Putting Peyton in his
Place
 This is the sixth in a series of postcards Sports
Illustrated's Peter King will e-mail from his annual NFL
training-camp
tour.
Posted: Wed July 29,
1998
July
28: Anderson,
Ind.
TEAM: Indianapolis
Colts
SITE: Anderson College, a classic midwestern small college an
hour north of Indianapolis. Take a left off state Route 9
at the Christian Family Store and you run right into
Peyton's (Summer) Place. Too bad he's not
here.
FOOD: Missed it interviewing
Jim
Mora. I must have been looking longingly at a
Tupperware-boxful of Toll House cookies, baked by Mora's
wife,
Connie; because Mora offered me some, I took them, and that was
lunch. Delicious and moist, with a hint of vanilla. All
that was missing was the
milk.
Dear
NFL Junkie:
I'm back in the Midwest, where I cut my journalistic
eyeteeth
(Cincinnati
Enquirer, 1980-85). It's so pleasant. Walking to practice this
afternoon, three kids—athletic, about 12-ish, gym
shorts, sandals, tanned, happy-looking—passed by on
the Anderson campus. One of them, a boy, looked at me and
said: "Hi. How are
you?"
Weirdest thing about this place is the lack of
Peytonmania. In the hour's drive from the airport
I passed no Colts billboards, no mention of Manning, nothing
to signify any excitement over the team or the player.
There are "Colts Training Camp'' signs at the highway
exit, but those are 15 years old. What a
contrast from yesterday. Dallas's crowd was 15 times the size
of
Indy's.
Finally, about dinnertime here, Colts
GM Bill
Polian and Manning agent
Tom
Condon reach a pretty incredible deal. "When it finally got
done, there's no question Bill looked a little bit
shocked," said a source close to the talks. He should
have been. The Colts will pay Peyton $11.6 million before
he takes a snap and an additional
$8.4 million after his third season, if he meets some very
minimal playing-time
requirements.
In the 15 years I've covered the league players have gone
from getting almost zero guaranteeed money to, in this
case, about 95 percent guaranteed money in a guy's first
three seasons. Maybe I'm showing my age but I definitely
don't think this is a good
thing.
—P.K.
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