CHAPTER 13

“I’LL WIN FOR YOU”

As early as October of ’97, Sports Illustrated was writing that Tennessee “may well be looking for a replacement for Peyton Manning, the predicted No. 1 pick in the 1997 NFL draft.”¹ The Atlanta Falcons, on the chance that they’d be so bad they would have the first pick in the draft, traded journeyman quarterback Jeff George and his $3.64 million contract after the season. Such maneuvering was part of what writers called the “Peyton Manning sweepstakes.” Even George’s own agent, Leigh Steinberg, acknowledged that “there’s a quarterback shortage” in the NFL and that “you can’t split Peyton Manning into 30 pieces.”² Not a soul would have blamed Manning if he had left Tennessee to cash in. But he regarded his three years as unfinished business, and he felt part of a family in Knoxville. Though never the most gregarious of guys, and often one who prickled the others with his attitude, they had grown together, black and white, going through hell sometimes. The year before, when Joey Kent was married, Peyton attended the wedding in a black church, joining in on gospel songs sung by the choir.

These moments, as with Archie being taken to dinner in the black part of town by Richard Neal, were small but important road signs for a Manning clan bred and conditioned to accept black exclusion. And the idea of wading into a pro clubhouse was a daunting one for a 20-year-old who had lived a cloistered life. Then, too, wasn’t he a disciple at the altar of college football? Even if it wasn’t all he dreamed it would be, why not wring the last drop from that fantasia? This was a deeper wish than the one assumed by those who figured that if he turned down the pros, it was “to have one more year of studying, parties and the roar of college crowds.”³ In truth, his studies were done, completed in three years, and the parties meant nothing to him. But the college crowds? The pomp? The smell of the air on Saturday mornings? The damp afterglow of victory? You bet.

In the end, he just had to give it one more go-around in a blinding orange uniform, even if it meant risking an injury that would devalue him by millions. This was not a small matter; wisely, Archie took out a very pricey $7 million insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London, the most ever for a college player, to be paid if his son’s career was ended by injury.⁴

As the early-March deadline approached for his decision, he spent typically long hours on the phone, calling other athletes for advice. These included quarterbacks past and present—Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman, Bernie Kosar, Phil Simms, and Drew Bledsoe, who had come out early in ’93—and even the most famous early pro leaper of all, Michael Jordan, who told him to take the money and “don’t look back.”⁵ That indeed may have helped make his decision for him—in reverse. He wasn’t ready to not look back. By March 6, with more college life left in him, he opted for the womb of the Vol family. He called Archie, who came up to Knoxville with Olivia for the announcement. When he called Phil Fulmer, it was 1 a.m. and the coach was again in his pajamas. “I’m staying, Coach,” he told him. Fulmer burbled back, “I love you, man!”⁶

Speaking in the athletic complex, wearing a suit, two-toned shirt, and tie, his teammates gathered around him, he said, “I don’t wanna expect to ever look back. I’m staying at Tennessee.” The pro crowd was shocked, not to mention disappointed, given the thin crop of quarterbacks eligible for the ’97 draft. As soon as the news went out, Bill Parcells, who had been named coach and general manager of the Jets and had been holding off on trading the first pick, quickly dealt it to the St. Louis Rams, there being no one on draft day worth keeping it for. Indeed, God’s pick, Wuerffel, wasn’t taken until the fourth round, when he was plucked with the 99th pick by the Saints, to play three mediocre seasons for them and three more as a journeyman.

For Peyton, the prospect of playing in New York might well have helped him make his decision. The prickly New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica wrote, “You know what I really heard from Peyton Manning [at the announcement]? That he did not want to play for the Jets. This was a business decision, and a lifestyle decision. New York/New Jersey lost.”⁷ If so, Manning had thought about the business angle beyond a superficial level—that playing in the Big Apple might kill his marketability if he was a quick failure and Parcells lost faith in him. New York was too big for him to be Peyton Manning; he’d have to be another Joe Namath. That was a bridge too far. He acted like a courtly Southern man and good Southern scion, one with an old-world value system, notwithstanding his sly deviation from the image. Parcells, who had lost the most by the decision, praised him the most, drawing a broad perspective that “the common feeling in this country today is that everybody sells out for the money and opportunity. In Peyton’s case, I admire his decision and think that it took courage to make it . . . I think it’s refreshing, really.” NFL vice-president Joe Browne also called it “the right thing to do,” no matter that the league had made it almost too easy for underclassmen to go pro.⁸

