MANN ABOUT TOWN: Eli Manning fields his first series of pre-Super Bowl questions after arriving in Indianapolis yesterday. (AP)
INDIANAPOLIS — This isn’t Peyton’s Place so much as it is Eli’s Place. The place where he can become the first New York quarterback to win two Super Bowls. The place where he can become the first Manning to win two Super Bowls.
The place for Histor-E.
It is so much different for Eli Manning now than it was four years ago. He is no longer the Other Manning. And he is no longer the Other Quarterback in the Super Bowl, even though the Patriots’ Tom Brady is once again the other quarterback for the other team.
Eli stood tall and proud behind a podium inside the Giants’ hotel headquarters yesterday and reminded you again what every franchise wants its face to be. The best of it came when Eli talked about being in Miami when older brother Peyton finally got the monkey off his back and won his first Super Bowl in 2007, and how witnessing it made him that much more driven to win one of his own. Which he did a year later.
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“Just seeing Peyton after that game, seeing him down in the locker room, seeing that smile on his face and then being with him for those next couple of months after he won a Super Bowl made you jealous,” Eli said. “You always want to win a championship, but when you see someone win it, just the relief, the smile that is just painted on his face for months, it makes you want to win one even more.
“It truly gives you a burning desire to get one.
“There’s not a better feeling from a professional standpoint than knowing that you’ve done your job as a team better than anyone else, and that’s what we’re fightin’ for.”
If you think Super Bowl XLVI is too big for Eli, then you don’t know Eli.
“Same Old Eli, man — calm, cool,” Victor Cruz said, and smiled. “He actually played a prank on me this morning which I’m not too happy about.
“He put soap on my towel, man. I had it up, and I was taking a shower, and I go back and I go to wipe my face and there’s more soap just all on my face.
“That’s the first time I caught him. That’s the first time I knew it was him initially because he walked past, and as soon as I wiped my face he looked back and gave me a smirk, so I knew it was him.”
But now that Eli’s here, it is all business.
“You don’t want to be so relaxed you have a great feeling that everything’s going to work out perfectly,” Eli said. “You still want to prepare hard, get all your studying in, make sure you’re doing everything to get your team ready to play. … It’s all going to come down to making sure we play our best football on Sunday. That’s the ultimate goal.”
That even means no family reunion in Indianapolis, where Peyton has starred for more than a decade with the Colts.
“I don’t have any plans right now to see Peyton,” Eli said. “I know I won’t be going over to his house any time this week. The last Super Bowl I played in, he was in Arizona, probably starting Wednesday or Thursday. I never saw him then, so I’ll talk to him throughout the week like I always do, but besides that I’m going to keep my normal routine and probably won’t see a whole lot of family throughout the week.”
At least Peyton won’t get the opportunity to pin Eli down and knock on his chest with his knuckles and make him name all the teams in the SEC or the NFL. Such was life for six-year-old Eli.
“The one I never got was 10 brands of cigarettes,” Eli said. “When he really wanted to torture me and knew I had no shot of ever getting it. That’s when I just started screamin’ for my mom or dad to come save me or maybe [oldest brother] Cooper. That was his go-to move.”
Peyton’s lone go-to move as he sat out this season was to the spine surgeon’s office. It reminds Eli how precious this moment is.
“When you have an opportunity that you can go win a championship, you don’t want to let those things slip away because you just don’t know if you’re going to get another opportunity,” Eli said.
Peyton predicted Eli would get multiple opportunities.
“I really haven’t thought much on playing in Indianapolis,” Eli said. “It’s not really a time to reflect right now on that. We’ll look back on playing a Super Bowl in the town where he played his NFL … plays for the Colts. We’ll look on that later.”
He’ll get a chance to evaluate his legacy later, too.
“If you get concerned with other things, it takes your focus off what your job has to be for this coming Sunday,” Eli said.
To make Histor-E in Peyton’s Place.
steve.serby@nypost.com