This Sunday is of course one of the biggest days on the sporting calendar – Super Bowl Sunday.

This year’s National Football League finale pits two contrasting teams against each other. On one side, the mighty Indianapolis Colts, a team with a strong winning culture, recent Super Bowl success, and a certain future hall-of-fame quarterback in Peyton Manning.

On the other, the underdog New Orleans Saints, making their first trip to the big one, and riding on the back of public sentiment. Many otherwise neutral sports fans are hoping to see the perfect ending to the fairy-tale story of a city rising from the depths of despair after Hurricane Katrina.

At Beaver Lake Middle School on Friday, students were encouraged to sport the colors of their favorite team ahead of Sunday’s big game.

It appears allegiances are about divided between the Colts and the Saints, with, of course, a lot of Seattle Seahawks fans thrown into the mix.

Gaby Adamson said she has been a Saints fan for a few years, and originally started rooting for them because her Mom went to Purdue, the alma mater of New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees. She also said her family really liked the New Orleans area.

She’s planning on watching the game at a friend’s house. Can the Saints win? “Yes they can,” Adamson said. “The Saints are going to win, for sure.”

Not so sure is classmate Nathaniel Kabamba, who on Friday was decked out in his Peyton Manning jersey, and a blue and white spray paint hair-do.

He said that growing up in Hawaii, only certain games were shown on TV, and so he ended up watching a lot of Colts games, one of the league’s biggest teams.

What’s so good about the Colts anyway? “Manning is the bomb,” Kabamba said.

There would be few in the world of football who would doubt him. Only on Sunday will we find out whether Manning and the Colts are good enough to deny the NFL’s cinderella story in the New Orleans Saints.