America at Large: With three weeks to go in the regular season, Tony Dungy faces a dilemma, although it's a problem 31 other NFL head coaches can only wish they had.

Last Sunday's 26-18 win in Jacksonville not only sewed up first place in the AFC South, a first-round bye and home-advantage throughout the play-offs for Dungy's Indianapolis Colts; it also put them on a collision course with history.

Only two teams in NFL history have gone undefeated throughout a regular season. One of them, the 1934 Chicago Bears, was upended by the New York Giants (a team they had beaten twice in the regular season) in the championship game. The other, the 1972 Miami Dolphins, went 14-0 over the regular season and capped a perfect year by winning all three of their post-season games. A 14-7 win over the Washington Redskins made the Dolphins a perfect 17-0 in what has become the benchmark for every team since.

Dungy now faces some hard and fast decisions. Should he go for perfection and a place in history, or should he approach the three remaining games as if they were meaningless exhibitions, since their outcomes can't possibly alter his team's post-season position? Should he rest his regulars, play them sparingly, in the hope that they would be re-energised for January's wars, or should he try to maintain a momentum that has seen the Colts steamroll their opposition since September?

Dungy wasn't exactly forthcoming about his plans after Sunday's win in Jacksonville. "I know you want to know about our plans for San Diego," said the Indy coach. "It's an AFC game and a home game and we definitely want to win it. We're going to play to win, and then we'll go from there."

The Colts already sported the league's most dangerous arsenal of offensive firepower, but the difference this season has been an unexpectedly dominant defence. Offensively, Indianapolis ranks first in the league, having scored an average of 30.2 points per game, but the Colts have simultaneously allowed just 13.8 points per game, second only to the Bears.

Early last month Dungy and the Colts also overcame a personal bugaboo when they added the scalps of the two-time defending World champions to their trophy collection. The 40-21 trouncing of the Patriots in a Monday Night Football game represented quarterback Peyton Manning's first win in seven tries at Foxboro.

Beyond the historical import for themselves, two of the Colts' remaining three games could affect the shape of the rest of the league. This Sunday's opponents, the Chargers, are in a three-way tie with Kansas City and Pittsburgh for the sixth and final AFC play-off spot. Sitting down Manning after, say, one quarter of play might enhance his long-term value for the play-off run, but it would hardly sit well with the Chiefs, with the Steelers, or, one suspects, in the league office in New York.

A week later, the Colts will travel to Seattle, where a similar situation awaits. Like the Colts, the Seahawks have already clinched their division and a play-off spot. Unlike the Colts, they have a two-game lead with three to play for the NFC's best record and home field throughout the play-offs. By a week from Sunday they could also be resting their regulars, or they could have a lot at stake, but not as much as the teams - the Giants, Panthers, Buccaneers, and Bears - chasing them to the wire would have to lose should the Colts lay down for them. Moreover, considering that the game looms a potential preview of Super Bowl XV in Detroit, neither team may want to fully bare its hand.

Watching all of this unfold from afar are the surviving members of the 1972 Dolphins, one of whom, running back Larry Cszonka, is forthright enough to admit, "I will cheer very ardently for whoever the Colts are playing every weekend until they lose."

But Jim Kiick, who played the Sundance Kid to Cszonka's Butch Cassidy in that old Miami backfield, said earlier this year: "What we celebrate is our accomplishment, not revelling in another team's misfortune. If in fact another team does it, we'll be glad to put another chair on the mountain top."

Every time a team gets to 10-0 the old Dolphins have found themselves similarly besieged. Some of them have plainly wearied of it.

"None of us ever calls a reporter and says, 'You're not giving us enough attention'," said Jim Mandich, the tight end on the '72 Dolphins. "You call us. Then when we respond and say things like, 'Yeah, we're proud of what we did', it somehow gets interpreted that we're 'clinging desperately to the past' and don't have lives.

"I played with Tony Dungy in Pittsburgh. I've known him since he was a high school quarterback. I pull for Tony, I want him to win a championship. I'm not sitting here with my Dolphins cheerleading skirt on."

"We've really not talked about it," said Dungy of the looming record. "I think that's one of the reasons we've been able to stay loose. We've really not sat here saying for the past weeks 'wouldn't it be great?' "

"What we're doing on the field speaks for itself," concurred center Jeff Saturday. "You still have to come out on Sunday and do it then. We don't have to talk about it. We just go out and play."

"I always think it's better to win and keep winning," said Dungy. "You'd like to win them all, but a loss isn't fatal, especially at this point when we've already clinched things. You don't want to lose, you don't want to go out there and play poorly, but there won't be any more pressure on us if we're 16-0 than if we're 14-2. Either way, we're going to have the best record and we're going to be the favourite to go to the Super Bowl, but being the favourite doesn't guarantee anything. If you lose in the play-offs, it'll be disappointing for everyone here - and that's no different whether you're 13-3 or 16-0."