Peyton Manning Cited in Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

I discovered this article browsing my Facebook newsfeed and I have always been a fan of Peyton Manning so the header caught my attention. An article in ABC News discussed how Manning was cited in a lawsuit field last Tuesday by six women alleging the University of Tennessee violated title IX by acting with “deliberate indifference in its response to incidents of sexual assault.” The incident that Manning was involved with was the lawsuit that involves trainer Jamie Naughright who reported Manning (a Tennessee student at the time) to a sexual assault crisis center in 1996 for allegedly placing his bare bottom and genitalia on her while she examined his foot. Manning denied these allegations and Naughright eventually settled with the university and left her job. In 2000, when Manning’s book came out, Naughright filed a defamation suit against him saying the book casts her in a negative light and Manning’s characterizations were false and caused her to lose her job at Florida Southern College.

The entire article focused mainly on Manning’s legacy and his “squeaky clean image” casting him in the virgin light. Naughright was never mentioned as a vamp specifically but the article does indeed allude to her falsely accusing Manning of sexual assault. Manning describes the incident in his book as a “crude but harmless locker-room exchange” in which Naughright caught him ‘mooning’ a fellow athlete. There is a lightness to the article that I think makes the incident seem less serious than it typically would be handled if it didn’t include Manning and his fame status.

            I am curious to see how these allegations would have been handled in the media if the perpetrator weren’t in a football legend. Also, should there have been any mention of how Naughright did not receive justice for the alleged assault on her? Or is it just assumed that she was falsely accusing Manning because his talent on the football field?