Peyton Manning, Hero Worship and Today’s Media

Society has become overrun by hero worship and Peyton Manning’s retirement is just another example.

I’m sitting awake at 3 in the morning with one thing on my mind, hero worship. No, it’s not because of the massive amounts of trailers and ads for Batman V Superman we’ve been inundated with lately. It’s because of one name, Peyton Manning, and the media love fest that ensued after his retirement announcement.

Don’t get me wrong, as Manning was an amazing NFL quarterback. One of the best to ever fling a pigskin – yes, even better than you Uncle Rico. Five years from now he’ll be a no brainier to be enshrined in Canton, Ohio. But does that mean we should ignore the two horse sized – perhaps Colt or Bronco sized — issues in the room?

Not everything that glitters is gold — even if it has two Lombardi trophies and more records than a hipster™’s living room.

Over the last year (as in January’s piece by Sean Wagner-McGough of CBS Sports), Manning was accused of taking HGH to help recover from what most thought would be a career-ending and potentially life-altering neck injury. Even if the allegations are true, it’s debatable how egregious such an action really is. What shouldn’t be debatable — yet is somehow in our sound bite society — is the seriousness of the sexual harassment allegations that resurfaced against Manning recently (via Michael McCann of SI.com).

So why did both go almost completely ignored? The same reason the fact that Full House and Fuller House have been praised recently despite their Golden Gate Bridge sized flaws

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Whether it’s cheesy jokes, bad catch-phrases or a grown man playing a kids game, we all want to connect to those feelings that made us comfortable in our less complicated youth. We want to have an escape from the real world and its complex problems for hours at a time. Thus, sometimes we choose to overlook glaring issues to recapture some of our youth.

Which brings us to USA Today’s Lindsay Jones. She wasn’t afraid to ask the difficult question while others genuflected at the altar of Manning. The veteran reporter asked the 18-year NFL vet if he had any comment about the aforementioned assault allegations from his time at Tennessee.

As you can imagine, the Internet responded in its usual tempered and level headed manner. As in, it turned to Jones’ social media channels and lost its collective mind, prompting this response.

"“Manning deserved a chance to respond to what everyone has been saying about him for the last month. I had to ask,” Jones tweeted after the presser."

And she did. It’s her job and everyone else’s that was in that room. Unfortunately, most were too blinded by the gaudy statistics and shiny trophies Manning had accumulated over the years to ask the tough question. Jones deserves praise for asking the right question rather than the convenient one. Instead, she received hate.

Our job in media, whether its bloggers, beat writers or reporters, should always be to attempt to tell the full story. We shouldn’t ignore the facts even if they’re not convenient to the narrative we’re trying to create. Even the best players have their flaws and not everything that glitters is gold even if it has two Lombardi trophies and more records than a hipster’s living room. There has to be a balance between the rumor mongering and the hero worship. A place where we take an honest, yet interesting look at a career and a person.

Like any hero, if you take off the costume – and let’s be honest, sports uniforms are costumes – there is just a human being with immense and special talent left standing there. And like any human, it’s not what they do when everyone is watching that defines them. It’s what they do when they think no one is that reveals their true character. Sometimes it’s worth shining the light on all of it.