How much did the Jets lose? Consider that Parcells, who had left coaching the Patriots to take the job, brought with him his defensivebacks coach, a cryptic fellow named Bill Belichick. What-if is a fun game to play. Had Peyton Manning come to New York, not only might Parcells—who immediately turned the team’s fortunes around—have won a title, but when he moved on, Belichick might not have had to go to New England to coach a mighty team. He might have had one coaching Peyton Manning—against Tom Brady.

Coming back to Tennessee only heightened his regional appeal as a favorite son. Over his years at the school, there would be 68 children named Peyton born at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, and when he left it would be the 51st most popular infant boy’s name in the state, prompting Archie to lament, “I only had dogs and cats named after me.”⁹ In the fall of 1997, Peyton was technically a student but on campus only to play football. In fact, he looks back somewhat sheepishly at the free time he had as everyone else studied and toddled to and from classes. Living with Ashley in an off-campus apartment, before the ’97 season he’d bide his time hunting and fishing. They went on getaways, to Cancun, to Las Vegas, paid for by her salary. Although suspicious-minded writers wondered if there had been some sort of under-the-table “arrangement” for him to stay, the only perk he could legally partake of, he said, was to drive around in Phil Fulmer’s Lexus.¹⁰ Metaphorically, to be sure, he was the driver of Fulmer’s team, his éclat such that even now the NFL’s Falcons were still pining away for him, with open talk not particularly refuted by the team that if they were to “tank it” in ’97, they could draft him after all.¹¹

For the Vols, losing was not an option. The mainspring would be powered by the Manning–Marcus Nash battery. With Joey Kent gone, Nash, a senior who had already snared 101 passes and seven touchdowns from him, would be his go-to guy, though Peerless Price and Jeremaine Copeland would also prosper, and tailback Jamal Lewis was a reliable ground presence. Rated No. 5 preseason, the Vols waded in against Texas Tech, blowing them away 52–17. The first major test was next, a trip to the Rose Bowl to play UCLA, a nationally televised game on ABC. This, of course, was where Manning had made his shaky debut, a distant memory now. This time, he barely had to break a sweat in taking the Vols to a 27–6 lead, hurling two touchdown passes. Bruins quarterback Cade McNown outpassed Manning 400 yards to 341 and led a comeback, but the Vol defense held them off in the 30–24 win.

The schedule makers had laid a trap for them, though, placing the Florida game on September 20, though the Vols had a two-week layoff to prepare. The Gators had tuned up by decimating poor Central Michigan 82–6, a wipeout that Steve Spurrier smugly called “a confidence builder” for his No. 3–ranked team. Worse for the No. 4 Vols, it was their third straight road game, and in the Swamp. That Manning was the focus was evident when Sports Illustrated pimped the game with a story titled “Putting Peyton in His Place,” the title feeding off Spurrier’s verbal jabs at him. “I know why Peyton came back for his senior year,” went one. “He wanted to be a three-time star of the Citrus Bowl.” These sorts of lines had a hard edge, as Spurrier was genuinely irked by the big talk coming from Vols fans and Fulmer. He also couldn’t abide the unrelenting star treatment afforded to Manning, who hadn’t won anything. Indeed, Tim Layden, who had been a virtual PR man for Manning, wrote of him now as a paladin who “signs autographs, speaks to schoolchildren, visits hospitals and throws the deep sideline route. Last week when Tennessee students camped out waiting for fewer than 800 tickets to go on sale for [the] game, Manning bought 20 pizzas for those at the back of the line.” And “His talent is so surpassing that he alone is capable of deciding the game on the strength of his own work, and it would surely be the single, heroic performance that would cement his place in college football history.”¹²

Peyton was politic. Asked if he came back expressly to beat Florida, he said, “It’s hard for anybody to beat Florida. I came back to be a senior. . . . I just want to win so badly. Football is all about team and all about winning. . . . I want to win this year more than anybody else in the country. I guarantee you that.” Still, it was plausible that he did want to wipe away that Gator stain, which he took personally, admitting that this “isn’t just another game, it’s huge. It’s different from every other game.”

