Peyton Manning is one of the most beloved advertising promoters in the NFL due to the popularity of his commercial appeal. Long before the quarterback guru was entertaining fans and winning a slew of NFL games, he was honing his passing skills as a competitor on the University of Tennessee (UT) volunteer football team in Nashville, Tennessee.
After a senior year of high school in which the New Orleans, Louisiana native had racked up numerous accolades, including being named Gatorade National Player of the Year, Peyton had a multitude of college football scholarship offers to consider. The fact that Peyton Manning is the son of a former star NFL quarterback named Archie Manning only amplified the attention and exposure the teen signal caller received.
Despite pressure from some sources to follow in her father’s footsteps and attend the University of Mississippi at Oxford (commonly known simply as Ole Miss) like her father did, Peyton chose to follow in his footsteps. The eighteen-year-old decided to join head football coach Phillip Fullmer in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he became a volunteer football player for Tennessee.
As a freshman in 1994, Peyton saw significant playing time when 1st and 2nd row quarterbacks Todd Helton and Jerry Colquitt were injured and pushed the freshmen into the mix. The University of Tennessee capped off an eight-win, four-loss season during Peyton’s first year on campus with a dominant 45-23 Gator Bowl victory over Virginia Tech.
As a sophomore, Peyton led the UT Volunteers to a one-loss season that concluded with a Citrus Bowl win over Ohio State University. The only loss of the season came against the Southeastern Conference (SEC) rival, the University of Florida Gators. Despite Tennessee’s halftime lead over the Gators, Florida won the head-to-head matchup handily with a final score of 62-37 (after Tennessee led 30-21 at halftime). In the final polls at the end of the season, the University of Tennessee finished at number three in the Associated Press poll and number two (ahead of Florida) in the coaches’ poll.
During his junior year in Knoxville, the team quarterback Peyton Manning failed to live up to expectations when, as the number two team of the preseason, they were beaten by both the University of Florida (35-29) and the University of Memphis. (21-17). A Citrus Bowl postseason win over the Northwestern University Wildcats secured a top ten finish for UT’s football program finishing at number nine in both the Associated Press and Coaches Polls.
Despite completing his college degree in three years and being a projected number one overall pick for the 1997 NFL Draft, Peyton Manning returned for his senior season. Manning failed to win an elusive national championship his senior year, but he left Knoxville as the best quarterback in school history with records for most touchdowns (89) and passing yards (11,201). As the starting quarterback, Peyton Manning went 39-6 in college.