When Peyton was in high school, his father Archie was the color commentator for the New Orleans Saints radio station. Archie frequently went to off-season practices & the Manning sons would occasionally tag along. One day when Peyton was with his father, Jim Mora, Saints coach from 1986-96, let Peyton join the workouts & throw to the Saints receivers as they ran their plays.

What's striking isn't that Peyton was throwing footballs to NFL receivers while he was just barely a high school junior. What's striking is that he fit in. Everyone at the practices, the players, coaches and Mora, who now coaches Peyton with the Indianapolis Colts, knew they were seeing the beginning stages of a great quarterback. Not surprisingly, considering he grew up the son of a legendary NFL quarterback, that's all Peyton ever wanted to do.

He and his brothers Cooper and Eli and a multitude of neighborhood friends played in the yard of the Manning's 1853 home in the Garden District of New Orleans. The community was an eclectic mix, with Peyton calling both novelist Anne Rice and musician Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails neighbors.

The one constant, though, was Peyton's love for football. He fancied himself a quarterback - just like his signal-calling dad. Peyton credits Archie for spurring his love for the game. But it wasn't by traditional methods. Archie was hands off when it came to coaching his kids. "It was a policy in the house growing up, he would help us out and be glad to play catch with us or hit ground balls to us in baseball or shoot hoops with us, but we had to go to him for help," Peyton said. "He wasn't going to come to us and say, 'All right, you do this, you do that.' It was more, 'Hey dad, will you come and play some catch with us?' "He was always very helpful and supportive and I think that's still today why I have a love for football, because it was fun for me as a kid...I've always had a true love for sports and I think that's because of the way my dad handled things."

Peyton had more than a "true love" for sports, though. He had true skills. Skills that he honed & developed through hard work, practice and perseverance. When high school came, Peyton was on the verge of national fame. The expectations had been since his birth. Archie Manning was a fixture for decades in the football South. What would is son accomplish?

But these lofty expectations didn't affect Peyton. He didn't lie awake at night wondering about what may or may not happen. Instead, Archie remembers walking into Peyton's bedroom to find him listening to tapes of his dad's college games at Ole Miss. Peyton enjoyed the game too much to be bothered with expectations.

It's an outlook that continues to serve him well.