There’s no better opening than the this one by Ian O’Connor, so we’ll just go with that:

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14918070/father-archie-thankful-peyton-manning-career-nfl“Archie Manning should have known better, and his middle son, Peyton, was reminding him why.“It’s only his first game and already we have Peyton shaming others for his own lousy performance. His O-Lines really shouldn’t take it personally, the guy pulls this shit on his own father.“The rookie quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts had just thrown three interceptions in his losing 1998 debut against Miami, and the camera had caught the old man acting the part of a Little League father treating his son’s start like Game 7 of the World Series.”That sentence just hurts my brain.“Maybe Archie was already starting to suspect the football gods had cursed him again.”OH NOES MY KID IS A STARTING QB IN THE NFL WHY FOOTBALL GODS WHY“Maybe as he sat in the stands that day, Archie Manning was thinking, ‘Here we go again.‘”Patience, Archie Manning. You need it.“‘Whatever it was I did, wincing or whatever, Peyton made me aware of it that night,’ Archie said. ‘He didn’t like it. He didn’t like anything about how he played in his first game or about how he lost.’”Whatever it was that Archie did, wincing or whatever, I can’t find it anywhere. No videos, no .gifs, no stills, nothing. Looks like sexual assault allegations aren’t the only thing the Mannings are good at making disappear!“‘But he pretty much told me, ‘It’s bad enough out there, and I don’t need to see you reacting like that.’ I learned a little lesson there. I never acted that way again.’”“How DARE you show any negative emotion toward my performance! Keep it up and I’ll ‘Send you to Belize,’ in that I will literally ship your worthless old ass to an insane asylum in Belmopan.”“Of course, on the day Peyton Manning retired in Denver with his parents and family in attendance, it’s worth noting that he rarely gave his father another opportunity to act like a disappointed stage dad.“Another sentence that makes me want to garrote baby manatees.“Manning retired with a share of the all-time record of 186 regular-season victories, also held by Brett Favre. ‘But it was that one win he had out of the bullpen this year,’ Archie said, ‘that I’ll remember the most.’”O rly Arch? GO ON:“‘I think that’s one of the top three wins Peyton’s ever had,’ Archie said. ‘That’s the difference between a 1-seed and a 5-seed. We just never thought Peyton would get the job back because Brock was playing well, and we didn’t think Peyton would ever get healthy enough to get another chance. But he got one off the bench against San Diego. Von Miller isn’t the MVP of the Super Bowl and isn’t on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ if we don’t pull that game off.’”This completely disregards the fact that the Chargers were a dumpster fire by that time and that all the Broncos had to do to win that game was to not turn the ball over five more times in the second half.A tedious examination of Peyton’s recent injury history and other factors leading to his decision to retire follows, culminating in this Buddhist koan:“‘Peyton’s at peace with this,’” Archie said.Followed on immediately by this little passive-aggressive number:“‘I texted about 75 people right after he made his decision to retire, and I got unbelievable responses back from so many friends that we treasure. People love Peyton and they like this story, even though some of our friends are mad about all the stuff over the last few weeks.’”“I am shocked, SHOCKED to find that HGH abuse and sexual assault are going on here!”“On the Al Jazeera report, Archie Manning said, ‘You hate to go through that. One thing you learn from all this, it’s a different world today and journalism is different than what it was.’”“Back in my day we were snorting crushed-up D-bol and horse tranquilizers off reporters’ press passes.”“Though Archie said he couldn’t discuss details of the Tennessee case, he did address the impact of the back-to-back hits on his son’s image. ‘It certainly wasn’t fun,’ he said.“Back in my day we called that little maneuver the ‘Dingleberry Surprise.’ I taught it to the boys myself.”“Archie Manning didn’t want to defend his son in his final hours as an active NFL player. He preferred to talk about the good times in Indy and Denver, and the calming effect Tony Dungy had on the high-strung quarterback.”I can’t…I can’t even…“He couldn’t bear to watch sometimes, and he did pace nervously away from the action when the stakes were especially high. But Archie Manning stood still long enough to watch his middle son become one of the all-time greats, a reward long overdue for a damn good quarterback who went 35-101-3.”
Others equally deserving of such a rich rewarding include EVERYONE ELSE WHO EVER STARTED 100 GAMES OR MORE AT QB IN NFL HISTORYBy this logic Ryan Leaf’s kids should be multiple Nobel Prize-winning astronaut psychic surgeons that dominate the NFL in their spare time.And if your kids’ successes can make up for your own lifetime of failure and suckitude then I guess you must not have cared enough in the first place,, smgdh