It’s 2010. Peyton Manning is the quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts and it’s Super Bowl XLIV against the New Orleans Saints.
Peyton and the Colts lose the game 31-17.
With time still remaining on the clock, Peyton did something that Cam Newton (or any black quarterback for that matter) would have been absolutely skewered for — he left the field.
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He didn’t congratulate the opposing quarterback Drew Brees, as is customary. He didn’t shake any hands. He didn’t try to smile. He just bailed.
Here’s how Chris Chase, of Yahoo Sports recalled it in an article entitled, “Peyton Manning storms off Super Bowl field. Is he a poor sport?”
“Peyton Manning didn’t shake hands with New Orleans Saints players after his Indianapolis Colts lost 31-17 in Super Bowl XLIV. Apparently some think this is a sign of poor sportsmanship from the NFL’s greatest player. It’s not.
Walking off the field without congratulating Drew Brees may go against our misguided notion of what sportsmanship should be, but it wasn’t at all disrespectful or bitter. It shows how much Peyton Manning wanted to win the game. And who can argue about that?”
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You see, it was the competitive fire of Peyton Manning that caused him to leave the field before time expired without shaking any hands or offering any congratulatory hugs to the opposing team and staff.
Back in 2010, the team from Fox Sports had a similar recollection of Peyton storming off the field,
“When he last played in a Super Bowl here, Peyton Manning left the field with Most Valuable Player honors as the 2006 Indianapolis Colts celebrated victory.
This time, Manning couldn’t leave Sun Life Stadium fast enough.
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Manning reacted stoically Sunday night after wide receiver Reggie Wayne dropped his team’s last gasp — a fourth-down pass in the end zone late in the fourth quarter. With hands on hips and his helmet still on, Manning returned to the sideline and stared at a video-board replay. He then headed toward the locker room before the final seconds expired in New Orleans’ 31-17 win.
Was it poor sportsmanship for not shaking hands with Saints players? Sure. But after what had just transpired in Super Bowl XLIV, I wouldn’t want to look back either.”
Did you catch the humanity there? The writer clearly identified with the sullen, frustrated Manning and said that he would do the same thing if he was in that position.
All of that is fine. I actually agree with the writers. Competitive athletes who fight through a long brutal season have every right to be frustrated when they lose. That’s normal. Peyton Manning, in that sense, reacted, according to the writers of the day, like any great athlete would.
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What’s clear, though, is that Cam Newton got no such treatment.
Never mind the fact that after the game, in which Cam was sacked and mollywhopped all night long, he went and found Peyton Manning, flashed him a genuine smile, looked him in his eyes, shook his hand, and congratulated him. That didn’t really get reported though did it?
Instead, Cam gets a treatment from pundits and retired players alike that is altogether different than what Peyton Manning received six years ago.
Ignoring the warm gesture Cam offered Peyton, former Bronco Bill Romanowski went straight for the racist use of the word “boy” in a now deleted tweet saying, “You’ll never last in the NFL with that attitude. The world doesn’t revolve around you, boy!”
Conservative superhero Glenn Beck was also deeply troubled by Cam Newton and decided it was worth taking to Facebook over. He declared:
“Cam has obviously not learned how to lose with grace. I wish I could show my children how to behave after a loss but unfortunately I can’t.
This is not the behavior of someone who lost the game. This is the behavior of a loser.”
Over 15,000 people liked Beck’s statement.
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But let’s be clear, it’s not just these two guys, tens of thousands of people have piled on Cam across social media.
Did he leave the game early?
Did he refuse to shake hands with opposing players or coaches?
No, he was just frustrated during his press conference.
Somehow though, this puts him in a league of douchebaggery that Peyton Manning never dealt with when his postgame Super Bowl frustrations were treated with grace, understanding, and dignity.
It’s deeper than this game though. It’s even bigger than Cam Newton.
The racist double standard between black and white quarterbacks is as pronounced as ever.
On the day before the game, Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, shared an article with a title that is full of coded racism and false equivalencies, “From hip hop to squeaky clean, Super Bowl QBs Manning & Newton both evangelical Christians.”
Really? Let me guess who is hip and who is squeaky clean in that article.
But is Peyton Manning really squeaky clean or is he just white and popular?
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Beyond the current allegations that Manning used HGH — which Manning has denied — he was actually involved in something far more nefarious that would’ve likely dogged a black quarterback for his entire career. Somehow, it’s not a big deal with Peyton though.
