They are the past, the present and the future of the quarterback position in the world of football. They are the first family of quarterbacks and, in the south, the first family of football. They are the Mannings, father Archie and his two younger sons, Peyton and Eli. As, as a football family, let us not forget the wide receiver, Cooper.
Cooper is the unknown member of the family. He isn’t a football star like his father and his two brothers and he never received such honors as his homecoming queen mother, Olivia. He has, instead, become the cheerleader of the family. With two different brothers playing before huge audiences every weekend, Cooper told ESPN the Magazine his reasoning behind which brother’s game he chooses to attend: “I just choose where’s the best party.
“If the Colts are in Buffalo, Peyton’s got no chance of me being there. Unless Mississippi’s going to Auburn. Now if the Rebs are playing in Kentucky and Indy’s at, say, San Francisco, I’d probably be thinking of Eli. But I’d miss him.”
Cooper, 27, is the oldest of Archie and Olivia’s three children. Aside from being the party-going cheerleader for his brothers, he is involved with some television and radio work as well as other investments. He has hosted a talk-radio program in New Orleans, where he and his wife reside. Mostly, he is a champion at the game of life, enjoying all that it has to offer. Unlike the other men in his family, Cooper was not a quarterback, abandoning the notion after a bad experience in high school. He was a wide receiver, the guy who would catch Peyton’s darts across the lawn at their New Orleans home and during one season of high school football. He was on his way to following in his father’s footsteps at the University of Mississippi. When he graduated, he would be catching his father’s passes on the University’s all-time team. But as a freshman, he was diagnosed with congenital spinal dysfunction that ended his football career, nearly ended his life and still affects his body posture to this day.
There is little doubt that Cooper is the most charismatic, free-spirited and witty of them all. He, in fact, often calls his father “Arch,” as if they are Ole Miss frat buddies. His physical misfortune has turned him into a lover of life who never misses out on the opportunity to enjoy himself. And he enjoys watching his brothers play. He revels in being a Manning the same way, as a young kid, he reveled in striking up conversations with the likes of Roger Staubach and Dan Fouts in the Louisiana Superdome.
Archie Manning was quite possibly the greatest quarterback to ever put on a pair of spikes at the college level. He re-wrote the Mississippi record books, leading them to their finest era in school history. On Oct. 4, 1969, as a junior, Manning entered the national conscience, having one of the greatest days in the history of the Southeast Conference during ABC’s first ever primetime national telecast of college football. He set an SEC record with 540 total yards, a record that still stands. He passed for 436 and ran for 104 in leading the Rebels over Alabama. In that junior year, Archie led Ole Miss over three top five teams, most notably a 38-0 white-washing of Tennessee.
“Tennessee had embarrassed us the year before so we embarrassed them that day in Jackson,” recalled Archie.
Following a Sugar Bowl victory over Arkansas, Manning’s star was shining bright. He was already a legend in Mississippi for his play on the field. He was treated like a rock star and he dated the prettiest girl, homecoming queen Olivia Williams, who he would marry in January 1971. He was a celebrity unlike any other on that campus in Oxford. Years later, the speed limit on campus roads were changed to 18 miles per hour, the number that Archie wore. He finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy balloting as both a junior and senior.
You must remember that Ole Miss was not always known as the Manning Family University. Prior to Archie’s arrival, the school was known more for past racist policy than for anything else and it caused many across the nation to loathe the place. This was a university that, in 1962, had to be taken over by federal troops in order for integration to occur, in order for James Meredith to be the first black student allowed to attend. This was the same university that, in 1962, saw riots in attempts to prevent integration from occurring. It was Archie’s graceful play on the football field that finally allowed the nation to move past those segregated, chaotic days of 1962. Archie’s impact at the university was just as much political as it was athletic.
He was carried into frat parties by his offensive linemen. A song, “The Ballad of Archie Who,” was written about him, mocking a Tennessee linebacker who asked, “Archie who?” in the days leading up to the Ole Miss 38-0 victory. Invitations to his marriage were scalped. Another Ole Miss legend, author John Grisham, names characters in his novels after Archie. The university’s athletic department has a “Manning Room,” a mini shrine to Archie.
His legend at Ole Miss was something so great that it created enormous expectations at the school for Cooper and Eli. It, in part, contributed to Peyton’s decision to attend Tennessee instead, the only member of the family of five who did not attend Ole Miss. Many fans of the Rebels still are angry at Peyton for not leading them to glory, the way Archie had before and the way Eli is now.
