And now, to cleanse your palate, here are 12 links about Peyton Manning.

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Links

News Anchor Drops F-Bomb When She Hears That Peyton Manning Will Sign with Broncos - Not as funny as the eventual follow-up, “Tim Tebow drops f-bomb in church when he hears God has forsaken him”. [Brobible]

Careful What You Tebow For - When I Tebow, I like to Tebow for world peace. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

Video: Tyler Honeycutt Baptizes Michael Beasley - I’m guessing this also has something to do with Tebow? [Smoking Section]

Best of Mechanical Bull Fails - I love that HuffPo thinks “not successful riding the mechanical bull until the end” is a “fail”. He slowly slid off! LOL! [HuffPost Comedy]

Everything These Drunken Dumbass Brothers Needed to Know About MMA They Learned From a Chuck Liddell Highlight - Advice: do not attempt to recreate anything you’ve ever seen in your own backyard. [Cage Potato]

Michael Bay says new TMNT will be “edgy, lovable, aliens” - Michael Bay’s only interpretation of science-fiction is “aliens”. He should remake the Twilight Zone and have ever ending just be “aliens”. [Film Drunk]

Our 30 Favorite Wondercon Cosplay Photos So Far - Every year they should retire one costume from cosplay rotation. This year it should be The Joker. Actually, that should’ve been every year for the past 20 years. [Gamma Squad]

Sofia Vergara Is the Deserved Cover Girl for the Sex Issue - At least in a still photo you can’t hear her yell “JYAYYYYYYY, JYAYYYYYYYY”. [Warming Glow]

The Best Of #Roger Sterling - “Being in blackface once, getting robbed once and emotionally harassing Joan all the time” memed onto a picture of him having a heart attack. [UPROXX]

UPROXX @ SXSW: A House For Lions, Youngblood Hawke And The Workaholics House Party - Or, “how I spent my Friday afternoon”. A very tight butthole gallery. In fact, the only loose butthole aspect of the day was the complete lack of Jillian. [UPROXX]

This Liquor Store Has The Best Signs - Finally, someone’s taken the concept of funny church signs and applied it to the secular world. [Buzzfeed]

Every Itchy & Scratchy From The Simpsons - 48 minutes of your time well spent, especially when it gets to the Poochie parts in the middle. [NextRound]

5 British Shows That Will Please the “Downton-Abbey” Loving Old Lady Within You - I was hoping “Oh Do Behave!” was on the list somewhere. [Pajiba]

It’s Twitter Official: Peyton Manning is about to become a Denver Bronco. In a related story, Tim Tebow is up Sh*t Creek and accidentally tossed his oar into the wilderness.

When God closes a door, he opens a window — now that the “WHERE WILL PEYTON MANNING GO? I BET IT’S HERE” story every city with a football team’s newspaper has been writing for the last month is dead, it will be replaced by “COULD TIM TEBOW END UP IN OUR CITY WITH A FOOTBALL TEAM?” Boston.com is already on it, projecting that Tebow will be traded to the Patriots, for some reason. He’s also being traded to Arizona, Miami, Jacksonville and any other regional website that needs page views.

More on the story as it develops, especially if it involves Tebow singing in the garden of Gethsemane.

Literally just a step up from Frank Stallone.

One of the first of many strange moments in this Peyton Manning free agency saga was actor Rob Lowe Tweeting that he “was hearing” that Manning would be retiring, presumably due to his 4th neck surgery. Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay fired back something about classic rock songs and his new El Camino – my memory might be a little hazy – and the rest of us just made a bunch of jokes on Twitter, while silently hoping Rob was right so it would destroy sports reporting as we know.

Alas, here we are, on the morning of Manning’s first free agency, awaiting his decision with baited (tee hee!) breath. And if you’d like to believe him, Rob’s brother, Chad, also seems to be a bit of a scooper.

