There was a time when Branndon Stewart knew Peyton Manning only as some quarterback from Louisiana. And yes, he realizes how that now sounds.



"I know it seems crazy," Stewart says, "but I wasn't a football news junkie. I guess that's the best way to put it."



Stewart was, like Manning, a mega-recruit of a high school quarterback who, like Manning, committed to Tennessee in 1994.



Their freshmen year, when senior Jerry Colquitt tore his left ACL seven plays into the season, Stewart, Manning and junior Todd Helton all got a shot. Helton started until he sprained his knee in the fourth game.

And so the two freshmen, competing for the job, would put in extra time after dinner, watching film in coordinator David Cutcliffe's office to learn the nuances of his offense. Coaches had badges to access the facility after hours. Players did not, so the coaches would place a rock in the doorway to leave it open.



Except a few times, the rock wasn't there and the door was locked. Stewart would knock, but with Cutcliffe's office on the third floor, nobody could hear him.





Peyton Manning at Tennessee

When he was eventually let in, he’d plead his case with Cutcliffe. Freshmen don’t win those battles, though. You’re late, you run. No excuses.

Soon, Manning would run away with the job. In the spring, Stewart transferred to Texas A&M.

Decades later, his football career long over, Stewart heard from a friend who had read Peyton Manning’s biography. What he learned: “Peyton bumped the rock out of the door so I couldn’t get in,” Stewart says.

Now that’s crazy.

**

Before Manning carefully chose Tennessee in 1994, he strongly considered other schools, including the one that would sign Tom Brady a year later.

“I’ll tell you what — at one time I thought he was going to Michigan,” his father, Archie Manning, was saying last month. “I thought the Ole Miss thing was weighing really heavy on him, and he’s thinking, ‘Alright, if I don’t go to Ole Miss, I don’t want to play against Ole Miss. I’m getting away from the whole thing.’ And I really think (Michigan) was his getaway.”

“At some point,” Archie says, “the (Tennessee) coaches convinced him or he convinced himself that by going to the other side of the conference, he wouldn’t have to play (Ole Miss) every year.”

Adds Cooper Manning, Peyton's older brother: “It’s funny — for a while there, I really thought he was going to go to Michigan. It was just kind of outside the box…I think he kind of liked that scene.”

According to Archie, Peyton gravitated toward two coaches throughout the process:

Cutcliffe

, who served as the offensive coordinator under Phillip Fulmer at Tennessee, and Michigan’s Cam Cameron, then the Wolverines quarterbacks coach. As Archie says (in a way only Archie can), “Cam impressed the stew outta the whole family.”

In 1993, Cameron videotaped a spring practice of Manning so he could provide a visual to accompany his six words of advice to the Wolverines coaching staff: “This is the guy we need.” When the practice was over, Manning threw for an additional hour-and-a-half with Cameron watching.

Manning took an official visit to Michigan in December 1993 and Archie, who was already in Cleveland broadcasting a Saints game, decided to come along. They saw the campus and met Bo Schembechler. Rising senior

Todd Collins

was penciled in as the starter for 1994, but Peyton was fine with sitting his first year, Archie says. What made Michigan and Tennessee appealing is that both depth charts opened up in Year Two.

A month after his visit, on the eve of Peyton’s decision, he and Archie spent the night at the Hilton Riverside hotel in New Orleans. The phone had been ringing non-stop at home, and Peyton felt he needed to leave the house to clear his mind. He told Archie before he fell asleep, “I’m going to call coach Fulmer in the morning.” He made it official on Jan. 25, 1994.

On Feb. 7, Cam Cameron left Michigan for the Washington Redskins. Michigan took one quarterback, early commit Scott Dreisbach, in the 1994 class. The following fall, the staff sorted through the hundreds of recruit videotapes that it always received. Anything from California landed on Bill Harris’ desk.

The Wolverines already had a ’95 quarterback — an in-state kid named DiAllo Johnson — but the tape of an additional quarterback intrigued Harris. He passed it to Kit Cartwright, Michigan's new quarterbacks coach. Cartwright signed off on it, as did head coach Gary Moeller.

“So I went out there to investigate,” Harris says, “and to see if Tommy Brady was tall enough and smart enough to play quarterback.”

Would Tom Brady have had the same career at Michgan is Peyton Manning played for the Wolverines?

The two greatest passers in history have spent 15 years on opposite ends of an absolutely epic NFL rivalry. They could have spent three in the same locker room.

It’s purely hypothetical, but you can’t help but wonder: Would Tommy Brady have committed to Michigan if Manning was there? Would he have won an open competition against Manning? Would he have spent three years behind Manning and taken over the job in 1998 and 1999 (which, essentially, is how it played out in Ann Arbor anyway)? And if Manning's presence steered him elsewhere, someplace that didn’t create such adversity, would Brady have turned out the same?

Of course, there are no answers to those questions. The real questions regarding Brady’s recruitment went unanswered, too, as the Patriots quarterback declined an interview request for himself and his father.

As Bill Harris remembers, one of his major selling points during Michigan’s short pursuit of Brady, winning tradition aside, was location.

“Peyton came to campus, Cam recruited him hard, and a lot of those kids, they come up to Michigan and it’s snowing and it’s cold, and a lot of them get a little afraid,” Harris says. “Tommy Brady, he said the same thing. I said, ‘Tommy, let me tell you something. You don’t know where you’re going to play pro ball, because you don’t choose. They choose you. Some team in New York could be choosing you to play. It’s going to be cold and it’s gon’ be rainy and it’s gon’ be windy. And then you’re going to be glad you came to Michigan.’”

