Manning Archie - Manning: a Father, His Sons and a Football Legacy

MANNING

ARCHIE AND PEYTON MANNING
WITH JOHN UNDERWOOD

To my mother, Sis, who is the most
courageous and caring person I know.
And, of course, to my dear Olivia, the
Great Equalizer, a fantastic mother,
and an all-pro wife.

Archie Manning

F or reasons forever his own, Archie Mannings father turned a shotgun on himself on a summers day in 1969. Archie was the first to find the result, draped backward across the bed in their little house on Third Street in Drew, Mississippi, where Archie grew up. The shotgun and the stick Buddy Manning used to activate the trigger lay incongruously on the floor in front of the dresser drawer he had pulled out to serve as a brace. It was the gun and the stick that caught Archies eye as he passed the bedroom door, and when he turned back to look closer he saw the red spreading out from beneath his fathers body. The implications swept over him like an avalanche.

Archie had come home ahead of the family from a wedding that Buddy Manning had chosen not to attend. It was later assumed that his dad planned it that way, hoping it would be Archie who found him rather than Archies mother or sister, knowing that Archie would take care of it, but Buddy Manning was never big on weddings anyhow, so that was speculation. Archie could only guess what prompted so drastic a decision. There were no precursors. Buddys health wasnt great; he had had a stroke. But that was five years before and the effects seemed minimal. Business wasnt good, but that wasnt new either. Buddy ran the Case Farm Machinery shop in Drew but, like the town itself, had never really known an economic winning streak. Apparently it was an accumulation of things. His last words to Archie had been immaterial, something like See you back at the house.

They had last talked freely a couple days before, when Buddy drove up to Oxford to bring Archie home from the University of Mississippi for his short summers break before football started again in the fall. Archie had completed his sophomore year, and had emerged as the teams starting quarterback, with favorable reviews. Buddy seemed pleased. No signs of depression then either.

But Archie would remember that his dad kept so much inside. He would remembersadly, then, because there would be no more chancesthat Buddy had never once told him he loved him. I knew he loved me, he had ways of showing it, but he just never said it. He remembered the times his father had begged off attending Archies games growing up, blaming work, and then along about the third inning or third quarter of this contest or that, Archie would look up and there would be Buddy, kibitzing with friends in the stands, and watching.

Through tears, Archie called the doctor and the ambulance that day, and made sure a friend diverted his mother and sister so that he could clean up before they got home. It was mostly a blur after that. Archie would remember that a man from Case came around with a check, and that his daddys salary figured out at $6,000 a year. It would occur to him much later how insignificant that would bespill-off, reallyto professional football players today; that a year of his dads labors wouldnt cover the down payment on one of their automobiles. The inequities still nag him.

Then after the funeral, Archie took his mother, Jane Manning, aside and told her he would not be going back to Oxford. That his football career was over. That he would get a job, maybe be a coach of some kind (he had lettered in four sports in high school), and would stay home to help the family make ends meet. He was, after all, not the stereotypical dumb jock. He had been valedictorian of his senior class, and his reliability was already well established on and off the playing fields of Drew.

But you really didnt tell my mother anything, Archie says. Sis is what everybody called her; one of those very independent ladies you just naturally respect. I get my size from her side of the family. Not from her directlyshe was short like my daddy, but as they say in basketball, she played tall. She had a job as a legal secretary, which she kept until she was eighty, and she had a broad practical streak. She would park her car unlocked in front of the house with the keys in the ignition, and if you questioned her about it shed say she would rather somebody steal it there than come in the house looking for the keys.

Her priority was people. She was always there for those she loved, and even for some she didnt. But this was a new kind of challenge. My older sister, Pam, was in her senior year at Delta State, and Sis had to count the pennies. But when I told her I wasnt going back to college, she wouldnt have it. She said her needs were small. That when it came to living costs, Drew wasnt exactly Beverly Hills, California. She said she had her job, and that I had my Ole Miss scholarship. That I should get my education, and continue to play football like I wanted, which is what she wanted, too. Unlike my dad, she had seen every game I ever played growing upI mean every game, in every sport, at every level. She said for her to be deprived of seeing more would be compounding the tragedy.

So I went back to Oxford, and back to football.

Decisions at pivotal moments made even willy-nilly have a way of becoming profound. Stand for a moment at this melancholy bend in a road already traveled and project ahead to what would not have happened had Sis Manning accepted her only sons offer that day to sacrifice college for family responsibility.

The Archie Manning years at Ole Miss would have been over before they really started. Archie would not have twice made All-America, and Bear Bryant would not have had reason to call him the most athletic quarterback Ive ever seen. He would not have become the sports paradigm that he is in Mississippi, a legend larger than life, according to the novelist John Grisham, a fellow Mississippian. Grisham named characters in his books after Archie. And there would not have been all those years in the National Football League, where he shone so brightly in spite of the teams he played for, primarily the woebegone New Orleans Saints.

And because the circumstances would have been so badly skewed, it would not have followed that he would marry his college sweetheart, the lovely, long-legged Olivia Williams of Philadelphia, Mississippi, who two years later when Archie was established as Ole Misss lead player was the universitys homecoming queen.

And from such undeniable genes would not have come their three sons, so alike in physical endowmentsall three of them six-feet-four or better, with faces practically interchangeableyet so wonderfully different in style and content. No effervescent, slightly madcap first son Cooper to help channel second son Peyton into football even after his own aspirations were dashed by a life-threatening spinal disorder. No driven, courtly Peyton to set the stage for third son Eli, laid-back and matter-of-fact but by early indicators just as gifted, having shadowed Peytons records at Isidore Newman High in New Orleans to become, now, the quarterback-in-waiting at their dads old school, Mississippi.

And the University of Tennessee would not have benefited so grandly from Peytons matriculation (thirty-nine victories in three-plus seasons; two national college passing records; eight Southeastern Conference records, thirty-three school records, et cetera, et cetera; and for good measure, Peyton a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in three years). And America would not be enjoying now the spectacular liftoff of the third stage of his apotheosiswhere in two years as the central jewel of the Indianapolis Colts, he has become so respected at the most demanding position in all of team sport that one breathless National Football League analyst said in 1999 that Peyton Manning had paved the way for his team to be the next dynasty in [pro] football. Peyton took Indianapolis on the giddiest U-turn in the history of the league, from three victories and thirteen defeats in 1998 to thirteen won and three lost in the 99 regular season, a ten-game swing into the black. No NFL team had ever done that.