Do you really know your sports hero?
You're a sports fan, so you want to believe. You want to believe so badly in this guy, this one particular guy, the player you're cheering for on Sunday afternoon from your family room. You just know he is one of the good guys. How many of them are left, anyway? You sit there with your son or your daughter and you watch and you tell them that that quarterback is one terrific human being. You're thinking Boy Scout. You'd love your son to grow up to be just like him.
You think you know him. You really don't, but you think you do, because you see him on the highlights every Sunday and because you remember his father. The dad was a pretty good player when you were a kid, and that's reassuring, because the son looks like he, too, is from another era, with his short hair and his aw-shucks way. A younger, taller Ron Howard would have to play him in the movie, right? And Donna Reed would have to play his mother.
They call Peyton Manning a throwback, and, to you, he is just that, in more ways than one. Not only as a person, but also as a link to a time when sports could be just sports, without the police blotters and lawyers, when you could cheer for a guy without worrying that, the next day, you'd be hearing that he allegedly assaulted his wife or drove drunk or even was involved in a murder. With Peyton Manning, you'd never have to worry about what you'd tell the kids.
Or so you thought. All right, so if you were really paying attention, you may remember that back at Tennessee in 1996, when Manning already was an all-SEC quarterback, there was that mooning incident, but, hey, you'd say, can't the lady take a joke? Manning said he meant to drop his pants to show his rear end to another male athlete, not the female trainer. Boys will be boys, you'd say, right? But the female trainer apparently got in the way and saw Manning's backside. So Manning got into a little trouble. So the woman received a settlement from the university and left town. Things happen, you'd say. But that's ancient history. Peyton's still a great guy. Does all that charitable work, is a fabulous role model for kids.
Except that, while apparently everyone else, including the woman, forgot about the incident, one man did not. That fellow was Peyton Manning. In 2000, he wrote a book with his father, Archie, called Manning:A Father, His Sons, and a Football Legacy. In it, for some unknown and extremely ill-advised reason (our hero couldn't be the vindictive type, could he?), Peyton Manning decided to revive the mooning story, calling his action "crude, maybe, but harmless," while saying the female trainer should have "shrugged (it) off." He also said the woman "had a vulgar mouth."
The female trainer, Jamie Ann Naughright, who by then was teaching at Florida Southern College with a doctorate in health education, was minding her own business when word got out that Manning had called her vulgar and dredged up what he did to her.
Soon, copies of the book were all over campus, Naughright says, and the resulting notoriety led to a demotion at work.
Then came the lawsuit. (How could there not be a lawsuit?) And the court documents. And the explicit details about the 1996 training room incident from Naughright's attorney that, if correct, show that Manning's definition of a mooning and your definition of a mooning are two entirely different things.
Naughright's attorney says his client, doing her job, was crouching behind Manning to determine why he was having pain in one of his feet when "entirely unprovoked, Peyton Manning decided to pull down his shorts and sit on Dr. Naughright's head and face." Court documents add graphic body-part details, which we shall omit because you certainly can get the picture.
All right, you say, but this is Peyton Manning, the Boy Scout, and it's just another one of those he-said, she-said stories, right? Well, not exactly. Add another "he" to the equation — on her side. The court record includes a letter to Manning from former Tennessee cross country runner Malcolm Saxon, who Manning said was the intended target of the so-called mooning.
"Bro, you have tons of class," Saxon's letter says, "but you have shown no mercy or grace to this lady who was on her knees seeing if you had a stress fracture. ... You might as well maintain some dignity and admit to what happened. ... Your celebrity doesn't mean you can treat folks that way."
So you're a sports fan, and you want to believe and, for quite a few years, you've had many wonderful thoughts about Peyton Manning. They're still there, but now something else is there, too. You thought you knew the guy. Turns out you're still learning.
didn't cyse the shyt outta Denard them first 2 season at U of M either
Peyton
