Hi. My name is Scott, and I'm a football junkie.

As longtime readers of this column will know, I am a die-hard Eagles fan. However, I have a few "alternate" teams I also root for, provided they're not playing against my team.

At the very bottom of the ladder, of course, are the Dallas Cowboys. This is true for most Eagles fans. I'm fond of saying that I would root for a team composed of puppy-punting, nun-slapping Rush Limbaugh clones as long as they were playing against the Cowboys.

Two of my secondary teams are meeting in the Super Bowl this year, the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints, and the matchup is going to be one for the ages.

Imagine if I told you 20 years ago that one of the starting quarterbacks in the Super Bowl would be playing against a team for which his father once played quarterback. You'd have taken that bet in a heartbeat.

Well, this year it's true. Peyton Manning's father, Archie, quarterbacked the New Orleans Saints back during the dark days of the '70s, spending a decade behind the Saints' famously horrible offensive line getting pounded into paste on a weekly basis. He was actually a good QB, but he simply never had a capable team around him.

Peyton, for those of you who have just reawakened from a coma or been dropped off by the mothership, is the quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts. He's quite possibly the smartest guy to ever play the position, and certainly one of the greatest students of the game ever to play.

So what we have set up for the first Sunday in February is a matchup between a team that has only once before played in an NFC Championship game, and never made it to the Super Bowl, versus a team that has a storied history in two cities and a trophy case full of Super Bowl and conference championship hardware accumulated over more than a half-century of play.

Of course, there are some in Baltimore, the Colts' original home, who will never forgive the team for leaving in 1983. My Charm City pal Kinsley wouldn't go to a Colts game if he was offered a luxury box with all the Chesapeake Bay crabs he could eat.

Even so, the Colts have a huge fan base. Peyton Manning is one of biggest go-to guys for commercials needing a sports flavor (especially with Tiger taking his little, erm, vacation) and the team's high profile over a long period has made that horseshoe logo one of the most recognized around the world.

Then we have the Saints, founded in 1967 as an expansion team. The 'Aints, as they were known to some of their long-suffering fans, went their first decade-plus with losing records, and even endured legions of fans wearing brown paper bags over their heads in the stands of the Superdome, one of the most iconic stadiums in all of professional sports.

Sure, there have been glimmers of hope in the Big Easy over the years. Heck, the team even won its first playoff game in 2000. But there just seemed to always be a black cloud hovering over the fleur de lis on the helmets.

Hurricane Katrina, as much damage as it did to the New Orleans area, also blew away that cloud. After spending the 2005 season playing in other stadiums, the Saints returned to a remodeled Superdome and a city desperate for a rallying point. The Superdome sold out for the full season on season ticket sales alone, and the team made it to the NFC Championship game, losing to the Chicago Bears.

My sister, who lives right across the river from Baton Rouge and has lived in the bosom of the "Who Dat?" Nation for three-plus decades now, would disown me if I didn't root for the Saints, but that's not why I'm pulling for them to win.

I want them to win because this story needs a great ending, and there could be no finer one than the already-successful son getting beaten, giving his dad's old team its first Super Bowl win.

And, besides, which city do you think will provide the more entertaining post-game party footage? There's simply no contest there.

Got a question? Comment? Ax to grind? Drop me a line, anytime!