If the Colts want to win the AFC South this season, beating the Texans this weekend would be a pretty good way to kick off the final four weeks of the regular season.
That was the point that Colts coach Chuck Pagano was presumably trying to make on Friday when discussing the fact that only one team in the division is going to wind up in first place and, barring total collapses by several other AFC teams, in the playoffs.
“There’s no trophies for second place, right? Saw a good YouTube video of a basketball coach explaining that, I think it was the women’s basketball coach from Louisville,” Pagano said, via Zak Keefer of the Indianapolis Star. “He was talking about our society today and everybody gets trophies. I thought it was pretty good. You can finish fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and everybody goes home happy. That ain’t real life. There’s only one trophy. There’s only one division champ. That’s how they’re treating it, and that’s how we’re treating it.”
Pagano certainly isn’t the first person in the NFL to bemoan the presence of participation trophies in American society. He’s probably the first who could have delivered his diatribe in front of a banner lauding the Colts for participating in the AFC title game after the 2014 season.