After rallying the Indianapolis Colts from a 1-5 start to making the playoffs, quarterback Andrew Luck has another kind of rally in mind. The robotic kind. It turns out, the bookish gunslinger has a passion for table tennis unmatched by any of his teammates. "There's some good ping-pong players, but sometimes, no one wants to hang out, you know?" he lamented. The franchise QB, returning from a lingering shoulder injury which kept him sidelined for the entire 2017 season, has gotten his groove back. It is worth noting that Patriots WR Julian Edelman and Bears QB Mitch Trubisky also used table tennis as part of their rehabilitation from injuries. Having resurrected a season which all but the most diehard Colts fans would have written off after a dismal start, Luck is poised for an extremely lucrative contract extension this summer. When asked what he would buy with all the money, the Stanford grad gave it some serious thought. "That's a good question," he mused. "Maybe, like, a robot ping-pong thing that can hit balls back at you. My buddy has one and he swears by it." It is unclear from this context whether Luck is describing a conventional practice robot such as Newgy which fires balls from a hopper with programmable spin, speed and location, or rather one of the next generation of robots such as KUKA or Omron which use high-speed cameras and AI to actually "hit balls back at you." Whatever the particular nature of the coveted contraption, Luck's commitment to improving his table tennis game is laudatory. The benefits of cross-training for his coordination and reflexes are already paying dividends: the Colts have won 10 of their last 11 games, and are two games from the Super Bowl. After witnessing this miraculous resurrection, Colts owner Jim Irsay will likely be scrambling for the best "robot ping-pong thing" that money can buy as a signing bonus to lure Luck to the table. He just might have a hard time luring him away from it.

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