Retirement News
Peyton Manning informed his team the Denver Broncos today that he would announce tomorrow that he was retiring from pro football. It was kind of expected, given that he went out on top with a Broncos Super Bowl win this past February but it is still big news any time the all time passing leader of a league decides to call it quits. Even more, it’s big news when a league’s star player, a man that has been so popular and so visible as a face of the league throughout the last two decades, has indeed said that he has had enough of a playing career to be able to finally end it.
It has to be a bit painful of a retirement, though, as Manning earned about 19 million last year. It is interesting, actually, how he got that money. He was earning 19 million a year. The team wanted him to take a pay cut to 15 million a year. But Manning had clauses in the contract that he would get a two million dollar bonus if the Broncos won the AFC championship and another two million if they won the Super Bowl. He got them both and made the 19 million after all.
People had been trying to get Manning to retire since the Super Bowl win, telling him how great it would be for him to retire “on top.” Funny how people making 20 to 50 grand a year can tell a guy making 19 million a year he should retire. I for one think I’d like to have as many 15 to 20 million dollar a year salaries as I could get. Those same people telling him to retire are probably the same people who keep playing the lottery hoping to get themselves a payout of something along the lines of (you guessed it) a 15 to 20 million dollar lump sum lottery winning payout.
Manning will of course go down as one of the best quarterbacks who ever played. He was both the all time leader in passing yards and touchdown passes, ahead of Brett Favre, Dan Marino, Tom Brady and Drew Brees on most of the important career statistical quarterbacking categories. Manning quarterbacked two different teams to Super Bowl championships, the only player to ever do this.
Manning’s football playing career will end, but that is probably not the last time people will see him connected to the game. He is almost certain to be hired on by one of the major networks as some form or another of football
expert/commentator. He is/was one of the premier “brands” that football ever had. He was all over the place on TV commercials. He was always the one that seemed to be interviewed after games (like I said, he was a very visible star). He even guest-hosted Saturday Night Live.
The football world will miss Manning on the playing field, but I get the feeling he will not be going anywhere outside of the public eye. He is a brand name. I get the feeling he will be seen a LOT next year. Barring something unforeseen, he will be seen a TON on television and we will hardly even know he’s gone.
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The other piece of “retirement news” comes from L.A., where a retiring at the end of this season Kobe Bryant’s Lakers pulled off one of the most stunning upsets in recent NBA history. The Lakers beat the Warriors today pretty convincingly 112 to 95. That’s a beat down. That’s this year’s Lakers who won that game. This is the stuff that happens just before the Armageddon. An upset of biblical proportions.
Here is the perspective you need to know. Before the game started, the Warriors had won 55 out of their first 60 games this season, playing at a pace even BETTER than the all time winning Chicago Bulls team of the Michael Jordan era. The Lakers had won TWELVE out of their first 63 games. The Lakers were, at the time, 44 1/2 games behind the Warriors in the Western Division standings. It was the FIRST time in NBA history that a team with a less than .200 winning percentage defeated a team with a better than .900 winning percentage this late in a season.
The game wasn’t won because of a vintage, amazing Kobe Bryant performance, but rather with a 2015-2016 version of Kobe Bryant. For this game, Kobe only made 4 out of 14 shots for 12 points, but the Lakers were able to absolutely throttle the Warriors, who shot an anemic (worst performance of the season) 4 out of 30 shots from three point range.
The Warriors (and Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson) had their worst performance of the season during the same game that the Lakers played over their heads. If they played ten times, THIS would be the only game that the Lakers would beat them. For that matter, if the Lakers played ANY team ten times, chances are they would only win a couple of games, as their still less than .200 winning percentage would attest. The Lakers have the second worst record in the NBA for a reason.
Kobe Bryant will retire at the end of this season. He will have to remember the winning times of 2009 and 2010, because his current team will not and did not go anywhere this season. But for one game, his team shocked the world.
