He does not do many radio interviews.  Especially locally.  So it was a pleasure and a surprise to have PEYTON MANNING on our show last week. He was gracious with his time, open about all subjects and frankly said some things you never heard him say before.  Loved his comment about Lions top pick Matthew Stafford.  It got picked up by SI and CNN's Peter King for his "Monday QB" national column (read by just about everyone in the league) and in fact made THIS week's Sports Illustrated.

 

It's funny. We received some of the same feeback about Peyton that we heard after Bill Belichick (Colts nemesis and Pats head coach) came on our show in October.  Colts fans called then and said that Belichick seemed ""nice." He said things they never heard before. That they kinda went from "hating him to just kinda not liking him."  Bascially we humanized him.  We made him real. (And he's NOT a bad guy. He's a great guy).  We try to show different sides of folks on the show.  I don't think you get that a lot of places.

 

And with Peyton last week it was the same thing. We had some regular callers who for whatever reason didn't like Peyton before the show, called and emailed us afterwards telling us they NOW liked him.  Liked what he said. Liked how he came across.  He was comfortable. Easy to listen to, easy to talk to. Thought he was a good guy. 

 

Most of the time we only see Peyton in short soundbites on the local sports news shows.  You really don't see the real guy.  That's what we tried to show with Peyton and quite frankly try to show each show whether we are talking to Jack Nicklaus, Natalie Gulbis, Troy Aikman, Barrack Obama or Danica Patrick who joined us yesterday. 

 
We'll work to get ole No. 18 on again.  We gotta enjoy EVERY minute of that guy Colts fans.  We are going to get up one day and he will be gone. And then a dark, deep winter will set in.  We are so lucky to have him in charge of our NFL franchise.  And the QB is IN charge. He probably gets more credit when the Colts win than he should and he certainly takes too much blame when the team loses.

 

I haven't always agreed with everything he's done but at the end of the day Archie and Olivia did one heckuva job raising their boys - especially our QB.