Peyton Manning would be a terrible coach for Tennessee football, and it would ruin his legacy with the Volunteers.
By now you have probably seen Mike Freeman’s report with the Bleacher Report from Wednesday about rumors that Peyton Manning wants to return to Knoxville to coach the Tennessee Vols.
It’s a terrible idea.
Manning should never coach any position with the Vols and maybe any position anywhere for that matter.
There are thousands of reasons this is a bad idea, starting with the fact that Tennessee football already appears to have a coach who has the program going in the right direction with his recruiting.
Manning would be an awful coach.
Sure, he’s been called a coach on the field for years, and he can direct an offense. That’s called being the best to ever play the quarterback position and being a great leader.
A great leader, however, is only part of being a coach.
Also with coaching comes the ability to evaluate talent and develop guys mentally, especially in college. Manning would be terrible at that.
Throughout his NFL career, playing with Manning did not make guys mentally tough. They already had to be mentally tough to play for him.
But in college, Manning would have to make some guys mentally tough, especially high school kids who would step on campus thinking they are everything.
Does anybody believe that Manning has the patience to do that? Of course he doesn’t.
A bigger reason this is a bad idea, however, is that nobody can trust Manning to evaluate talent. This isn’t the old cliche that great players don’t make great GM’s or evaluators of talent. John Elway and Larry Bird have proven that wrong.
It is just a certain type of player who makes a terrible evaluator of talent. Manning and Michael Jordan fall into that category.
Manning would recruit every player thinking, “If that guy has the same heart, mental toughness, and work ethic I have, he can be amazing.”
The problem? Those guys don’t have the same heart, mental toughness, and work ethic.
It’s well-documented that Manning could not understand why some teammates didn’t take football as seriously as he did, the same way Jordan or even Kobe Bryant have done in basketball. And it likely rubbed many teammates the wrong way, something we constantly saw with Kobe.
He would not be able to grasp the fact that recruits would not take football as seriously as he did, and as a result, he would miss on talent.
The lack of patience and inability to evaluate talent are two things that immediately disqualify anybody from coaching football. Manning will be guilty of both.
And as a result, he should never step on a college field with a headset.