Dave Calabro/Eyewitness Sports
Eyewitness Sports caught up with Peyton Manning in Louisiana at the Manning Passing Academy. This came before the announcement of Peyton's knee surgery.
The alligators are hungry for attention in the swaps of Thibodaux, Louisiana. A short drive away, some football players are hungary for attention too.
"We got high school - freshmen through seniors - quarterbacks and receivers, tight ends, running backs; we're trying to make them best high school players," Peyton Manning said.
His philosophy is fairly simple: "Be early to practice, stay late, be in the weight room extra, and I think it's important as a young player to earn the respect of your teammates."
"I started when I was in college. Eli was a camper way back in the day, we turned him into a pretty good player."
This is known as the Manning Passing Academy. A family tradition, 13 years and counting.
Two weeks from camp people might think Peyton is in Hawaii or playing golf somewhere, but instead he's running around and playing with high school kids.
"It's a great chance for me to be with Eli, Cooper, and my dad. We stay in the dorm with the kids, we have our own rooms, but we're right there in the middle of it. It's great for me to be with my family two weeks before training camp and you know, it's fun for me to talk football and teach these kids some of the things that I've learned from some of the great coaches I've had," Manning said.
Over 900 kids learning about football and life from the past two Super Bowl MVP's.
"Are you 24/7 football all summer long or do you take a break, do you check out from football?" Eyewitness Sports asked Manning.
"You still gotta work out a little bit but me and Eli and my dad and Cooper went to Scotland on a golf trip for a week. We've been trying to do that for a couple years, that was really a lot of fun, playing all those great courses over there and it was a good father-son trip," Manning said.
We wanted to know what the future holds for the two MVP's. "Are you coaching Eli now, now that he's quote 'MVP', you've been there done that, are you coaching him on how to do commericals and all that?" we asked.
"Oh no - no! Eli's in good shape. Eli, though, has obviously been listening to all the tips I've been giving him over the years about football and he put that to good use this year so no, I was real proud of Eli this year. Obviously he's had a fun off-season, he's excited about playing this year as the defending champs. It's fun to play in that role, I know they're excited about starting the season off against the Redskins on NBC Thursday night. We're excited to be playing the Bears on Sunday night on NBC as well."
The season opener is September 7 at the new Lucas Oil Stadium and Peyton is anxious to get some practice time in, although now he's expected to be out for up to six weeks after knee surgery.
"We don't want guys walking in there looking around at this brand new stadium like it's a visitor's stadium. We're gonna practice in there, we'll of course play the pre-season games in there, and it's important I think to get comfortable with the sidelines, with the end zones, just kind of knowing your surroundings a little bit. Obviously we got real comfortable there in that dome, so we're gonna try to do that as soon as we can and give the Lucas Oil Stadium that same home field advantage that the RCA Dome had."
And that pressure of winning will be here soon enough, but right now Peyton is enjoying working with young talent.
