To this I would add, "Why not Chad!"

For your consideration, a notion that only seems crazy until you dare to stop and lend it serious thought:

Chad Pennington, the Dolphins' quarterback, should be the NFL's Most Valuable Player for 2008.

Yes, I did consume a quantity of New Year's Eve champagne, but not until after writing this column. I swear.

This isn't to say Pennington will win MVP honors. He won't. The Colts' Peyton Manning probably will win. He has the name and pedigree. He is the predictable, safe pick, and the Football writers who vote are a march of lemmings.

Pennington did pick up a couple of other trophies on Wednesday; he was named the league's comeback player of the year and the AFC offensive player of the week.

It was the second comeback award of his career, for which Pennington kidded that the secret was to "get hurt, and then come back."

A bigger honor that Pennington had rightly earned, the Pro Bowl, was denied him in favor of the Jets' Brett Favre in what must now be widely acknowledged as an egregious misjudgment. Favre's season fell off a cliff when his team needed him most just as Pennington's performance soared in the clutch, culminating with their head-to-head meeting this past Sunday in the game that lifted Miami into the playoffs.

Time now to right a wrong, I say.

MVP.

SO MANY REASONS WHY

I'm about to make the case that nobody deserves it more than Pennington.

First, let's mention that he fits the historical candidate profile perfectly.

A quarterback or running back almost always wins. Since the first MVP award in 1957, there have been 54 winners (including three ties), and 49 have been a QB (33) or a runner. There has been no exception since 1986 with Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor, and no such defensive exception demands itself this season.

Also, a player from a successful team almost always wins. Fifty-one of the 54 MVPs were on playoff teams. The most recent exception was the Bills' O.J. Simpson in 1973, back when he set a record with 2,003 rushing yards. No such exception presents itself now.

So why Pennington?

Start by whittling away contenders.

Perhaps four defensive players merit token consideration -- certainly including Baltimore safety Ed Reed, whom the Dolphins face this Sunday -- but none rises to that Lawrence Taylor-esque exception.

Minnesota's Adrian Peterson and Atlanta's Michael Turner are running backs in the conversation, but only peripherally. No receiver merits serious consideration.

Other quarterbacks? Drew Brees and Jay Cutler had big years individually, but their Saints and Broncos didn't even make the playoffs. So did Philip Rivers, but his 11-5 Chargers of a year ago finished at only .500. Eli Manning and Kerry Collins? They weren't the main reasons the Giants and Titans won.

Arizona's Kurt Warner is a legitimate MVP candidate. He has the gaudy stats. He led a woebegone franchise to its first division title since 1975. He'd be a solid third on my ballot.

A FAIR COMPARISON

For me, it's down to Peyton vs. Chad.

One of them is the future Hall of Famer with the famous bloodline, the bigger name, the stronger arm and all of those cute TV commercials.

The other one had a better season.

Pennington outperformed Manning overall in terms of passer rating, completion percentage, yards-per-attempt and interception percentage -- arguably the four most credible gauges for the kind of season a quarterback has had.

Pennington's 67.4 percent accuracy easily was a Dolphins franchise record. He ended the regular season with four straight games of having a 100-plus passer rating, which no Dolphin had done since Dan Marino in 1984. He threw for more yards than any Dolphin since Marino in 1997.

Not sold on stats? OK, try this: Who did the most with the least?

Manning's team was 13-3 last year and 12-4 this season. So his team was good once again -- as entirely expected -- while his numbers were clearly worse, individually.

Pennington was brought into a team that was 1-15 and guided it to an 11-5 mark, and was the main catalyst for Miami tying an all-time season record for fewest turnovers.

Forget that Pennington's numbers overall were superior to Manning's.

Miami's guy should be league MVP if only because he is the singularly indispensable player in the biggest turnaround in NFL history. Around his leadership and literal guiding hand -- because of that -- the laughingstock of the entire league has ended its long playoff drought.

Pennington has turned a team and a franchise right-side up, taken what was incredibly bad and made it instantly credible.

As Miami linebacker Joey Porter shouted to no one in particular in the merry din of the visitors locker room after Sunday's Jet-beating:

"You tell me the right quarterback don't matter!"

The Dolphins had just the right quarterback this season.

And none in the entire league mattered more.

M-V-P.

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