Make no mistake, he was the leader of the team but he never put himself above those players who surrounded him. Dan Nester, a student at Ole Miss during Archie’s tenure there, tells of how the star quarterback went out of his way to just be “one of the guys,” how the extra attention he received embarrassed him. He never wanted to be the star of the show. His humility was something he carried with him throughout life and something he has passed on to his children. Of course, it is hard to lack humility when you play for an NFL team as wretched as the New Orleans Saints.
Archie’s NFL career was one marked by individual greatness and team failure. He was selected No. 2 overall by the Saints in the 1971 draft. The Saints were a dismal franchise, one that would not enjoy their first winning season until 1987 and would not finally win a playoff game until 2000. Archie was not immune to the constant criticism the team received or the boos showered upon the team by the fans. There was one time, in fact, that Cooper, the wittiest of the children, asked, “Dad, is it alright if I boo, too?”
Cooper and Peyton joined in the booing, in part to simply be a part of the crowd. When the embarrassed fans started wearing the paper bags over their heads in disgust, the children wanted to show up at games wearing them as well. It wasn’t long before the boys had stopped watching the Saints’ games on television when their father was on the road. Cooper’s favorite team became the San Diego Chargers while Peyton’s favorite player, at least in those kindergarten days, was Wes Chandler, one of Archie’s receivers.
Now, of course, Cooper and Peyton idolize their father and the people in New Orleans do too, the greatest player in the history of their star-crossed franchise. In 1978, Archie had perhaps his finest season. While the Saints missed the playoffs again, they won seven games, at that time a franchise record, and Archie was named the NFC Player of the Year. A year later the Saints reached the .500 plateau for the first time but it then came crashing down. In 1980, the Saints lost their first 14 games en route to a 1-15 season. Within two years, Archie was traded.
He finished his career with brief stops in Houston and Minnesota, never to play in a post-season game. There is little question that he is the greatest quarterback to never appear in a playoff game and is greater than some quarterbacks who won the Super Bowl. Hank Stram, a Super Bowl winning coach with the Kansas City Chiefs before taking over for two seasons in New Orleans, has said that if he had a better supporting cast, Archie would be in the Hall of Fame. Others believe he should be in the Hall of Fame in spite of his lousy supporting cast and failure to ever reach the playoffs.
Archie, upon retiring, opted to make his permanent residence in New Orleans and to be the team’s color analyst for radio broadcasts. While he was busy working for the Saints, who would finally reach the playoffs with him in the booth, his sons were learning to play football and learning about the game.
But while they were learning how to play football and other sports, Archie was always careful to maintain his distance, to not be overbearing on his children, to not put pressure on them to be professional athletes.
“It was a policy in the house growing up, he would help us out and be glad to play catch with us or hit ground balls to us in baseball or shoot hoops with us, but we had to go to him for help,” Peyton once said. “He wasn’t going to come to us and say, ‘All right, you do this, you do that.’ It was more, ‘Hey dad, will you come and play some catch with us?’
“He was always very helpful and supportive and I think that’s still today why I have a love for football, because it was fun for me as a kid. … I’ve always had a true love for sports and I think that’s because of the way my dad handled things.”
Peyton and Eli have few traits in common, however. Peyton inherited his mental makeup from his father. Like Archie he is intense and focused, a “neat-freak,” as Archie puts it. Eli, on the other hand, is the complete opposite, laid-back, relaxed and uninhibited.
“I can’t figure him out—Eli just doesn’t stress,” Archie told ESPN the Magazine almost a year ago. “He’s a mama’s boy. I always called Olivia the ‘Great Equalizer’ because she has the ability to stay calm in a crisis. That’s how Eli is.”
Eli took after his mother, unlike Cooper and Peyton, in part because Archie was rarely around during Eli’s formative years as he had been during Cooper’s and Peyton’s, because he was playing in Houston and Minnesota rather than in New Orleans. Following Archie’s freshman year at Mississippi, his father Buddy took his own life. Peyton has acknowledged that he understands that part of why Archie has always been there for his sons is that his father was not there for him, especially during those rock star days in Oxford, although Archie believes it was more a matter of his simply loving his children so much and wanting to be around them.
With his father away, Eli pattered his persona more around his mother’s. About an hour prior to one of his high school games, Eli recalls calling his mother, reminding her to tape the evening’s episode of Seinfeld. Archie and Peyton, whose single focus on the field was and is winning, could not believe the seemingly cavalier attitude that Eli had. He’s an hour away from taking the field and he’s thinking about Seinfeld?
“Mom runs the family,” Eli said. “She’s the kind of person who without her we’d be lost. She supports us. I got real close to my mom when my two brothers were in college and Dad was traveling a lot. It’d just kind of be my mom and me at home, and we’d go out to eat a lot during the week when she didn’t feel like cooking for one person.”
