Despite my Dallas Cowboy fandom emerging the same time I got bitten by the sport bug in 2001, one of my favorite football players from the start never played for the franchise.
Peyton Manning, who played quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts and later Denver Broncos, never had much to do with the Cowboys. Both teams were a part of the American Football Conference, the other conference Dallas only has to worry about if it could make it to a Super Bowl.
Before his rivalry with Tom Brady and the Patriots and his ever present commercials made him a household name non-sports fans still recognize six years after his retirement, he was still one of the most promising young quarterbacks in the league.
This made him rate high in all my football video games. While now that just means the massively overrated Madden series, back when I was a kid there were several more options.
I liked to pick the Colts and after reading about the quiet, humble, kind of undersized super star receiver Marvin Harrison who was my receiving idol, I grew to love the quarterback who threw him the ball as well.
I found a mailing address for fan mail in one of my books at the time that had a glowing biography written about him that made me like him more. To this day, it is the only fan mail I have sent to an athlete as I cringe thinking about the letter’s content, about how he helped me win in various video games using his avatar. I hope he never read it.
My dad did call the house phone once and did a horrible impression of him telling me he did read the letter, but even my 11-year-old self saw through it.
Manning is going to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this Sunday on his first year on the ballot, an honor reserved for only the best players.
When people brought up the best quarterbacks in the league during the 2000s and early 2010s, it usually settled on either Manning or Brady.
Their rivalry, continuing even when Manning went to the Broncos in his last few seasons, was special not only because you saw the two best of their era going back and forth, but because they usually always had Super Bowl berths on the line and went down the wire.
Brady and the nearly 20-year dynasty New England Patriot teams usually had the upper hand since he had the benefit of having the best coach of the modern era in Bill Belichick, who usually had some creative defenses to throw at Manning and his high powered offenses.
Manning succeeded enough as he led his teams to four Super Bowls in his career, winning two of them. He was saved from being relegated to being talked about as a great player who could not win the big one.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the weekend edition of the Bowie News.