Peyton Manning is headed into one of the trickiest rooting situations of his football life this Saturday, and it all comes down to family.
The Tennessee legend will be in Neyland Stadium when the Volunteers host Texas, a game that puts his nephew, Arch Manning, on the opposite sideline from the school Peyton has represented for decades. That creates a rare split in loyalties for a man who has never hidden how deeply he still feels about Tennessee.
Back in June at the Manning Passing Academy, Peyton was asked which side he would be on for the matchup. He didn’t come out and say he was backing Texas, but he made his position pretty clear when he said that “nothing is more important than family.”
“One of the kids was asking me earlier who I was going to go,” Manning told Chris Gordy at the Manning Passing Academy. “I said, ‘Who do you think?’
and he said that he would go for his school over his relative. I went, ‘You and I are different.
You and I are wired differently.’ Nothing is more important than your family.
Obviously, it’s going to be a huge SEC game. My dad dealt with it when I was in college when Tennessee played Ole Miss.
I love my university, my alma mater. Pull for them unconditionally but nothing is more important to me than my family and when you have a nephew playing, I pull very hard for him every single Saturday.”
We also know Peyton will be at the game on Saturday, thanks to comments Pat McAfee made during Monday Night Manningcast on Monday night. While McAfee was off to the side as the Mannings interviewed Scott Van Pelt, he could be heard shouting “Saturday!” toward Peyton, a clue that lines up with ESPN’s College GameDay schedule for the weekend.
What remains unclear is whether Peyton will be chosen as the guest picker for Tennessee-Texas on GameDay. There’s a strong case against it. He would be in an awkward spot publicly picking against Tennessee, and Tennessee would probably not want to be the first school in GameDay history to have its biggest football icon pick the other side.
So the safest guess is that Peyton keeps a low profile around this one. Given what he said in June, that would fit. Tennessee has long had one of its most visible and devoted alumni in Peyton Manning, but this weekend, the family tie seems likely to matter most.
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