Peyton Manning retires – and ends the world's most exhausting hagiography

In the end, Peyton Manning only fielded one question about the lingering sexual assault allegations surrounding his time at the University of Tennessee. He ended his answer to that question during Monday’s retirement announcement with a quote from Forrest Gump — a cloyingly sentimental film about a whimsical hillbilly possessed of a preternatural talent for football and an ingratiatingly uncomplicated view of life. I wouldn’t say Peyton is Gump-esque, but there are certain parallels that gave me cause for a chuckle during his self-aggrandizing public celebration.

Make no mistake, despite the man’s humble rhetoric, the whole affair felt a bit hagiographic in an exhausting way. The football world has been exalting Peyton Manning for years, even more so after his dramatic return from neck surgery. The perilous nature of his health meant that every time he stepped onto the field, the announcers had to treat the game like it might be his last. At any moment his head could pop off his neck like a Rock’em Sock’em Robot, sending the entire nation into spasms of uncontrollable disgust. “God, did you see when Peyton’s head fell off? It was the highest rated NFL game of all time.”

Thankfully, that nightmare scenario didn’t come to pass and the worst that happened during the Sheriff’s comeback tour of Denver was a final campaign in which he threw nine touchdowns and 17 interceptions during the regular season. He might have cracked 20 if he had played a full 16-game season. His passes were thrown with all the vigor of a backyard game after a particularly tryptophan-heavy Thanksgiving dinner. His movements in the pocket resembled Michael Keaton trying to turn his head in the restrictive rubber costume from the first two Batman movies.

Like Kobe Bryant, a retiring gunslinger from a different sport, Peyton’s final year has been long on nostalgia, but short on individual accomplishment. Manning, unlike Bryant, benefitted from having a great team around him, which dragged his battered body to a Super Bowl championship. In the face of this sobering reminder of the passage of time (and the toll that football takes on the human body) sports pundits sang the praises of a man pretty much falling apart before our eyes.

As such, the last four seasons have felt a bit like an ongoing farewell tour, rendering the actual farewell something of an anti-climax. The incongruity of hearing how great Peyton is while watching him play as poorly as one can while still winning a Super Bowl was quite a bit to swallow over the past calendar year. Add to that his shameless corporate shilling, the Al Jazeera HGH scandal and the resurfaced sexual assault allegations, and the desired fairy tale ending doesn’t seem quite so perfect.

The video the Broncos played prior to Peyton reading his prepared remarks was a gloriously overblown spectacle to behold. In a way, it was as if the Broncos were just as concerned with cementing their place in Peyton’s legacy as they were of reinforcing his place in the football pantheon. All the effusive praise from John Elway and Gary Kubiak was like listening to a guy try to keep his girlfriend from going back to her ex. The Colts will always be the team that is most associated with Peyton Manning, just from the sheer number of seasons he played there and that his prime years came in Indianapolis.

His best season with Denver ended with a historic drubbing in the Super Bowl – although he did set a record for touchdowns that season – and his one championship season featured a 44.96 QB rating to go with those 17 picks. The Broncos might not end up being a footnote in his career the way the Chiefs are with Joe Montana or the Vikings and Jets are for Brett Favre, but the Peyton Manning hologram that will greet visitors to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the year 2067 will be wearing blue and white.

Personally, I’m just glad the whole ludicrous affair is over with and the retirement circus has left town. The only person with anything to fret about right now is Skip Bayless, who is, as we speak, furiously searching for another human plate of cornbread to fawn over on national television every day. At least he still has Eli Manning, the NFL’s real-life version of Loki from the Marvel movies, even if he doesn’t inspire the same sort of hyperbole that his brother does.

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There’s also likely some consternation in the front offices of every team desperate for an injection of gravitas behind center. My hometown Los Angeles Rams just lost millions of dollars in merchandise revenue that could have been generated by the signing of No18. They’ll just have to dig up another high-wattage name who’s seen better days like RGIII or Colin Kaepernick to excite the nascent local fanbase. The Manning retirement has journeyman quarterbacks and fresh-faced youngsters out of their depth breathing a sigh of relief. Case Keenum and Blaine Gabbert have never slept so well in their lives.

The Sheriff is gone, but is he really gone? Sundays will still be littered with his adverts for Nationwide, Papa Johns, and surely Budweiser at some point. He’ll pop up on Saturday Night Live once or twice, donning a funny wig or tripping on a banana peel at an inopportune moment. Phil Simms will call a rookie quarterback “a young Peyton” or compare Brock Osweiler’s mediocre game management to his predecessor’s.

Through controversies, scandals, and health problems, Peyton Manning will continue flashing that dopey grin that’s sold countless pizzas. He’ll meet presidents and famous actors and rake in millions of dollars in the process. The career lifespan of the average corporate pitchman is much longer than that of a pro football player. Peyton might have lost his ability to throw a tight spiral, but he’s never lost his skills at selling me stuff I don’t need. That will serve him well in this next phase of life, though he might want to consider another, less famous Forrest Gump quote: “Momma said there’s only so much fortune a man really needs and the rest is just for showing off.” Here’s to many more decades of Peyton Manning showing off.