15 best college football players we wish played in the Twitter era

4. Best college football players before Twitter: Peyton Manning, QB, Tennessee

Peyton Manning is the second or third-best quarterback in the history of the NFL. He was also a standout at Tennessee, finishing second in the Heisman race his senior season. The guy was a lot of fun to watch, and he put up video game numbers before the spread offense revolution.

His 1997 season, he put up the fourth-most yards passing and third-most passing touchdowns, where he trailed Chad Pennington who had the luxury of throwing to Moss in the not the SEC and Tim Couch who was in the Hal Mumme/Mike Leach offense.

But even in college, and Brady and New England fans will be eager to hop on this bandwagon, Manning had the reputation of being a big game choke artist. In his senior year, he lost to rival Florida in the third game of the season and then dropped to Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.

In fact, Manning never beat Florida, and that is certainly meme-worthy. As a matter of fact, Manning is so un-clutch, that he managed to lose the Heisman trophy to a defensive player! How perfectly on brand is that? It’s almost as if the fates conspired to make sure Manning would never be the greatest of all time.

Now, Manning is very careful about his image, and it is very unlikely that he would have been getting into it with fans who called him a choke artist. But Florida fans would certainly be having a field day on Twitter.

There would still be plenty to show off, though. Manning threw for more than 11,000 yards and 89 touchdowns in his career as a Volunteer. Tennessee also won 11 games in Manning’s senior year, and being in the top 10 in Heisman voting for three years is always impressive.