What it means to be Peyton Manning

Yet, this title still implies failure because it limits and confines his performances and greatness to a specific plane that does not represent totality. For much of the sports world at large, Manning is not the greatest of all time because he has failed to live up to their expectations. Yet, the list of great players without championships in all sports is as long and wide as the Nile River.

For a guy who not only cherishes the football brilliance of Manning but also the self-effacing, reserved, smart, surprisingly humorous, unassuming person that he is, I also realize the inherent “stains” in his career. I have sensed and felt the quiet but restrained pain he feels when trotting off of the field after those eight crushing playoff losses and one Super Bowl loss. Too often this has resonated within my own soul only to spring forth with nights reflecting on the giant hump that has implanted itself in the middle of my own journey. Sports, like life, is a playground for failure. For die-hard sports fans, that failure isn’t eased by the reality that it isn’t us playing or earning the millions.

We are playing. Why? Because we compete everyday in life. Life, then, is essentially a sport. Repeated failure in life has, sadly, led to many giving up on life.

Quarterback Peyton Manning #18 of the Denver Broncos changes the play during a game against the Washington Redskins at Sports Authority Field Field at Mile High on October 27, 2013 in Denver, Colorado

The real brilliance of Peyton Manning is that he doesn’t give up. He comes back fighting. Not only does he come back fighting but he comes back equally strong or stronger. Look at his nnumbers in 2012. After losing to the Ravens in the divisional round of the playoffs under nearly impossible circumstances, he returned in 2013 even more vigilant and determined. His record-setting numbers support this.

I believe that numbers don’t lie. Actually, sometimes they tell a painful truth. That truth is often the very failure that hovers over us like an umbrella. Take my St. Louis Cardinals who lost the NLCS after being ahead three games to one with a chance to make a repeat appearance in the World Series in the latter part of 2012. Then, a couple of months later, shortly after the arrival of 2013, Manning and the Broncos saw their seven point lead with 30 seconds remaining in the game obliterated leading to an overtime loss in the divisional round of the playoffs. Fast forward to the NBA Finals where my Spurs let a five point lead with 28 seconds to go and a championship trophy awaiting them slip through their fingers only to lose the game in overtime and eventually the series. Concluding the year of heartbreak was my Cardinals losing in game 7 of the world series. The numbers convey that I should be boasting and reveling in at least two championship rings with the real possibility of two more. However, the absolute value is four losses and that number doesn’t lie. That number flashes when the lights are off and those life memories of my own disappointments show up. Suddenly, those career opportunities or life circumstances that have evaded me are illuminated.

Though his mind may often exbibit computer-like functionality, Peyton Manning is a human being who can’t escape the numbers and what they both mean and don’t mean. He, like us, and we like he, grow weary of solving the equations when the numbers don’t add up.

Sure, the numbers don’t lie and the reality is that they will never add up. For someone like Peyton Manning, the numbers are meant to show us his indefatigability, his fortitude, his pure will, drive and determination. The numbers are meant to show that –as with his 8 early playoff exits–that you never give up. The late, great Jim Valvano taught us that. Never. Give. Up.

Those four heartbreaking losses for me mean that I come back and root just as hard for my Cardinals, Spurs and Broncos. In my own life, it means that I, as Barry White once said in his song Get Up, ” get up and stay up” no matter how many times I’m rejected, defeated or turned away.

I.AM. PEYTON MANNING and so are all of us “sporties” who get up and go at life even harder, whether it’s our careers, our relationships, our duties, etc. It’s time that we really embrace what Peyton Manning is much the way we have done with Michael Jordan. Yes, Michael won 6 championship rings, including two three-peats and seemed unbeatable at the height of his career. Michael is also in a sport in which he doesn’t have to depend on the variables that MANNING has to, namely defense, special teams etc. since football is “specialized” in a way that basketball is not. Still, Jordan offers a different kind of winner in which the numbers are in his favor or the analogy: when life is working on all cylinders for us.

Conversely, in Manning we have another kind of winner who wins because he refuses to be beaten down even when the numbers seem to be paradoxical (record setting numbers up against playoff losses and exits) or when life is not working on all cylinders for us. If you are this type of winner, then both you and I operate very much in the mould of Peyton Manning. 2014 has arrived and I believe it’s his year. I sense another championship ring that should surely catapult him firmly into the discussion for the best quarterback of all time. Neither Montana nor Brady will be able to say they won a championship with two separate teams. Let’s not forget Manning’s four MVP’s and likely a fifth for the 2013-14 season. Yes, 2014 is Peyton Manning’s year and mine….and yours if you can see it through my lens.