Colts hoping familiar locale leads to similar result in Super Bowl

The Colts started this season with one goal: winning another Super Bowl.

Now they are one victory away and headed back to the place they last won a championship.
Super Bowl XLIV: Sunday, Feb. 7, 6 p.m. ET

No, the plans haven't changed much from the Colts' last Super Bowl trip to Miami. This week will be spent putting in a game plan, and next week, first-year coach Jim Caldwell will take a page right out of Tony Dungy's playbook. The Colts will stay at the same hotel, practice at the same facility and follow almost the same routine that they did before beating the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI.

"We'll change some things," Caldwell said Monday. "We'll tweak them and adjust them a little bit, according to how we envision some things, and it depends on what happens to us this week. We'll make some adjustments -- it's not an iron-clad sort of routine. But, overall, we'll probably be fairly close to what we've done previously."

Some of the changes aren't by choice.

Four-time NFL MVP Peyton Manning and his Pro Bowl teammates, who include tight end Dallas Clark, defensive end Dwight Freeney and wide receiver Reggie Wayne, are expected to be in town Sunday afternoon for a pregame news conference -- a full day before the rest of the Colts arrive for Super Bowl XLIV. Team president Bill Polian called that rule "distasteful" and a "fiasco" on his weekly radio show Monday night.

The Colts' team plane also is expected to arrive a little earlier than it did three years ago because of new rules implemented in 2008.

But with nearly half of Indianapolis' roster having Super Bowl experience, Caldwell will rely on his veterans to help younger players cope with the countless distractions of the next two weeks. Players, like fans, are scrambling to make travel plans, fill countless ticket requests and answer all kinds of e-mail and text messages. Caldwell said he had about 250 e-mails and more than 150 text messages after Sunday's 30-17 victory over the New York Jets in the AFC Championship Game.