SALT LAKE CITY — Perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a five-time NFL Most Valuable Player, two-time Super Bowl champion and 2021 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee would be at an aerospace, technology and defense summit.
But that’s exactly where Peyton Manning found himself Wednesday night, speaking to thousands of people in attendance for the 47G Zero Gravity Summit in Salt Lake City.
As it turns out, many of the lessons that made Manning one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time also translate to the business world.
For Manning, those lessons came early and often, while growing up with his dad, Archie Manning — the patriarch of the Manning football family and 14-year NFL quarterback — and his brothers, Cooper and Eli Manning. But before Manning became a household name, he made a choice that he described as “one of the best decisions I ever made.”
That decision? Returning to the University of Tennessee for his senior season.
“My first three years in college, I really was on the go all the time. I was running to practice, running to do an interview, running to class. I didn’t want to be 49, like I am now, and kind of wondering, ‘I don’t remember anything about college,’” Manning said.
During his senior year, he said he “got to slow down for a year. I took grad school hours. Had to walk to class and walk to practice and ensure some friendships and relationships with some students, classmates and teachers that are still important to me today.”
It also helped him prepare both physically and mentally for life in the NFL and the adversity that came with it. Manning went on to be the first overall selection by the Indianapolis Colts in the 1998 NFL Draft.
During his rookie season, the Colts went 3-13 and Manning threw 28 interceptions — an NFL rookie record that, to Manning’s dismay, stands to this day.
“I don’t think I could have handled that adversity, had I not stayed all four years in college. The next year, my second year in the NFL, we went from 3-13 to 13-3. I really attribute a lot of that to having stayed four years in college (and) coming in the professional ranks with as much preparation as possible,” Manning said.
Calling an audible and tech in football
Manning said having a plan is key to success in both football and business. However, those plans don’t always unfold as perfectly as imagined.
That, Manning said, is where the audible comes in.
“We said, ‘Hey, if the defense ever lines up like it, this is what we’re going to audible to.’ And it might be this week’s game, it might be next week, it might not be until the very last game of the season, but this is the plan if this situation comes down the road,” Manning said. “Winging it is not good in football. I know it’s not good in your industry, as well. So I think it just comes down to what I would just call dogged preparation.”
Manning also talked about how he sees technology changing the NFL for coaches and players on the field, as well as fans watching at home. He said he thinks technology has already helped to improve the game and enhance player safety.
“When I first started playing football in the NFL, you watched all your film, your video, on a Beta (Betamax) machine,” Manning said, explaining that it would take hours to upload film onto the machine for him and his teammates to watch.
“(Patrick) Mahomes comes off the practice field in Kansas City at 11:00. At 11:01, they are handing him his iPad. It has the entire practice that he just finished on the iPad. He can go have lunch. He can go to the training room, ice his legs and watch the route that he just threw to (Travis) Kelce and (Rashee) Rice and talk to them about it, and they’d be aware of it,” Manning said.
He also mentioned chips in a player’s helmet that communicate with the athletic training staff on the sidelines, signaling a player might need to come off the field to be evaluated after a big collision.
Transitioning from football to business
After retiring from the NFL in 2016, Manning jumped into his next journey, launching Omaha Productions — a media and content creation company focusing on live shows, docuseries, unscripted shows, podcasts and other things.
“I like being a part of that team, that I’m sort of the offensive coordinator in the press box and not physically the quarterback of. I’ve enjoyed being part of that team, to kind of create positive, unifying content. It kind of celebrates a sense of community and hard work,” Manning said.
Of course, you can hear Manning and his brother Eli Manning every Monday night on ESPN’s Monday Night Football “Manningcast,” featuring the brothers and a host of weekly guests. The No. 1 requirement to being a guest? Loving the game of football.
“We had a game Monday night. We had Charles Barkley on and Baker Mayfield, and they were great. We’ve had President Obama, die-hard Bears fan. Condoleezza Rice, huge Broncos fan. Snoop Dogg has been a youth football coach for years out in California, (and) loves football,” he said. “So you couldn’t have, probably, three more different backgrounds ... but because we check that at the door, we can all sit and watch football games together. We see it as a bit of a unifier.”