In a way, Peyton Manning and I go way back. To 1996, when I made the trip to Knoxville to see UCLA play Manning and No. 2-ranked Tennessee.

We were in the same stadium, anyway. The two of us and 100,000-plus other people, most of them wearing orange.

Tennessee won 35-20 before the usual Neyland Stadium capacity crowd, numbered at 106,297. (I remember thinking of buying some Vols paraphernalia, but even hours before the game a huge line had formed just to get in to the team store. I took a pass.)

Did I go into the Volunteers locker room, after the game, to listen to the Heisman Trophy candidate speak?

I imagine I did not. I was there to cover UCLA, and particularly their coach, Bob Toledo, who was coaching the first game of the post-Terry Donahue era.

I remember writing that the Bruins had shown up and given a good account of themselves. They trailed only 28-20 in the fourth quarter, and within a couple of years they would make a push for a national championship, with Cade McNown and Danny Farmer.

But back to Peyton. Clearly, he was good. Having been a Los Angeles Rams fan as a child, I knew Peyton was the son of Archie Manning, a very fine quarterback whose NFL career had been pretty much wasted playing for the New Orleans Saints, who were awful while he was there.

Peyton never did win the Heisman; in his senior year, the voters gave it to Charles Woodson of Michigan. I had a Heisman vote, back there, and I don’t remember for whom I gave my first-place vote. I’d like to think it was Peyton … but I really don’t know. Not sure I would have voted for Woodson, either. (I’m guessing I voted for Ryan Leaf of Washington State; a West Coast solidarity thing, and he did have a huge season; his stats compared favorably with Peyton’s. This is before Leaf was an NFL bust, remember.)

In 1998, Peyton joined the Indianapolis Colts, and the rest has been history. Maybe the smartest quarterback ever, great at reading defenses, the man who won a Super Bowl for the Colts.

Then came the injuries, neck injuries, which have to be scary as heck for a football player; will the next blow be the one that leads to permanent injury?

He missed all of 2011, the Colts didn’t want to keep him around with Andrew Luck on the way — a hard call, but they cannot be faulted, strategically (they would have had to spend a lot of money on a guy who might never play again), but it was pretty rough, emotionally, because of everything Peyton did for that franchise.

I decided I liked him even better once he became something of a public figure … in terms of fans having a sense of who he was. He hosted Saturday Night Live in 2007, he did a ton of commercials, including the one with his parents and brothers touring ESPN studios, and Peyton and Eli trailing behind and messing with each other.

I was happy to see him make the comeback with the Broncos in 2012, and happier still to see him regain the NFL single-season record for touchdown passes today, with 51 — one more than Tom Brady’s old record.

Lots of pundits doubt the Broncos’ ability to get to the Super Bowl; they are likely to play all their playoffs games outside, in the dead of winter, and severe cold and aging quarterbacks are not a good combination; Peyton’s reputation for being an indoor quarterback is not quite borne out by the facts.

Even the Super Bowl will be cold and miserable, quite likely, going off, as it is, in the new New York Giants/Jets stadium in New Jersey.

I would like to see the Broncos win it, with Peyton behind center. I wouldn’t bet on his marvelous season ending like that, but I hope it does.

Unless Denver is playing Seattle. I like Peyton, but I like Pete Carroll, the Seahawks coach, even better.