Spurrier surely felt that way. The too-tanned former quarterback could only take satisfaction by making Peyton leave the field again in defeat. His task was to figure out how to do it without Wuerffel and his two pro-bound receivers, Reidel Anthony and Ike Hilliard, though the swarming bump-and-run defense coached by Bob Stoops was intact. The new QB, sophomore Doug Johnson, a walk-on who had been playing baseball in a rookie league, was green but had thrown for 460 yards in the tune-up games. One thing the Gators had not lost was their ability to trash talk. Manning, said tackle Mo Collins, “is highly overrated. He’s a good player, but I don’t know if he deserves all the exposure he’s getting. I just want to know what the big thing is [about him].”¹³ Spurrier said it was an “important” game, but nothing like, say, Georgia or LSU.

This was the sort of loose-lipped talk that Fulmer had clamped down on, lest it be bulletin-board fodder. Dave Cutcliffe went no further than to say, “Our attitude is, ‘If we don’t beat them, nobody else will.’” Peyton’s boldest statement was: “They’re the champs, they can talk all they want. Until we change the trend around here all we can do is take it.” He only wished he could say what he wanted to, and did years later—that Spurrier “didn’t show much class.”¹⁴

The prospect of humbling the big shot brought a then-record 85,714 people to the Swamp, nearly every one of them prepared to shower abuse on Peyton. As one report observed, “There was an undertone of ugliness at the Swamp.”¹⁵ It only got uglier. Down 7–0 near the end of the first half Peyton, under severe pressure, threw an errant pass that was intercepted by safety Tony George, who ran it all the way back 89 yards. That was basically the game. Johnson would wind up with a middling 14 of 32 with two interceptions, but also 261 yards and three touchdowns. Peyton had to air it 51 times, completing 29 for 353 yards and three scores, but the 33–20 Gator win stung. Crossing paths with Spurrier after the gun, he would recall, they shook hands, “but he didn’t look me in the eye.”¹⁶ Salting the wound further, Spurrier said he was surprised his offense played so badly and still won so easily.

His chance to beat the Gators now gone, Peyton could still make it a season to remember. Shrugging off the defeat, he was back in the saddle. He would strafe Ole Miss 31–17—this time with no demons anywhere around—and then faced undefeated, No. 15 Georgia, a make-or-break moment for the season. This was not only a personal vindication for him, it was the coming-out party for Jamal Lewis, the future Baltimore Ravens mainstay, who as a freshman broke out big, running for a breath-stealing 232 yards, propelling him to what would be a 1,364-yard windfall season. Yet such was the Vols’ dominance that Peyton also threw 40 times, completing 31, with four touchdowns—so effortlessly that when he couldn’t help but throw his final scoring pass late in the no-contest game, Georgia coach Jim Donnan grew beet red and later tore into Fulmer for running up the score, which ended at 38–13.

Next to fall were Alabama, South Carolina, Southern Mississippi, and Arkansas. Then came a date with Kentucky, a middling team but a meaningful match in that it pitted Peyton against a new flavor, sophomore sensation Tim Couch, a real gunner who was breaking school records and winning favor as an early contender for the Heisman. But this was a Manning stunner. The game was never a contest, as Peyton was money all day, only 10 of his 35 throws not caught, five going for touchdowns, no picks, and when the 59–31 rout was done, he had collected 523 yards—his career high, college or pro, and a Tennessee record until Tyler Bray broke it by seven yards in 2012. Stat freaks by rote call this Peyton Manning’s best game ever, in particular for his 14.9 yards per attempt, still a Vol record. “Above all others, including Manning’s own performances,” wrote one such analyst, “this day against Kentucky stands out as the best we’ve ever seen.”¹⁷

