While Manning isn’t being charged in the current lawsuit, he was named in the suit as an example of how sexual assault isn’t taken seriously and is swept under the rug at the school.
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One part of the lawsuit includes a sexual harassment complaint made by athletic trainer Jamie Naughright involving an incident in a training room in 1996 as she was treating Manning. The original suit was settled by the court, but Manning was sued a second time by Naughright for making disparaging remarks (making reference to her “vulgar mouth”) – a violation of the settlement – about her in his book with father, Archie, titled “Manning: A Father, His Sons and a Football Legacy”.
King said a Google search showed that USA Today had written a news story and column about the lawsuit in 2003, but, in an era before social media, the articles had not “rocked the American sports world to its core”, as King wrote they would have had they appeared today.
But two recent stories about Manning threaten to stain his good-guy image.
By all accounts, after she left Tennessee, Naughright moved on with life, forged a successful career in sports medicine and found a way to live with whatever happened in Knoxville.
There’s former Baylor defensive end Sam Ukwuachu – convicted in August of sexually assaulting a women’s soccer player after he was cleared in a “school investigation” – and former Baylor defensive end Tevin Elliott – accused of sexually assaulting five women from October 2009 to April 2012 before an incident led to his conviction in January 2014. In that document Manning is accused of allegedly rubbed his rectum and scrotum on Naughright’s face during an examination, according to SB Nation. Now Peyton Manning – with past allegations resurfacing about sexual misconduct toward a University of Tennessee female athletic trainer while in college – is back on the news cycle front burner for reasons beyond whether the Denver Broncos quarterback intends to retire. Saxon witnessed the incident between Manning and Naughright, and later wrote a letter to Manning that said he lost his eligibility for telling the truth about what happened and imploring him to set the record straight to help Naughright regain her credibility in her profession. Then, a few years later, Naughright sued Manning for a remark about her in the book Manning wrote with his father, Archie.
The Broncos have said they will wait to begin talks with Osweiler as a courtesy to Manning, who has yet to decide if he will return for a 19th National Football League season. “I never understood why you didn’t admit to it…”, it stated in the document. If Manning decides to continue his career and play in 2016, both of these stories are going to be examined with more scrutiny.
Nobody says Manning is ideal, just that he’s about as close as a superstar athlete can be to perfection.
He was supposed to win the Super Bowl and then ride off into the sunset as the flawless champion: The picture of perfection.
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The “facts of the case” obtained by the New York Daily News was originally entered into court in October 2003. “… Peyton Manning is not a party to our lawsuit”. Anheuser-Busch, the brewer of Budweiser, said Manning was not paid for the mentions, but Beer Business Daily had reported that Manning, who does many commercials in the United States, is the part-owner of a Bud distributorship in Louisiana. In the wake of the PED claims, numerous outlets cover a two-decade-old allegation about a young Manning exposing himself to a female trainer as though it were breaking news.
