Watch: Peyton Manning Says "Vols Are Coming Back, Pruitt is the Right Guy Leading the Charge"

Peyton Manning has been around football for his entire life. Born the son of an NFL Quarterback, he eventually went on to be one of the most successful pro players of all-time. Manning has spent a large amount of his time around Tennessee football, and during the broadcast of Monday Night Football, he made a strong statement about his alma mater. You can watch Manning's statement in the video below. 

Manning and Charles Barkley joined Kirk Herbstreit and Rece Davis in the "mega-cast" for the game, and the Tennessee and Auburn match-up quickly became a talking point. 

The group started to talk about the return of SEC football, and Manning said, " I am looking forward to the SEC returning like Kirk said. Tennessee has Auburn later in the year. That was one of our bonus games that was given to us as a gift. I think Alabama and LSU got Vanderbilt and Kentucky."   

The banter went back and forth between the two, as Barkley started to heckle Manning about the 2004 SEC Championship game. I went down before the game and I don't know if Peyton ain't donating enough money, they had all those little guys out there. Auburn players were 20, 30 pounds bigger. I said these little dudes ain't got no chance at stopping Ronnie Brown and Cadillac. They're going to run all over them. Peyton, you need to donate some more money to Tennessee because y'all ain’t got no good weight room." 

Manning quickly replied, "I'm telling you, the Vols are coming back. Jeremy Pruitt is the right guy leading the charge, and I’m excited about Tennessee football. We got South Carolina Saturday night. Looking forward to getting the SEC started.

Tennessee will kickoff at 7:30 ET on Saturday against South Carolina.