Ultimately, college recruitment is revealing not because of where someone like Brady or Manning goes, or considers going, but because of the process. It is a real-life translation of game preparation: Surveying the field; examining the details, analyzing every last one from every possible angle; and, finally, executing the plan.

**

Out west there was a class of ‘94 quarterback, Ryan Clement, who was heavily pursued by high-majors across the country. A strong-armed 6-foot-2 prospect out of Mullen High in Denver, Clement had home visits from Cutcliffe, Florida’s Steve Spurrier and Miami’s Dennis Erickson. He had phone conversations with those guys, too, plus others like Lou Holtz and Fulmer.

He remembers one call, in particular, that came in the summer of 1993.

“Ryan,” his mother said, “Peyton Manning is on the phone.”

“And I was like, ‘The dude from New Orleans?’” Clement says. “Well, my whole family were huge football fans so we knew who he was before that. We knew he wasn’t just a dude from New Orleans.”

They had never met, but Peyton knew Florida and Tennessee were also involved with Clement. Peyton knew recruiting could be a funny business, and that coaches weren’t always upfront. So Peyton knew he needed more information.

The "dude from New Orleans," according to Ryan Clement.

“You’re almost always at a disadvantage with those recruiting scenarios,” Clement says, “but because of what Peyton was willing to do and thought of doing — it just didn’t cross my mind to pick up a phone and create this group of people that kept in touch — he did and I think he helped all of us. He was a great resource.”

The group, according to Archie Manning, was Peyton, Clement, Josh Booty, and

Hines Ward

, a quarterback from Forest Park, Georgia.

“One day I’m sitting at home and I get a phone call: ‘Hey Hines, Peyton Manning here, quarterback down in Louisiana,’” Ward recalls. “I’m like ‘wow, it’s kind of crazy that he’s doing his research.’”

Over several months, Manning and the others exchanged long-distance calls and insight about each school and coach. They compared notes, decided which coaches were bluffing and which weren’t, enabling them to make more informed college choices.

Ward remembers John Chavis, the Tennessee defensive coordinator, telling him: “Hey, if you sign right now we’ll stop recruiting Peyton Manning.” Ward, laughing, recalls his reaction: “You’re a damn liar. I’m getting the hell out of Tennessee.”

When Ward received his first call from Manning, they were strangers. He had only read about Manning in magazines. He knew Manning would be special, though. And Clement knew he wanted no part of going to the same school as Manning. Yet there was something neither of them knew.

“To this day,” Clement says, “I have no idea how he got my phone number.”

Even Archie found it interesting, and a little funny, that his son had set up this network. But, hey, that was Peyton. Every detail mattered. Everything needed to be in place.

As Cooper Manning hilariously puts it, “Growing up, if we got in a fight or a real, you know, tiff — and I don’t know what people do now to their brothers to get back at them — but if I went in his room and took his chair and put it on the ground or put his pillows on the ground or messed up his room, that would be equally as harmful as going over there and punching him in the stomach. You could really get him riled up by disheveling his stuff.”

During high school, Peyton’s stuff included media guides from college programs. He studied them. He attacked recruiting, Archie says. By November of Peyton’s senior year, Archie estimates his son was still in contact with 35-40 schools. That’s when Archie gave Peyton the only advice he’d provide during the process: “Don’t waste people’s time.” That’s when Peyton whittled it down to actual contenders, including Tennessee, Ole Miss, Michigan and Florida.

Outside of that, Archie let Peyton handle the whole thing on his own.

**

Twenty football seasons have passed, and time with the two iconic quarterbacks of this generation has grown more treasured.

Take Bill Harris. He last saw Brady in 2000, at the old Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit. It was the first preseason game of Brady’s professional career, a game in which he was sacked on his first snap by former college teammate James Hall. Harris, in attendance, met Brady afterward.

“I was glad that he was with New England and had Drew Bledsoe there and I told him maybe Drew would teach him a thing or three,” Harris says. “And you know Tommy gave me a big hug and said, ‘Coach, let me tell you: I can teach him something, too.’”

Harris has never been to the Hall of Fame, but he’s intent on “getting these old bones to Canton” when Brady is inducted.

Some of those who crossed paths with Manning during his recruitment remain in high-profile football circles: Hines Ward, obviously, and Cam Cameron, who in 2012 was fired as Baltimore’s offensive coordinator six days before his Ravens faced Manning and the Denver Broncos in Week 15.

Others, like Clement, faded from the game. Clement enjoyed a successful college career at Miami, where Peyton once randomly called the ‘Canes football office to wish him luck against Florida State. He finally met Manning at the 1998 NFL Draft combine, went undrafted, played some Arena League, went to law school and wound up back in Denver.

He was down the street from the Broncos' practice facility, waiting for his daughter to get out of gymnastics practice, when he shared these old Manning stories.

His 6-year-old son, Lane, is a “little flag football quarterback.” Walks around calling himself Peyton Manning. Lane’s football memory will probably begin with Manning’s Broncos.

"He doesn’t realize yet that his dad was, at one point, at least in the same conversation," Clement says.

But time has passed, and so prolifically has the dude from New Orleans, setting records that even Lane will see last a while.