Peyton Manning and Omaha

A lot of people wondered what Denver Broncos QB Peyton Manning meant when he kept yelling "OMAHA" in his pre-snap cadence against the San Diego Chargers. In fact, he did it on a whopping 44 different plays.

Now, according to the Sporting News, that question has finally been answered by no other than Manning himself.

Old #18 said it means a running play. Or maybe a pass play. Or maybe a play-action pass. And it might depend on what quarter of the game it is, which way the wind is blowing, what color jerseys they're wearing that day, which way they're going on the field, and maybe some other stuff.

In other words -- MANY other words -- Manning flapped his gums a lot, but didn't say anything remotely relevant to the original question. True to form, some media folks ate this up like Moses had just come down from the mountain with the tablets again. In their never-ending quest for the almighty "scoop", especially involving one of their heros, they often don't even realize when they're getting played. They'll run with it anyway as if it's big news. What's truly sad is millions of idiots will nod their heads thinking they just learned something when they read the story. Manning could have said "Omaha" signified that any player that lives in a condo -- or house -- should run/block left -- or right -- depending on how many bowls of cereal Chris Christie had for breakfast that particular morning. And somebody somewhere would think this is a hot story. Extra. Extra. Read all about it.

But back to Peyton himself. Whether he wins his second Super Bowl this year remains to be seen, but few would doubt his career is quickly winding down. Another year or two maybe. He may be a lot of things, but the energizer bunny, or nuclear powered, he's not.

Yet when football is over, Manning has another ready-made career waiting for him. Would anyone doubt Peyton has always gravitated to a microphone to spout his platitudes like Rush Limbaugh? Or has a way of mugging up the TV cameras like Regis Philbin? And forget setting records for passing yards and touchdowns. Manning might well be the all-time world record holder for dumb commercials.  But when Peyton talks, fools not only pay attention, but evidently rush right out and go buy things. The man can definitely sell himself.

So the other career? The dude's a born politician. He plays the media to his advantage while never giving a straight answer to a question, is already filthy rich, and he's got built-in name recognition.

Don't be surprised if a Senator Manning gets elected in the next few years.

As for yelling out the word Omaha before so many plays?

He could have said Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Hong Kong, whatever. It's just the name of a town.

But Omaha's got something else going on. A certain very large meat packing company is headquartered there.

And hey. On top of all the other endorsements -- getting free steaks probably isn't such a bad idea either.