His mother, in fact, wasn’t the only woman who Eli gravitated toward. Archie says Eli is extremely close with Peyton’s wife, Ashley, and Cooper’s wife, Ellen. Both of them attended the University of Virginia and were the primary reason Eli strongly considered going there prior to his ultimate landing in Oxford.
Cooper and Peyton were football fanatics. They knew the answers to obscure trivia questions and the starting lineups for every team. They had loved the life they had lived as kids, attending team functions and practices with the Saints while their father had been playing. Cooper would strike up conversations with opposing players and they both would have the team trainers tape them up for practice, as though they were participating. Each had told Archie early on of their desire to be college football players. Eli, however, had little interest in the sport.
“Peyton used to pound on me unless I could name all the SEC schools,” Eli says. “He’d torture me. I used to run to Cooper to hide from Peyton. I guess Cooper terrorized him, so he took it out on me.”
Glancing at Peyton and Eli, there is little question that they are brothers, so alike do they look. But if you knew them, you would swear they weren’t related—until you saw them show off the one thing they both possess: a golden right arm. It was that golden right arm as well as his family history that had Ole Miss coach Billy Brewer calling Peyton, “the most important recruit in Ole Miss history.”
Peyton chose not to go to Ole Miss for several reasons, among them the pressure of living up to his father. He knew, however, that pressure would follow him wherever he went. When you’re the son of Archie Manning, arguably the greatest quarterback in college football history, the pressure of living up to his standard exists. Ole Miss was a perennial bottom-feeder in the SEC, rumored to be under investigation for committing NCAA violations. He had a mapped out plan to success and a program in such trouble did not fulfill his requirements. Furthermore, Cooper’s illness drew him away, as he has said he is sure he would’ve been a Rebel if Cooper had still been playing. The entire family considers the one year in which Peyton and Cooper were high school teammates to be their most fun year of football.
So, despite loving Ole Miss more than either of his Rebel brothers, Peyton went to Tennessee instead. To this day, he receives hate mail from Ole Miss loyalists, although he says the understanding letters he has received far outweigh the angry ones. So distraught were Rebel fans that even Archie fell a little from grace in the wake of his son’s decision.
It proved to be right decision though. He took over as the starter in the middle of the opening game of his freshman season after starter Jerry Colquitt suffered an injury. From there, he went 40-9 and 3-1 in bowl games. He set 33 school records, seven SEC records and two NCAA records. He led the Volunteers to the SEC championship in 1997, his final season. He finished second to Charles Woodson in the 1997 Heisman Trophy balloting, a voting fans in Tennessee remain livid about. If there was a black mark on his resume, it was his inability to beat Florida, against whom he was 0-4 against. Still, that is only a minor hiccup on what was one of the great careers of all-time. ESPN’s Chris Fowler called him “The model for a college football player.”
He simply loved being a college football player. He loved the lifestyle, he loved the atmosphere at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, where the university is located. Despite graduating with honors with a BA in speech communication after only three years, Manning decided to stay at Tennessee for the 1997 to complete his eligibility, knowing full well that he would have been the No. 1 overall pick in the 1997 NFL draft.
“My college experience was a really good one, so I decided to stay all four years,” Peyton said retrospectively. “I just didn’t want to look back and say I wish I would of stayed my senior year. That’s really what it was in a nutshell. I just kind of wanted to be a senior in college. I had already completed my degree in three years, so, I knew I had a chance to slow things down a little bit. I had the opportunity to really take everything in and create a lot of memories for myself and I’m certainly glad I did. For months I was asked the same question repeatedly every day: ‘why did you really stay?’ I just wanted to enjoy being a college senior. For some reason people had a very hard time believing that.”
And following that 1997 season, Manning, a year later than initially projected, was the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft, selected by the Indianapolis Colts who had long debated whether to select him or Washington State’s Ryan Leaf. Four years later, Leaf, who was selected No. 2 by the San Diego Chargers, has retired after a myriad of issues that have labeled him as one of the most self-centered athletes to ever play and the biggest bust in NFL history. Manning, meanwhile, is re-writing the Colts record book, having led the team to the playoffs in two of his first four seasons. In just his second season, he led the Colts on a worst-to-first transformation; they were 3-13 during Peyton’s rookie campaign of 1998 and won the AFC East at 13-3 in his second season. He has become the model quarterback to emulate because of a high standard of play, on-field and off-field leadership and a tireless work ethic on the field, in the weight room, in the film room and with the playbook. Few players study the game more than Peyton Manning.