On November 29, he bid adieu to Neyland Stadium, beating Vanderbilt to clinch the SEC East title and move the Vols up to No. 3, rarefied air indeed. Sweeter yet, in parallel time, Spurrier and his Gator blowhards had withered, losing to the very teams Spurrier had said he feared most, Georgia and LSU, dropping them to No 13. That put Manning in his first SEC title game—and the Vols’ first ever—facing the SEC West champs, the 9–2, eleventh-ranked Auburn Tigers. Played in the massive, cacophonous Georgia Dome on December 6 in what one scribe has called “the single best environment I’ve ever seen for a college football or any sporting event,”¹⁸ it drew a record crowd of 74,896 and was a prime-time must-see. In a natural clash of styles, the game showcased Manning against Dameyune Craig, a highly dangerous run-and-gun QB. An added incentive for Tigers coach Terry Bowden was that his more famous father, Bobby, coach of the Florida State Seminoles, had his team ranked fourth, and if Auburn knocked out Tennessee, Bobby Bowden would get a shot at the national title in the Orange Bowl against Nebraska. Manning and Craig had become friendly on the banquet circuit, but Peyton took the field with blood in his eyes. In short order, he threw a 40-yard touchdown to Price. However, the Vols would stumble through much of the game, Peyton contributing to their six-turnover parade with two interceptions.

Ominously, Auburn took the lead on a 24-yard fumble recovery for a touchdown and led 20–10 at halftime; it looked like Tennessee was “seemingly determined to ruin Manning’s league finale with a Pop Warner–level display of bumbling.”¹⁹ With 30 minutes left to right the ship, Peyton got seven back with a five-yard pass to Copeland. Craig matched that with his second scoring pass, going up 27–17. Peyton, hot now, bombed one away to Price for a 46-yard touchdown—though on the conversion attempt, Auburn blocked the kick and ran it all the way back for two points. So it was 29–23. A minute into the fourth quarter, Manning had a second-and-10 on his 27-yard line. He took a two-step drop, swiveled to his right, and threw a short one to Nash, five yards downfield. Finding himself in man-to-man coverage, Nash spun to the outside, put a hip fake on a defender, and cruised down the sideline to the house, a 73-yard streak.

That made Peyton, who racked up 373 yards and four touchdowns, the SEC’s all-time leader in passing yards and touched off a semi-crazed reaction by the team, and a more controlled one by him. He ran down the field, pumping his fist, then pushed guys toward the bench so as to avoid a flag for excessive celebration before Jeff Hall kicked the winning point of the 30–29 death match. This, wrote one reporter, was “classic Manning. Understated. Intelligent. Selfless. And, well, OK, boring. No . . . poses. No finger-pointing smack talk. Not even one of those Danny Wuerffel praying-hand jobs.”²⁰ True indeed was that Peyton saw such displays as “pandering to the individual.”²¹ At least until the game was over. Then, named the game’s MVP, he tarried on the field with jubilant Vol players and students, before grabbing the baton from the bandleader and leading repeated renditions of “Rocky Top.”

SEC crown in hand, ranked third in the country, the Vols now would go up against Tom Osborne’s frightful Nebraska Cornhuskers in the January 2 Orange Bowl—Peyton’s last call. In the interim, he would savor the spoils of the miraculously revived season, receiving the Maxwell Trophy and a number of other honors. When he journeyed to New York as one of the top candidates for the Heisman, he went on David Letterman’s Late Show to amiably engage the host in a competition, tossing footballs across 52nd Street toward an open window. But he would not get the Heisman, beaten out by Michigan’s terrific defensive back Charles Woodson. Even if it did seem trivial in the broader, cosmic scope of his rising star, not winning the Heisman bugged him. He showed as much in his memoir with Archie when he wrote, “I didn’t cry over it,” and then did just that. He called the Heisman committee “rude” and “poorly organized,” adding that he had been at banquets with past Heisman winners who were “drunk as skunks.” Woodson had won, he ventured almost comically, because he would be playing in the Rose Bowl and ABC wanted the Heisman winner in it.²²

