The Guy Who Beat Peyton Manning Started a Marketing Company

So this post is a one-off from what I typically write on the OutboundEngine blog, but it’s a pretty interesting break for you in your day. Recently, BuzzFeed did an article on our CEO, Branndon Stewart, and it’s a story a lot of you might not know.

Back before Branndon started OutboundEngine, he played college football at the University of Tennessee and, as the BuzzFeed article points out, is the “one guy who ever played ahead of Peyton Manning.”

In the recently released ESPN documentary The Book of Manning, which generally covers the Manning quarterback dynasty in fascinating and remarkable detail, no mention is made of him. “All of a sudden,” one of the film’s talking heads says, in reference to Manning’s 1994 season, “Peyton is the guy.” But that’s not true. Manning and Stewart actually took turns helming the Volunteers’ offense for much of their freshman years. It wasn’t until the seventh game of the season that Manning seemed destined to be The Guy. In that game, Stewart didn’t play after halftime, and would go on to transfer — and hard as it might seem to believe now, many Vols players and fans weren’t happy about it.

The way it played out was Stewart, feeling like the coaches had already made their choice, transferred after the season to Texas A&M, where he started parts of three seasons and led the Aggies to their last conference title — and only BCS berth — in 1998.

Fast forward to today, and Branndon is now CEO of a company he built, OutboundEngine, and doing quite well for himself. It’s pretty cool to know that the only guy who ever played ahead of Peyton Manning now runs a company that does the marketing for small business owners (Mortgage Professionals, Insurance Agents, Real Estate Agents). Not to mention that OutboundEngine is growing at a rate of 300% a year too.

There you have it! I get to come to work everyday and work a very smart guy who has some pretty interesting stories from his football past. That, and I get to read about him on occasion in BuzzFeed articles.

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Thanks to Joel Anderson for the BuzzFeed Post The One Guy Who Ever Played Ahead Of Peyton Manning Is Alive And Well And Running A Software Company.