Peyton Manning

Peyton Manning played quarterback in the NFL for eighteen seasons, fourteen with the Indianapolis Colts and four with the Denver Broncos, having arrived from Tennessee with the Maxwell and Davey O'Brien awards already on the shelf. By common consent he is one of the best ever to play the position. Then he retired into the second career American sport now offers its most articulate veterans: broadcasting, advertising, and a surprisingly durable run as a comic performer.

The comedy works because of the contrast. His public manner is fussy, precise and faintly schoolmasterly, the nickname was the Sheriff, and putting that voice into an animated bull or a Christmas sitcom is funny before anybody writes a line. He voices Guapo in Ferdinand, plays versions of himself in The Santa Clauses and You're Cordially Invited, and takes a straight acting credit as Laird in Is This Thing On?.

The rest of the screen list is the athlete's usual mixture of self appearances: The Roast of Tom Brady, the Comedy Central roast format, hosting duty at the CMA Awards, the NFL retrospective America's Game, and archive footage in Elway.

He belongs to a football family and it is a crowded one. His father Archie played in the NFL, his younger brother Eli did too, and his nephew Arch has come up through the college game with the Texas Longhorns.