For the Vols, there was a dollop of schadenfreude, too—Spurrier’s acrid joke about Peyton being relegated to the Citrus Bowl became a delicious irony when the Gators ended up exactly there themselves, while the Vols played for consideration as national champs. Few, however, gave Tennessee much of a chance against the undefeated ’Huskers, who had annihilated Texas A&M 54–15 in the Big 12 title game. Moreover, the Orange Bowl would be Tom Osborne’s finale before retiring. With Michigan ranked No. 1, Osborne needed to run up the score to make his case for the national title. The Vols, of course, needed to win and hope for an equally unlikely loss by Michigan to No. 7 Washington State in the Rose Bowl. The ’Huskers were the Vols’ polar opposite, a plundering herd that rarely passed, and Fulmer knew he had no way to stop them. Worse, the still-fickle-fingered Vols had two early fumbles and trailed 14–3 at the half, then 28–3 late in the third when Peyton, who could only muster 134 yards, finally connected with Price.

That was the last TD he would throw in college, and Fulmer mercifully let him come out early. The ’Huskers won going away, 42–17, and Ahman Green broke the Orange Bowl record with 197 rushing yards. In the end, “UT was nothing more than a prop for Nebraska’s big show.”²³ Afterward, Peyton, with Archie, journeyed into the winners’ locker room to congratulate Osborne, who returned the favor with nothing but praise for the losing quarterback. Just minutes after removing his uniform, Peyton was in a different time frame, his Vol records—including 7,382 passing yards, 53 touchdowns, 576 completions, 904 attempts, and a 63.7 completion percentage—a thing of the past. His biggest beneficiary, Nash, caught 76 passes and 13 touchdowns that season, for 1,170 yards, and both made first-team All-America, solidifying Nash’s status as a first-round draft pick—by the reigning NFL champ Denver Broncos, with whom he would win a ring as a rookie as a part-time target of John Elway.

“How’s that for a dream come true?” Nash said. “I caught passes from maybe the two best quarterbacks of all time. How many guys can say that?”

The whole world assumed Peyton would be taken with the first pick by the Indianapolis Colts, who had won the Manning lottery by going 3–13, one more loss than the San Diego Chargers, Arizona Cardinals, and Chicago Bears—the Atlanta Falcons had the bad timing to approach mediocrity at 7–9. The Colts fired coach Lindy Infante and dumped the 34-year-old incumbent quarterback, Jim Harbaugh. The new coach, Jim Mora, had coached the Saints for 10½ seasons, and as such was tight with Archie, who had spent most of those years as the team’s radio color analyst. Mora coyly said when he got the job, “I know [Peyton] well. He spent a lot of time around our organization. He’s an excellent young prospect.”²⁴ Also playing it close to the vest was the Colts’ new GM, Bill Polian. At the league’s March scouting combine in Indianapolis, Polian spoke of “weighing all our alternatives.”²⁵ In fact there was only one alternative: Washington State’s Ryan Leaf, who had turned pro after his junior season, in which he led the school to its first Rose Bowl appearance in 67 years. Leaf, who came in third in the Heisman vote, had more passing yardage than Manning on 60 fewer completions. About as tall, he also outweighed him by 25 pounds, and he could move.

A football writer who polled 20 general managers wrote, “The overwhelming consensus [is] Manning may have the more recognizable name, but Leaf clearly is the preferred quarterback among league executives. Fourteen of the 20 polled said they would draft Leaf . . . citing [his] stronger arm, better mobility and more promising long-term prospect as a franchise-caliber player.” Less noticed was the cautionary report by another scout who said Leaf was “self-confident to the point where some people view him as being arrogant and almost obnoxious,”²⁶ though these adjectives were not uncommon in relation to Manning, either.

A Manning slight was not implausible. Gauged outside of actual game conditions, he could only demonstrate skill level, not the instinctive “third eye” developed through endless study. He could seem awkward, slow. And a new wrinkle had arisen. Lusting for Leaf, who had dazzled the West Coast as much as Manning had the South, the San Diego Chargers were in a bind. They had the No. 3 pick and would be shut out of landing either QB. So they swapped their position with the Arizona Cardinals, who sat at No. 2, trading two first-round picks and two starters. This development made Leaf want to avoid the Colts any which way he could. Years later, his agent, Leigh Steinberg, maintained that he devised a plan to irritate Mora, thus turning the Colts off to him.