So Rob said Manning would retire and he was wrong. Chad says Manning will sign with the Arizona Cardinals, so by law of DNA and celebrity dipshittery I would be feeling pretty great if I were a Denver Broncos fan right now. That is, unless you’re one of the 60% of Broncos fans who would rather have Tim Tebow under center for next season, in which case, there are plenty of tickets available for Jacksonville Jaguars games next year.

With NFL free agency set to begin tomorrow, a lot of people believe that a handful of teams qualify for this equation:

Mediocre to average 2011 season + Peyton Manning coming off 4th neck surgery = ZOMG SUPER BOWL!!!1!

Among those teams have been the Denver Broncos, Arizona Cardinals, Seattle Seahawks, New York Jets, Washington Redskins, Tennessee Titans, San Francisco 49ers, Houston Texans, Philadelphia Eagles and Miami Dolphins. And what we know from an outlandish barrage of rumors and reports over the last 5 days is that only the Broncos and Cardinals really have a shot, because Manning hasn’t met with any other teams and he doesn’t want to. (Update: He’ll meet with Tennessee after all. Double Update: This is why the dead period before free agency sucks, because people can just report anything. Manning will meet with the Dolphins.)

That includes the Dolphins, but only because Manning claimed he’s familiar enough with their facilities that he doesn’t need a meeting. And while I think that’s a death rattle for Miami’s chances, that hasn’t stopped Miami’s fans from making one last-ditch, musical effort to sway Manning’s opinion.

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"You tell me, herp should I derp?"

Since officially becoming a free agent on Wednesday, Peyton Manning is the most popular dude at the desperation party, as basically any team in need of a quarterback is banging down his door. While Manning apparently claimed that he will have a decision made by the end of next week, the Kansas City Chiefs have set the bar with an unknown offer.

Meanwhile, the Denver Broncos are supposedly willing to do whatever it takes to land Manning, and even people in Philadelphia are calling for the Eagles to sign him. And, of course, Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has his checkbook out as he laughs at everyone. So what the hell is really going on? You know, with the guy’s surgically repaired neck and that stuff that sort of matters.

“His risk really is very low,” said Dr. Robert S. Bray Jr., who has worked with NHL star Sidney Crosby and whose DISC Sports & Spine Center provides medical services for the U.S. Olympic team.

“If I was a team, I’d ask, ‘Did (the fusion) heal? Do you have a CAT scan that showed it healed? Is the rest of neck in pretty good shape?”‘ Bray asked. “If those two answers are yes, then it gets down to, ‘OK, get out on the field and show me you can perform,’ because it will only get better from here with time.” (Via the Indy Star)

I’m no NFL general manager, but I assume that all of the guys who are figuring out ways to kill each other to sign Manning probably already asked this question and that’s why they’re doing what they’re doing. But having been a Dolphins fan for this long, I still worry that maybe Jeff Ireland doesn’t put too much thought into something like this and Manning could be rolling around in one of those electric wheelchairs powered by a straw and he’d be like, “So let me tell you why you’d be great in Miami.”

Also, photoshops like this do more harm to my sports sensitivity than they do my hopes…

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"Man, I can't wait to live in Kansas City."

On Friday, a very poor quality video of a guy in a white helmet throwing a football at Duke University showed up on YouTube and people were like, “Well Peyton Manning has a white helmet and he’s been hanging out at Duke, so it must be him!” And it makes sense that it’s Manning, because he has just a few days left before the Indianapolis Colts either owe him $28 million or have to cut him, and because of the new CBA the Colts can’t be at Duke to watch him throw the ball and prove that he’s healthy.

Instead, as the Internet’s greatest sports conspiracy theorists have noted, Manning could conveniently “leak” this video to show Colts owner Jim Irsay that all is good, as they say, in the hood, while also allowing the pack of rabid, quarterback-starved-teams drooling over a free agent Manning to witness his rehabilitation from a fourth neck surgery.

That Manning clan – full of the crafty ones, I tells ya.

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