Meanwhile, he remains an icon in Knoxville. Like Archie’s No. 18 was retired at Mississippi, Peyton’s No. 16 was retired in Knoxville. And this coming season, Peyton will make his first return to the state as a professional when he leads the Colts into Nashville to take on the Tennessee Titans on Dec. 8. No doubt, he has circled that date on his calendar. Everyone in the state of Tennessee certainly has. It may be the most hyped sporting event in the state’s history. There are probably many in the state who do not know how they will be able to cheer against their favorite son.
Oxford, Miss. got their wish, finally. A Manning was finally coming to carry on their father’s legacy. Cooper had been unable because of his condition and Peyton had opted against it. But Eli, he would be the one. He would be the player who would carry on his father’s name at Ole Miss. He would be the new Manning legend, the third overall and the second in Oxford.
“I didn’t understand how important my dad was here until I got on campus and had to sign autographs long before I took a snap,” says the youngest Manning. “The attention, I can take it or leave it. But I don’t think that’s pressure. Pressure is passing Accounting 202. I take it all as a positive; I have two older people who’ve been through everything before.”
The expectations, however, were enormous. Rebel fans didn’t want Eli to be Eli; rather, they wanted Eli to be Archie.
“I think there’s more pressure on Eli than there was on Peyton,” Archie told USA Today prior to the 2001 season, Eli’s first as a starter. “With all these expectations from Ole Miss people, frankly, I worry about it. But you know what the good news is? Eli doesn’t worry about it one bit.”
Amazingly, Eli has been Eli and that has been more than enough to satisfy the Rebel fans. After being a redshirt his freshman year and backing up Romaro Miller as a sophomore, Eli completed that sophomore year by appearing in the fourth quarter of the Music City Bowl. His play was so impressive that the expectations soared.
And amazingly, Eli met those expectations. Projected by most to finish at the bottom of the SEC, Eli proved to have a lot of Archie in him, taking a team with marginal talent to a 7-4 record that included an impressive victory over Louisiana State, the eventual conference champion. Another memorable game was the Rebels seven-overtime affair against Arkansas, a game they would lose 58-56. Having seen what his kid brother was doing, Peyton couldn’t help but marvel.
“The teams I played on at Tennessee,” said Peyton last season, “we had talent everywhere. My brother is under different pressure. Ole Miss needs him to play well every week. Right now, at this point in history, they need him to bring them all the way back. For him to be facing up to that the way he is…it says something special about Eli.”
Johnny Vaught, 93, Archie’s coach at Ole Miss and whose name makes up one half of their stadium’s name, Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, is impressed when he sees Eli play.
“Eli can recognize defenses and knows where the weaknesses are,” Vaught told the Washington Post. “He has studied football. He studies the opposition. He studies the defense. I just like to see him go out there and pick it to death. I can’t wait for him to come to the line of scrimmage and just say, on two, and call the play. I think Eli probably knows more football than either his father or Peyton did at this time of their careers.”
“He has the potential to be as good as they ever were.”
“Eli has what I call ‘fast-twitch’ mental fibers,” Coach David Cutcliffe, who was Peyton’s offensive coordinator at Tennessee, said. “He has great football-thinking ability. He has instant recall and is able to use it. In that three to five seconds of a play, he can have 45 seconds worth of thoughts go through his head.”
And despite Eli’s laid-back personality, his teammates know who is in charge, who is the leader on the field. They can see the fire in his eyes.
“You can look into Eli’s eyes in the huddle and tell how intense he is and what you need to get done,” senior center Ben Claxton told the Washington Post.
After only one season as a starter, Eli is being hyped as a Heisman Trophy candidate (though Archie has told Ole Miss not to campaign for him) and is already being considered a top NFL prospect. It seems like only a matter of time before a third Manning will be starring at quarterback at the highest level.
Now the brothers, so different as children, are growing more and more alike, even if Eli remains laid-back and Peyton remains intense. They speak on the phone each Thursday and again after the weekends to talk about their games, what they had done right and what they had done poorly, to celebrate the joy of victory or wallow in the agony of defeat.
Archie is no longer a color analyst for the Saints, preferring to instead travel the south on Saturdays to watch Eli play and travel the country on Sundays to watch Peyton play. He an Olivia own a condo near Oxford and attend every Ole Miss home game. Peyton attended his brother’s game last season during the Colts’ bye week. Cooper follows his brothers around to the best party atmospheres so he can have a few drinks and enjoy being a member of the Manning family.
It’s the first family of football, even if, for now, they have no Super Bowls to their name. Archie, Peyton and Eli are three athletes that all children should look up to. They are hard workers, leaders and good, respectable, polite people.
They represent everything that is good about sports. In their father’s legacy, Peyton and Eli are carrying a torch that burns strongly.