Such an attempt at manipulating the draft was not without precedent—the most famous example being John Elway, who in 1983 was similarly repulsed at the prospect of being chosen No. 1 by the then-Baltimore Colts. Elway’s agent, Marvin Demoff, threatened that Elway would sit out of football for a year and play baseball to avoid playing on a perennial loser and becoming “the next Archie Manning.” The Colts still took Elway, and wound up trading him to Denver a few days later.

As the Steinberg plan transpired, Leaf stood Mora up when the two were to meet, on a pretext of having an MRI. Steinberg later said he knew this would make Mora go “berserk.”²⁷

Even so, as late as mid-April, Chargers GM Bobby Beathard was projecting that the Colts would go for Leaf. But Polian was suggesting otherwise. Leaf, he said, didn’t have that much better an arm than Manning, and Manning had a quicker release. He was also projected to play right away, whereas Leaf needed more seasoning. During the ebb and flow, Sports Illustrated defined the issue as a hard choice between the “safe” Manning and Leaf as “the potential mother lode.”²⁸ With so much at stake, Polian watched tape of every one of the two quarterbacks’ passes—1,505 for Manning, 880 for Leaf—compiling their success rates in different game situations. Mora and the Colts’ new quarterbacks coach, Bruce Arians, did the same to compare notes. Polian also paid $5,000 to the former 49ers coach Bill Walsh, who had groomed Joe Montana into a Hall of Fame quarterback, to watch the tapes and provide his opinion. At one of the combine workouts, Polian stood just feet away as both young men went through drills; one of his conclusions was that Leaf had thrown 60 yards without striding, Manning 58. Polian estimated he spent 14 hours a day over four weeks making these comparisons. “Did we overanalyze?” he said later. “Absolutely.”²⁹

Peyton was unsure whether the beaches and smog and mellow-rot vibe of Southern California could ever be to his liking. He saw Indianapolis as an unpretentious heartland outpost—even if, in reality, it was no small town but the 13th-largest city in America. He remembered how awed he had been when he visited Notre Dame in South Bend, and likened himself to the “hick from French Lick,” Larry Bird—who, after his Hall of Fame career with the Boston Celtics, was now coaching the Pacers not far from where the Colts played. Unlike Leaf, he was in no hurry to flaunt an agent. Archie’s man, Ed Keating, had died in 1996 from cancer, though the family’s old lawyer, Frank Crosthwait, was still on a loose retainer. Archie and Peyton planned to interview a number of agents when they went to New York for the draft. Meanwhile, Mora and Polian, along with offensive coordinator Tom Moore and Arians, journeyed to Knoxville and gave him a last once-over on April 1, for which Peyton enlisted Marcus Nash to catch his passes during drills. They would do the same with Leaf on the coast. Just before Easter, the Colts’ owner, Jim Irsay, who had taken over the team when his father, Robert, died in 1996, met with Peyton in Miami at the Surf Club, which Irsay owned.

“I’ll win for you,” the kid told him, a promise that, Irsay would recall, “sent shivers up my spine.”³⁰

When Polian brought him to Indianapolis for another meeting, Peyton was even ballsier.

“If you don’t draft me,” he said, “I’m gonna kick your ass for the next fifteen years.”³¹

