Colts try to bring title to Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS -- The city that crowns champions yearns for one to call its own.\nIndianapolis hands out trophies at the Indy 500 and the Brickyard 500, at an NCAA Final Four every few years and at scads of world championships and Olympic trials it hosts. It's a big-time sports town in almost every sense of the word -- except, maybe, in the way that counts most.\nIt is not a titletown.\nThe Colts haven't won a Super Bowl since they moved to Indianapolis 23 years ago. They haven't even been to the big game, in fact. The last championship to be celebrated by a big-league team inside the city limits came in 1973, when the Pacers won the American Basketball Association title.\n"It's a city with a major inferiority complex," said Bob Kravitz, sports columnist for The Indianapolis Star. "It's a city that's still looking for an identity, a sports identity. ... We have a really nice identity as hosts. We're very good at handing out other people's championships. Now, the town wants one of its own."\nOnce again, Friday will be called "Blue Friday" in Indianapolis, and fans throughout this metro area of about 1.6 million will be wearing Colts colors, hoping a bit of Colts pride might spark quarterback Peyton Manning and the home team to its first trip to the big time.\nThe New England Patriots -- with quarterback Tom Brady, coach Bill Belichick and those three Super Bowl rings -- will provide the perfect foil in Sunday's AFC championship game. In many ways, it had to be them.\n"For us, they're always the team that's in the way of what we're trying to do," running back Dominic Rhodes said. "I mean, it would have been good to go down and beat San Diego. But to get the Pats at home, to have a chance to beat them in this atmosphere--that's what you want."\nOf course, getting the storybook setup doesn't always mean a title is preordained.\nThree years ago, Indianapolis made its first AFC title game and lost to the Patriots. Two years ago, Manning set an NFL record with 49 touchdown passes in the regular season, but the Colts lost to the Patriots in the divisional playoffs. Last year, the Colts started the season 13-0 and secured home-field advantage through the playoffs, but saw those dreams derailed with a divisional-round loss to Pittsburgh. This year, "The city is crazy about the Colts," said John Dedman of the Indiana Sports Corporation, which brings sporting events to the state.\nThis football frenzy is, in many ways, a labor of love that fans in long-suffering sports cities can best understand.\n"When I came here in 2002, I would have classified it as a basketball town, a Pacers town," Colts coach Tony Dungy said. "Now, you see a lot more blue around, people in Colts gear. People have embraced this team. We've got players who are easy to embrace."\nIndiana has long been known as racing and hoops country, and the Pacers of the 1990s and early 2000s had some championship credentials. But Pacer Reggie Miller's retirement and the Ron Artest brawl in November 2004 sullied their esteem in the community, and they have suffered in the standings, as well.\nMeantime, Manning keeps setting records and the Colts find themselves on the cusp of the Super Bowl.\nAgain.\n"There are a lot of people in town who are swallowing hard this week because they had such huge expectations last year and then fell on their sword," Kravitz said. "In this city, the sight of Tom Brady gives us the civic heebie-jeebies"