---
title: "Riley Green turns 38 as the former Jacksonville State quarterback duets with Peyton Manning"
url: https://badiyaa.com/riley-green-38-peyton-manning-alabama-vs-tennessee/
published: 2026-10-19T21:43:00+01:00
modified: 2026-10-19T17:30:51+01:00
section: Entertainment
publisher: Badiyaa
---

# Riley Green turns 38 as the former Jacksonville State quarterback duets with Peyton Manning

The Alabama singer went 55 of 100 for 612 yards in two college starts; his new rivalry duet with the Tennessee great arrived five days before the October 17 game.

Riley Green turned 38 on Sunday, October 18, at the end of a week he spent trading verses with one of the most decorated quarterbacks the sport has produced. “Alabama Vs. Tennessee,” his duet with Peyton Manning, arrived on Monday, October 12, along with an official video, five days before the two schools met in Knoxville on Saturday, October 17, the fixture fans call the Third Saturday in October.

For Green the pairing is more than a gimmick. Before Nashville, he was a quarterback himself.

## From the Golden Saw to a Division I huddle

Born Johnathan Riley Green in Jacksonville, Alabama, in 1988, he grew up playing at the Golden Saw, a music hall his grandfather ran inside a converted sawmill, where he performed every week. He stayed in town for college and played quarterback for Jacksonville State, then in the FCS tier of NCAA Division I, between 2007 and 2009. After a redshirt season, he appeared in two games as a sophomore and started two as a junior, going 55 of 100 for 612 yards and four touchdowns in those starts. In 2009 he left football for music.

Set those numbers beside his duet partner’s and the joke writes itself. Green completed 55% of his passes and averaged 6.1 yards per attempt (612 divided by 100). Manning left Tennessee in 1997 as the school’s all-time leading passer with 11,201 yards and 89 touchdowns, roughly 18 times Green’s college yardage, and later won two Super Bowls. Green, for the record, has said his own college loyalty lies with Auburn.

The music career moved faster than the football one. After a run of EPs from 2013, he signed with Big Machine Label Group in 2018, and his first single, “There Was This Girl,” reached No. 1 on the country airplay chart in April 2019. An early review heard more of a neotraditional country influence in it than in his peers’ singles, and he has not strayed far from that sound since. The Academy of Country Music named him new male artist of the year, and his fourth album, That’s Just Me, released on September 18 with 19 songs, debuted at No. 3 on the all-genre US albums chart, his first top-10 album. This fall he is also a coach on the 30th season of The Voice.

## The clip: a rivalry played for laughs

The video keeps things simple. Green and Manning sit at a table in a honky-tonk with drinks in hand, ribbing each other about their teams before landing on the song’s thesis: the fight belongs to the two schools, not to the fans sharing a bar. Green wrote it with Erik Dylan and Wyatt McCubbin, two of his regular co-writers.

Its best asset is Manning’s willingness to look slightly out of his depth. He is no singer and half-speaks his lines, and the clip leans into that, playing up his nerves before a beer or two loosens him up. That self-awareness is why the casting works: a five-time NFL MVP and Hall of Famer, reduced here to a nervous duet partner at a bar table.

The weaker side is the writing. The verses run through familiar rivalry signals, from Roll Tide and Rocky Top to orange and white and a bet over who buys the beer, and the song’s peace-making message is pleasant rather than sharp. It also has a narrow window: once game week passes, a rivalry novelty track tends to go quiet until the next one. The difference here is that the fixture comes around every October, which gives the song a reason to return each autumn.

Green takes That’s Just Me on the road next year, with the That’s Just Me Tour scheduled for 2027.

## Further reading

- [Wikipedia: Riley Green](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riley_Green)

- [Jacksonville State University: Country music star Riley Green returns home](https://jsu.edu/news/articles/2020/10/country-music-star-riley-green-returns-home-to-jsu-on-nov.-20.html)

*Image: Sgt. Jordan Arnold, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons*

*This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*