Peyton wanted someone from the Colts to confirm they were going to take him, but it didn’t happen. As the days ticked down, rumor had it that the Colts were shopping the top pick to other teams for a king’s bounty. Annoyed, Peyton told Archie he wasn’t going to New York for the draft. Archie laid down the law, saying how unprofessional that would look. And so, a few days before the draft, they arrived, booked into the same hotel where the other top picks and their families were put up, including Leaf, who arrived with 30 members of his family. The two rivals spent time together that week giving interviews, and they grew friendly. That week, as well, Peyton and Archie interviewed two dozen agents. One, 45-year-old Tom Condon, a stocky former guard for Boston College who went on to play 12 seasons for the Kansas City Chiefs, had also served as president of the players’ association before turning agent in ’91 with the IMG mega-agency, which of course Keating had helped build into a corporate titan. Condon showed up at the hotel looking much unlike the usual crowd of Brooks Brothers–suited, Gucci loafer–wearing super-agents. As Archie remembered, “He knocked on the door and he was standing there and he had on a pinstripe suit coat, shirt, tie . . . and blue jeans.”³² Condon’s explanation for that was simple. “I was supposed to meet [the Mannings] at 9 or 10 o’clock. So I end up running around that morning, trying to find some dress pants somewhere. Of course, nothing was open.”

Peyton and Archie had a gut feeling about him, that he would do his work removed from the spotlight. Neither did he have a problem having Crosthwait sign off on deals. Before walking out of the room, Condon was part of Manning Inc.

That Friday night, Leaf had dinner with Steinberg and Chargers owner Alex Spanos. At the next table were Peyton and Archie. The draft would commence at 11:45 a.m. on Saturday, a far cry from the prime-time spectacle of today, and even now the Colts were dawdling. As Peyton tells it, he learned his fate later that night on a media cruise around Manhattan with the top players. He was standing with Condon, he said, when the agent’s cell phone rang. On the other end, Polian said, “We’re taking Peyton.” Condon handed him the phone.

“You ready to lead the Colts to the Super Bowl?” Peyton said Polian oozed.

“Yessir, I’m ready.”³³

If this happened, then Polian put the others in the Colt brain trust through unnecessary hell the rest of that night and into the morning—or else, had second thoughts himself. Because, according to insiders, they stayed up all that night going back and forth between the two quarterbacks, during which “there was arguing going on . . . it was intense.”³⁴ Peyton and Archie cabbed it to Madison Square Garden on Saturday morning and stood in a backstage area, casually munching from a bag of potato chips. Peyton then took his seat in the front row alongside other top draftees to be, with Leaf a few feet away on a couch.

Insiders say the absolute final decision was only made 15 minutes before the draft, when Irsay notified Steinberg that his client was not going first, whereupon Leaf, whose stomach was nervous, let out a loud hoot and got up and went to the bathroom. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue made it official moments later, intoning in a lawyerly monotone, “With the first pick in the 1998 NFL draft, the Indianapolis Colts select Peyton Manning, quarterback, University of Tennessee.” Peyton then rose to the stage, to be glad-handed by the commissioner and Irsay as he donned a blue and white jersey that had been made with his name on the back. Taken to an interview area, he uttered his first words as a pro, polished as could be. “I realize the pressure,” he said, “but I think it’s exciting to be part of going in and trying to make a turnaround. I’m going in humble, but I’m going in to compete.”³⁵

Flashbulbs went off around him, and then he had to clear out for Leaf, taken by the Chargers. The Mannings then caught a flight to Knoxville, where the Vols were retiring his jersey at halftime of the team’s spring scrimmage and naming a street on campus after him. The day was eventful, historic in terms of a father-and-son dynasty, with appropriate rewards, although New York Times football writer Mike Freeman opined, “Most N.F.L. observers feel that Leaf is walking into a better situation than Manning. The Chargers’ staff is composed of quarterback-friendly coaches like the head coach, Kevin Gilbride, and the offensive coordinator, June Jones.”³⁶ And Spanos had big visions, or fantasies. “Son,” he told Leaf, “I’m looking to you for the next fifteen years.”³⁷ Polian was more tempered—“He fit best for us”—reminding everyone that general managers’ decisions go wrong a good half the time. “History,” he said, “tells us that sometimes fate intervenes.”

Polian was prepared to hold some sort of salary line, though Freeman figured Peyton would put to shame his old man’s now-emaciated salary history. “Look for Manning to receive a signing bonus worth $8 million to $10 million, with his total contract in the tens of millions of dollars,” Freeman wrote. “That is an amazing number when you consider the contract his father received. . . . These days, a quarterback might spend that much on shoes.”³⁸