Bears can run to glory against 'road' team

March madness if over: Now to the game

MIAMI -- It seems the stumping for this elusive Super Bowl will never end. Then I say one word to myself. Detroit.

Talk about eternity.

If the Bears had made their surge a year ago, guess where all your winter-weary scribes would be?

As it is, I'm looking out of my hotel window at palm trees, the L-shaped swimming pool, Miami harbor, the towering cruise ships moving in and out, party-hearty South Beach just over the Venetian Causeway.

Should I mention the pina coladas I had last night in Key Largo?

Weep not for us journalists.

But a game is coming.

And all the blabber and all the ticket-scalping and all the spottings of Flea, Fergie and a nutty sprite named Prince will soon be relegated to the trash bin of pettiness.

Whatever else the Super Bowl is, it is big.

As Gary Fencik, free safety for the 1985 Bears, said Thursday while we were talking about that New Orleans game many years ago, ''No matter what happens for the players, their lives will never be the same.''

And now, only hours until kickoff, there are still many out there who feel the Colts, behind guaranteed Hall of Famer Peyton Manning, will romp over these modern Bears.

Yet amid the endless waterfall of statistics -- did you know there will be 7.5 million Super Bowl parties today or that sales of antacids at 7-11 stores will surge 20 percent Monday? -- I have found a couple of stats that make me curious.

No, it's more than that. They make me almost certain.

Yes, the Colts' run defense has toughened up in the playoffs, giving up only 220 yards on the ground in the last three games.

But how about before that?

I don't buy into a leopard changing its spots in a month, a weakling becoming a bully overnight.

Just consider that in the last three games of the regular season, the Colts gave up 474 yards rushing. And in Game 13, a 44-17 wipeout loss to the Jaguars, the Colts gave up an astounding 375 yards on the ground. The game before that, they surrendered 219 rushing yards to the Titans' running backs.

The Bears, as coach Lovie Smith has said again and again, are a running team, in philosophy, history and practice. The Bears' runs set up play-action fakes, which set up Rex Grossman.

Many critics thought it was a bad thing that Thomas Jones always had Cedric Benson looking over his shoulder or that the competition between the two was destructive to the unity and success of the offense.

Not true at all.

In fact, having two powerhouse runners -- one of whom is fresh at all times -- is a very discouraging thing for defenders, a big plus for the Bears.

Every team in the final four of the Super Bowl playoffs employed two share-the-load running backs, which is a trend that seems to be threatening the recent reliance on one Edgerrin James or LaDainian Tomlinson-type superback. Maybe the Bears' pair doesn't have quite the hugginess that Colts running backs Dominic Rhodes and Joseph Addai have -- ''Me and Joe, we love each other, man,'' said Rhodes -- but they bring the hammer.

Second stat: The Colts lost four of their last seven regular-season games. This is a spinoff from my belief that leopards don't change their coats. And the key element to those losses is not just that they occurred late, but that they all occurred on the road. Indeed, the 15-4 Colts are undefeated at home this season in the comfy, very-loud-for-the-foe RCA Dome with its artificial turf, perfect temperature, no wind, blue-clad fans, etc. But the Colts are only 5-4 on the road, including the playoff victory over the Ravens.

I don't know what the weather will be like at grass-field Dolphin Stadium -- there's a possibility of rain -- but I know this is not the Colts' home field.

And they'll know it, too.

The Bears are the ''home team,'' for uniform and bench purposes. And possibly cheering.

But most important is the fact the Colts are ''away.''

The Colts have mighty impetus to win this game.

But so do the Bears.

The '85 champs still dominate the Chicago skyline, even though a star from that era, the great Walter Payton, has been dead for over seven years.

The last playing link to that era seemed to vanish when Giants punter Sean Landeta, the goat who whiffed in the NFC divisional playoff loss to the Bears on Jan. 5, 1986, was re-signed for one day by the Giants this past December, then deactivated, seemingly for good, at age 45.

Yet the ghost of 1985 lingers, and these new Bears would like to dispel it like disco vapor.

By running wild on the Miami grass -- against a visiting team -- they can do so.

Letters to our sports columnists appear Sunday. Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com. Include your full name, hometown and a daytime phone number.