LARGETONY Blog

About thirty six hours ago, I was having hopes of seeing Tennessee play again today in the NCAA basketball tournament. Well, we know how that turned out. But thanks to an e-mail from my boy, Tank, it has come to my attention that I’ve got something just as good to fire up the DVR for:

Peyton Manning is hosting Saturday Night Live tonight.

I have not watched SNL since Jake hosted a couple of months ago. And that was the first time I had watched in years. I wonder if I am going to have to give up MadTV and watching SNL regularly again.

Back when the Colts won the Super Bowl a few weeks ago, I wondered if Peyton would be invited to host the way Tom Brady was when the Patriots won. Fans of both quarterbacks love to pit them against each other and make comparisons.

Peyton will probably retire one day holding the records for most of the game and season stats. Brady will probably retire with more Superbowl rings. Peyton is the boy-next-door who married his college sweetheart. Brady is the playboy who’s having a little trouble keeping his pecker in one nest. (Although I think Matt Leinart is going to end up taking that title from him.) Peyton is second only to Tiger Woods in endorsement deals. Brady…well…Trojan certainly won’t pick him up.

So, now fans will compare their performances on SNL. Brady was not bad in his appearance on the show, but I think Peyton is going to win in this match-up. Because he’s funny and has a real sense of humor, especially about himself. I think that’s a big part of why he gets all those endorsement deals. In the commercials, he’s almost always making poke fun at himself or his image.

I rummaged around the internet to try to find video of the first commercial (to my knowledge) that Peyton did. It was while he was still in college and playing for Tennessee. He had some surgery done one year and he ended up doing a commercial for the Catholic hospital in Knoxville. In the commercial he was tossing the football around with on of the nuns. To show he was back to full health he tells her to “go long, Sister…no, longer…longer.” Then he heaves the ball out of sight. Next you hear the nun in the distance. “Back at ya, Peyton!” and the ball comes zooming back to him. It was a funny, funny commercial.

That was 10 years ago and he still does commercials for local businesses now and then. Not just big national ads. I think that says a lot about his character that he doesn’t feel “too big” for East Tennessee.

Here’s a few of Peyton’s national ads.

This first one, for Gatorade, is your typical professional athlete ad where the star is treated as being beyond human.

These next two are just a couple of the many MasterCard “priceless” commercials. It really shows his naturalness with humor.

In this one for Sprint, he really takes a good laugh at himself.

This last one is just a blooper reel for one of the Mastercard commercials, but it’s fun to see.

I can’t wait to see how he does on the show. I won’t need my sock for this one like I did with Jake. Maybe just a bowl of popcorn.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 3:29 am and is filed under football, topical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.