Peyton Manning, Football Historian

As many of college football’s top quarterbacks huddled around him and a few of high-school football’s élite passers peered from nearby seats, Peyton Manning proceeded through a motion he has completed more than nine thousand times in seventeen N.F.L. seasons, something monotonous to witness if not for privileged proximity: he dropped back to pass. He shuffled his six-foot-five-inch frame through a seven-step drop and then staked his right foot into the turf, whipped his right arm forward along his ear, and sent a spiral into the Louisiana air. His wide receiver, who ran a comeback route to the sideline, caught the pass in stride. “That’s pretty, boys,” Cooper Manning, Peyton’s older brother and the emcee for this Saturday night showcase at the family’s annual passing academy, in Thibodaux, said. Cooper’s voice boomed through the public-address microphone, above whoops and hollers from the bleachers, where locals joined campers and their parents around Manning Field in early July. “That’s how it’s supposed to look.” Then the circle of quarterbacks around Peyton reshaped into a line, and each passer stepped up to throw the comeback, but could only mimic what couldn’t be outdone.