Peyton Manning: Renaissance Man

At this week's ESPYs, viewers again saw Peyton Manning plastered across their TV screens, doing a spoof of “The Blind Side” with Seth Meyers, where they inserted Manning in-between clips of Sandra Bullock's dialogue.

This is just another one of the many stops on the Peyton Manning comedy sponsorship tour. Who can forget such classics as “Cut that meat!”and “Your defense is offensive!”?

He’s done commercials for Sony, Sprint, MasterCard, H.H. Gregg, Oreos, Gatorade, DirecTV, American Red Cross, Reebox, Xbox, and ESPN. All that face time brings in around 13 million bucks just in advertising revenue for one of the NFL’s most recognizable stars, on top of the $15.8 million he will be making in the final year of his contract this coming season.

But Mr. Laser Rocket Arm doesn’t just stop at commercials. A renaissance man such as Peyton has to spread his wings further. He has performed in comedy sketches at the past two ESPY’s, did a bit with Kenny Maine on SportsCenter, and even hosted Saturday Night Live, which scored the highest rating the show had registered in ten months. (Here’s a hysterical United Way spoof.)

More after the click.

Lane Rizzardini has been playing fantasy sports for over 10 years. His earliest memory was drafting Fred Lane in 2003, only to find out Fred’s wife has shot him in the offseason. Lane is also a weekly contributor at fantasybaseball.com.

You can contact him at [e-mail] or through his Twitter page.