Manning: A Man Out Of Time

From SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, August 26, 1996

SEPTEMBER 16, 1995: Florida 62, Tennessee 37. Rain falls through suffocating humidity, forming deep, wide puddles at the corners of Florida Field. The Gators score a touchdown. And then another, and another, until the noise from beneath the umbrellas and ponchos begins to sound like the ceaseless roar of traffic. On the visitors' sideline, Tennessee's sophomore quarterback, Peyton Manning, sits on a metal bench, hair matted to his forehead, anger fixed on his soft face.

He had opened his life to a reporter in the week before this embarrassment. The story was supposed to be about his preparation for a game, about how he started on Monday morning with a weight workout in the predawn darkness and then went straight to calculus up on the Hill, a cluster of classrooms that many Vols athletes avoid because it's too far from the sports facilities. It was supposed to be about how he studied game film every afternoon and evening and did more interviews than the rest of his teammates combined. About how he seemed to fit the forgotten image of what a college athlete could be.

That afternoon in Gainesville, Manning walked from the floor of the stadium and paused in the tunnel outside the locker room. There he embraced his father, who whispered to him, "We're proud of you." Then Peyton clattered away. In the wake of this devastating loss, there would be no story.

Eleven months have passed and another college football season beckons. Peyton Manning is the player of the year before the first ball is snapped. He holds in his 20-year-old hands the dreams of Tennessee football fans, who desperately want an SEC title and the Volunteers' first national championship since 1951, and who want to see Manning become the school's first Heisman Trophy winner. He is also some NFL team's living fantasy, a 6'5 �", 223-pound once-in-a-decade catch who might enter the draft after this, his junior season. Manning is in a magical place, soon to be a wealthy professional, but for one more year he is a throwback, living an ideal. Now there is a story.

It begins in the fourth game of Manning's freshman season, when he becomes the starting quarterback after injuries to two upperclassmen. The Volunteers would go on to win 18 of 20 games with him as the starter. Last season they finished 11-1, ranked No. 3 in the country, as Manning threw 380 passes and had just four intercepted.

When NFL scouts make their spring pilgrimages to college campuses, they are supposed to evaluate only seniors, but when they came to Knoxville a few months ago, they couldn't help but be distracted by a sophomore. San Diego Chargers quarterbacks coach Dwain Painter had approached Manning to ask about several of Tennessee's seniors. In return, Manning grilled Painter. Having just studied a tape of the Miami Dolphins' playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills, Manning was curious about the coverages that had seemed to confuse Dan Marino. Painter was taken aback. College quarterbacks normally ask about meal money.

Last February, Manning attended the banquet for the Davey O'Brien Award, given annually to the quarterback voted best in the nation by a panel of sportswriters. Florida's Danny Wuerffel won; Manning was a finalist. Runners-up seldom attend the ceremony, but Manning went to Dallas with a purpose. At a reception for past winners, Manning worked the room for tutelage—from the Philadelphia Eagles' Ty Detmer, the Carolina Panthers' Kerry Collins and the San Francisco 49ers' Steve Young. Not a moment of idle chatter. "I figured I had two hours with those guys," says Manning. "I wasn't going to waste it by making small talk."

This surprises no one at Tennessee, where Manning has flabbergasted teammates and coaches with his work ethic since the summer of 1994. "He came in with an attitude that I've never seen in any freshman," says fifth-year senior fullback Eric Lane. Manning went to Knoxville six weeks earlier than most other freshmen to acclimate himself to the football program and participate in workouts with older receivers and running backs. "He wanted to get as much work done as possible, every day," says Lane.

Tennessee coach Philip Fulmer remembers a practice last fall when the team was doing a blitz-pickup drill, in which offensive linemen and running backs work on blocking. "There are no receivers in the drill," says Fulmer. "All the quarterback has to do is take a snap and drop back to give us the proper depth. But here's Peyton coming up to the line, giving signals to receivers who aren't out there, doing his checks, dropping back full speed, setting up...and there's nobody out there. All the coaches were laughing, but that's the way he lives his life. Peyton lives to be better. He's like the coach's little son who's 5'9" and can't break an egg when he throws—except Peyton is 6'5", with a world of talent."