.
Manning is right there with Dan Marino, who didn't win, and John Elway, who did, and all of the greatest quarterbacks who have ever thrown a football.
If winning a championship is the standard by which we judge quarterbacks, then does that mean Trent Dilfer and Jeff Hostetler and Doug Williams and Brad Johnson and Mark Rypien and Kurt Warner and Jim Plunkett -- all of them Super Bowl champions -- have had richer careers than Manning?
For the record, Ted Williams never won a World Series. Dick Butkus never won an NFL championship. Marcel Dionne and Brad Park never hoisted the Stanley Cup. Karl Malone never took home an NBA title.
Circumstance and good fortune lead to championships: Even quarterbacks, unless they're named Tom Brady, can't do it by themselves.