While quarterback for the Tennessee Volunteers, a respected trainer, Jamie Ann Naughright, testified that while she bent down to look at Peyton Manning’s feet, he pulled his pants down and sat his testicles on her face. Within hours of the incident, she reported it to the sex crimes division at the University of Tennessee.
The school settled her lawsuit, which included other alleged incidents of sexual harassment during her time at the school.
At first Manning denied it ever happened at all. Then, Mike Rollo, another staff member with the team who wasn’t even there during the incident, advised him to say that he was actually mooning a nearby player when Jamie Ann Naughright happened to move her face into his nude pelvic region. After days of denying it, Manning then stuck to the mooning narrative.
Of course, one person could have settled all of this for Peyton — Malcolm Saxon — the cross country track athlete who Peyton Manning claimed was the intended target of his mooning. Saxon wanted no part of it though. In court records uncovered by USA Today all the way back in 2003, a letter from Saxon stated:
“Bro, you have tons of class, but you have shown no mercy or grace to this lady who was on her knees seeing if you had a stress fracture. She was minding her own business when your book came out. Peyton, the way I see it, at this point, you are going to take a hit either way, if you settle out of court or if it goes to court. You might as well maintain some dignity and admit to what happened. Your celebrity doesn’t mean you can treat folks that way. Do the right thing here.”
After the University of Tennessee settled the lawsuit by Jamie Ann Naughright, part of the conditions were that both she and Manning would never talk about the incident again. In a book co-authored with his father, though, Manning not only downplayed the incident as “vulgar” playfulness that he thought she would laugh at, he said she often used vulgar language herself, which gave him the impression that they could go tit for tat.
In another court record, Manning said he could recall just one specific time and place where the trainer Naughright was vulgar. It was on a trip to Virginia for a conference on drug education attended by just four student athletes. According to Manning, the trainer referred to the athletes as “motherf—ers”.
The thing is, the other students there, without equivocation, all said no such thing happened. According to the original report,
“In an affidavit, Geno Devane, now a medical student in Miami, said that at no time during the weekend did he hear those words. ‘I can assure you that I would remember,’ he said. ‘I would have been very upset if that had occurred. That type of language would have been completely out of character because she was always very professional around me and other student-athletes.’
Eric Lane, then a teammate of Manning’s, said that he couldn’t recall Naughright using those words.”
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By this time, Jamie Ann Naughright, who had a dream job at the University of Tennessee, was asked to leave the school as a part of her settlement. She moved on and became a trainer at another university when Manning’s book came out. Not only did Manning violate the settlement by speaking of her and the incident in the book, she said his false statements about her cost her job at the new school.
She then sued Manning herself, for violating the agreement and costing her another position, where she was receiving rave reviews at the time.
Manning and his lawyers asked for the case to be dismissed, but the judge, Polk County Circuit Judge Harvey A. Kornstein denied the motion and put Peyton Manning on blast. In his statement, he said:
“Even if the plaintiff is a public figure, the evidence of record contains sufficient evidence to satisfy the court that a genuine issue of material fact exists that would allow a jury to find, by clear and convincing evidence, the existence of actual malice of the part of the defendants.”
“Specifically, there is evidence of record, substantial enough to suggest that the defendants knew that the passages in question were false, or acted in reckless disregard of their falsity. There is evidence of record to suggest that there were obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of Peyton Manning’s account of the incident in question. The court further finds that there is sufficient evidence to permit the conclusion that the defendants entertained serious doubts as to the truth of the passages in this case.”
In other words, Judge Kornstein said that there is evidence to support the conclusion that Peyton Manning lied in his book about the incidents and knew he was lying about the incidents and appeared to have ill intent in doing so.
Needless to say, after that harsh ruling, the Manning family quickly settled the lawsuit with her.
Somehow, though, in spite of all of this being public record, in USA Today, on ESPN, and all over the local news when it happened, it just didn’t stick to Peyton. Maybe it’s because Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist back in 2003, but I doubt that’s the culprit.
It didn’t stick for the same reason Peyton storming off the field six years ago didn’t stick. Both Facebook and Twitter were in full-force then. Journalists and fans alike gave him a pass for behavior that Cam Newton would’ve been completely crushed for.
It didn’t stick because Franklin Graham and others say Peyton Manning is squeaky clean despite ample evidence to the contrary.
Evidence isn’t really the pivotal factor in his cleanness — whiteness is.
