A quarter and a half into Super Bowl XLVIII, I was almost in denial. The weather in New Jersey was perfect. The FOX internet stream was working perfectly and in pristine video quality. The Seattle Seahawks were clawing the eyes out of the corpses of the Denver Broncos. Anyone who knew my proclivities as a football fan was not-so-subtly waiting for my inevitable outburst of joy and relief that never came. I wasn’t about to celebrate the embarrassment of Peyton Manning, the Denver Broncos MVP quarterback and media darling who’s basically routinely hyped as the Greatest of All Time, a moment too soon. I mean, broncos are the ones that do the kicking in the teeth, right? (Well, them and Kabuto the Python). Then why had the Seahawks left the most potent offense in the history of the NFL toothless well before halftime? Why had they reduced the oft-heralded Arm of Manning to 5 yard throws (with anything over that looking like a lame duck)? More importantly, why was I put into a stupor of disbelief by the Seahawks’ dominant performance?

I shouldn’t have been stupefied because I attempted to mute the hype. Not long after the New England Patriots disappointing performance in their loss to the Broncos in the AFC Championship game, I swore off ESPN. I knew the stories that were coming and wouldn’t be able to stomach them. I’d already sat through a season of claims that the Patriots weren’t good enough to make it as far as they did and that this Broncos team was better than the Patriots’ infamous 18-1 team. Apparently, Manning is obviously better than Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback, and this year proved it (as Manning’s offense broke all of the records set by by that 18-1 run that disappointingly ended in a Super Bowl loss).

I didn’t want to hear how Brady’s wouldn’t play professional football much longer so he’d never win the Super Bowl again, especially considering how “the Patriots don’t pay people to play around him.” The inevitable stories about the arrogance of the Patriots’ head coach Bill Belichick wasting Brady’s last years would be almost farcical. Most of all, I really didn’t want to hear about how the Super Bowl was going to be Manning’s coronation, the final piece in the puzzle to prove he deserves his spot atop Mt. Footballmore for evermore. Anyone who’s followed the NFL over his career knows that simply isn’t true.

Unfortunately, all those stories slipped through to me over the two weeks leading up to the big game. My avoidance of ESPN turned their hype down to an annoying whisper. Unfortunately, it was still there on Twitter, generic news sites, and in casual conversations with people. Columnists took Belichick to task for not surrounding Brady with more weapons, ignoring that one of his star weapons turned out to be a literal weapon himself and was sitting in jail and the other blew out his knee. People asked me how I was dealing with the brutal loss. ‘The team just played poorly,” I said. “I’ve come to terms with it.” What I hadn’t come to terms with was the Manning-love. I never have.

The only pre-game analysis I heard this year was the two hours leading up to the Super Bowl when I booted the internet stream up. It didn’t take long for the coverage to annoy me. After about 15 minutes I was jokingly calling Manning “THE GREATEST HUMAN BEING TO EVER LIVE” while my girlfriend laughed. People loved complaining about the celebrations of Tim Tebow, but the exalting of Manning is worse. We excuse all of his awful commercials by calling him a man of the people. We put up with his stilted and forced comedic acting by saying it’s admirable he can enjoy himself. Worst of all, we repeat that he’s the greatest quarterbacks of all time even though he’s never showed up when it mattered most.

The repetition of statements that go against everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve learned, of statements that I know to be patently untrue always burrow their way into my brain (especially if they’re repeated with ferocity) and I don’t know how to fight it. The reverence for Manning is one of the most obvious examples. He has the most career playoff losses of any quarterback. He’s been to the Super Bowl three times and lost it twice. The time he did win it was on the back of running back Dominic Rhodes, who was unjustly denied the game’s MVP award in favor of Manning. The two times he lost it he played poorly. He threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown in both games, one was the score that cost his team that game. In this years contest against the Seahawks, he barely looked like he was able to throw the ball over five yards.

Don’t talk to me about statistics. Showing up is more than performing physically. It’s not about setting the completions record or throwing touchdown passes. It’s mental. It’s about understanding the adversity against you, adapting to it, and executing the actions you need to win. Whenever Manning has been met with adversity in his career, he’s crumbled beneath it. Why? Because he operates based on scripts–timing and rhythm. Whereas a player like Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson can break free from the pocket and “make something out of nothing,” Manning can’t. The tougher things get, the less he gets going because it doesn’t fit into his neat little box of what’s “supposed to happen.”

What was supposed to happen in Super Bowl XLVIII, didn’t. It was never going to. That fact is the reason Manning and the Broncos never even showed up. I’m not claiming they intentionally threw the game. I’m claiming that based on the makeup of their team, they were never going to be mentally prepared for a Super Bowl or to play a team like the Seahawks. The Broncos were built around Manning. He was their leader. Teams resemble their cores and their leaders.

Manning is a great quarterback when everything works out exactly how he expects it to. There’s no denying that truth. His offense shattered a lot of records this season. They made it to the Super Bowl. However, it needs to be acknowledged that the AFC was weak this year. With the number of injuries they had, the Patriots had no business being in the AFC Championship game, yet they were the #2 seed in the conference and won their divisional round game 43-22. The Broncos beat the San Diego Chargers (a team that went 9-7 in the regular season and needed three other teams to lose in the last week form them to make the playoffs) in their divisional game. The Seahawks’ blowout was always in the making, to the point that I almost feel stupid for not betting on the game even though I never bet on sports.

At the gym the night after the game, the Manning Buick Verano commercial came on and I laughed. I’m pretty sure the people around me thought I was crazy, but I can’t help it nor do I care anymore. The divergence between the hype surrounding Manning and his performance in this year’s Super Bowl is too wide. He’s become a joke to me. I can’t look at him waving his hands and pretending to give audibles to orange cones without thinking he looks like a fool. What’s the point of these endorsements? Does he or anyone in the Manning family really need more money? Couldn’t he have spent all the time filming them over his career figuring out how to improve his weaknesses as a football player?

While I won’t remember much of what happened in the game (I’ve already forgotten a lot of the plays), I won’t ever forget my inability to accept what was happening because of the voices echoing in my head. I was watching the Peyton Manning I knew was real while the repetition of the fictional version reverberated in my mind, attempting to drown out the dreadfulness. After the game, those voices manifested in reality, saying how this game won’t affect Manning’s legacy or how we remember him. That claim literally makes zero sense. It borders on being the protest of a mind in denial.

I can’t speak as to what those people will remember. What I’ll always remember Super Bowl XLVIII as is the day Peyton Manning transitioned from doubted hero to Absurdist caricature, when the comic shtick of his commercials and public appearances made their way onto the football field. Now it’s easy to see how his career and the conversation surrounding it that declared him the GOAT (greatest of all time) would’ve made Kurt Vonnegut proud.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”