The New Orleans Saints vs. the Indianapolis Colts is the Super Bowl most Americans wanted to see.

Almost every football fan has ties to a local team, but once you get past those, this is the perfect game.

This is The Game.

NFL executives know that Americans love offense, which is why they often adopt rules that contribute to scoring and why they are giggling all over themselves about the Super Bowl Feb. 7 in Miami.

It doesn't get much better than this. You get the No. 1 teams from each conference and two of the highest-scoring offenses in the league. You get a Hall of Fame-in-waiting quarterback in Peyton Manning and the quarterback who challenged him for Most Valuable Player honors in 2009, Drew Brees.

On one side you have Saints receivers Marques Colston, Devery Henderson, Robert Meachem and Jeremy Shockey. On the other you have Dallas Clark, Reggie Wayne, Pierre Garcon and Austin Collie.

Some of them aren't household names yet, but they will be by next weekend.

There are still a lot of broken hearts in New York, Minnesota and even in Baltimore. The Jets had become this year's Cinderella team, but coach Rex Ryan's humor and abrasiveness offended a lot of people.

Minnesota quarterback Brett Favre had become the people's champion of the older generation, but all these Favre vs. Father Time stories had become nauseating.

We didn't need to see Favre limping his way to the whirlpool. We didn't need to see him squinting or smiling for the camera right before the snap. Those countless shots of his wife in the stands watching Favre getting smacked around like a pinata Sunday night were boring. Enough already.

Instead, we'll get some inside stories on how first-year head coach Jim Caldwell handled the Colts after his predecessor, Tony Dungy, left.

We'll also get the All-American kid in Manning, who will probably be labeled the best quarterback of all time if he wins a second championship.

It's hard not to like Manning. He is so efficient and businesslike. He's probably the best player in the NFL right now, and those touch passes he drops in over defensive backs to his receivers are gorgeous.

Even his commercials are good.

The Favre saga had some romance, but is there a better feel-good story in the country than the one in New Orleans? A few years ago, we all watched the images of this city and the state of Louisiana being swallowed up by Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans isn't all the way back, but it's rebounding and the Saints have helped rekindle some hope. Fans chanted, "Who Dat, Who Dat," as gold glitter fell from the top of the Superdome, which had become a giant refuge in the days after Katrina.

If this isn't America's Team for just a few weeks now, there never really was one.

No player epitomizes the relationship between New Orleans and the Saints more than Brees. He is gritty and tough and has had his own comebacks from several injuries during his nine-year career.

New Orleans has gone through its share of quarterbacks, from Archie Manning, Peyton's father, to Jeff Blake to Aaron Brooks. But it's Brees who makes this offense go. He isn't Peyton Manning, but there isn't another Drew Brees in the NFL, either.

He can make all the throws, from the hitch to the far side of the field to the 15-yard comeback to the back shoulder throw on the fade route.

It appears that both teams might manufacture points faster than they will appear on the scoreboard, but that won't happen.

Although Manning has an edge over Brees and the offensive skill-position players for the Colts are better than the ones on the Saints, this game will be won by the Indianapolis defense.

The Colts are underrated. Ends Robert Mathis and Dwight Freeney are the big names, but the Colts have two, strong athletic defensive tackles in Daniel Muir and Antonio Johnson.

The Colts are extremely fast, and they are some of the better tacklers in the league, including safeties Antoine Bethea and Melvin Bullitt.

Overall, Indianapolis has the better team with fewer weaknesses. But we definitely won't know that for about two more weeks. Until then, we'll analyze and over-analyze the two most dynamic offenses in the NFL and how these two teams managed the two best records for an entire season.

Unlike a year ago, there are no Cinderellas here. These were the two best teams with the two best offenses since late July.

It's a matchup we waited a long time to see.

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