Mention the name Archie Manning and instantly one thinks of football. Some
15 years after his last pass thrown in the NFL, Archie Manning still
symbolizes the sport in Mississippi, and that’s no small accomplishment in a
state where gridiron allegiances run deep. What is unusual, however,
especially in light of such allegiance, is that Manning’s popularity cuts
across fan lines; his is a reputation that all Mississippians, fans and
non-fans alike, can take pride in. With the possible exception of the late,
great Walter Payton, no other athlete has come to represent the best this
state has to offer through the heroic and Spartan-like aura of sport like
Archie Manning. Is it any wonder he is a Delta native?!
E. Archie Manning, III, was born in Drew, Mississippi on May 19, 1949. The
son of E. Archie Manning, Jr., known by all as “Buddy”, and “Sis” Manning,
the young Archie grew up in an almost idyllic environment, one befitting a
future hero. “Growing up in Drew in the late 50’s and early 60’s was
wonderful,” says Manning. “It’s really hard to think of a better place to
grow up. We’re talking about an easy, small-town way of life with friendly
people who watched over you. If anybody had it any better than me, I sure
didn’t know it.” Manning remembers going along with everybody else and
calling his Mother and Father “Sis” and “Buddy.”
“I picked it up from a lady who used to work in our house,” Manning laughs
over the phone from his office in New Orleans. “She called my parents ŒMr.
Buddy’ and ŒMiss Sis’, and I started doing the same. I called them that for
years, until I got a little older and shortened it to just Buddy and Sis!”
 Manning’s father managed the Case farm machinery and equipment company in
Drew, and, while growing up, Archie recalls doing odd jobs around the
business to help his dad out. “My dad was a well-liked man in town,” Manning
recalls. “Interestingly enough, though, he was not a sports fanatic. He
liked to watch games and so forth, and would toss the ball with me from time
to time, but he never pushed me in that direction.” Manning says that his
two uncles and two aunts, who all lived together in Drew on a nearby farm,
are actually the people who encouraged his ball playing proclivities.
 “Neither of my uncles or aunts ever married,” Manning chuckles. “They had
moved up to Drew from Crystal Springs in the Thirties to farm, and since
they didn’t have any children, they kind of adopted me and my sister. My
uncles’ names were Andy Frank and Peyton, and both influenced me to take up
sports. They always kept balls around, and put up a basketball goal for me,
so they were the ones who really encouraged me to play sports.”
Young Archie took the usual entrance route to adolescent sports, starting
Little League when he was seven, and playing organized basketball when he
was in the seventh grade. “Of course,” he recalls, “I also played a lot of
driveway basketball and pick-up football games. But I vividly recall when
some of my buddies and I made over a field behind my house that hadn’t been
plowed yet into our own baseball field! You should have seen it,” Manning
laughs. “We worked on it long and hard and made a nice field. It was marked
off and everything. We kept it mowed all the time and even started digging
dugouts, which we never quite finished! Man, we were serious about it,” he
chuckles.
Talent, however, didn’t come automatically to Archie as a boy. He was
naturally skinny but made for his lack of size with tenacity and skill that
caught the eyes of some of the coaches at school. “When I was in the seventh
grade, the baseball coach talked me into going out for the high school
team,” Manning says. “There was not a junior high team at the time, and I
was fast for my age, so he wanted me to give it a try. Lo and behold, the
day before the first game, our starting second baseman stepped on a nail and
was out. So, I started the game, as a 12-year old kid, and never lost my
position the whole season. I went on to play six years of high school
baseball, and some folks in town started saying I was going to be a major
league baseball player.”
The young Manning began honing his football skills, which would later serve
him so well, in the fifth grade playing in the Pee Wee League. “These were
fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders all put together,” Manning
remembers, “which really isn’t very smart when you think about it.” He says
he played some as a fifth grader, mainly as a running back because of his
speed, “but I was scared to death going up against those big boys!” he
laughs.
In the sixth grade, Manning played the position of quarterback for the first
time, and from that point on always played the position. “I didn’t start all
the time as quarterback when I was in high school,” Manning says. “I rotated
with another fellow. But I had a great coach in high school at Drew, a man
named Bobby Fisher, who was a former Ole Miss player. He still sits in front
of me at every Ole Miss home game,” Manning tells us.
As a senior in high school, Manning was a tall 6’ 2”, but only weighed in at
about 165 lbs. Even so, his talent level was such that he started getting
some serious looks form local universities, three in particular: Mississippi
State, Tulane, and Ole Miss. “They all offered me scholarships, and I was
very excited,” Manning remembers. “I decided to sign with Ole Miss in
December of 1966, because I really had always wanted to go there. In the
summer of '67, when I graduated high school, I was also drafted by the
Atlanta Braves baseball club. But I didn’t want to give up college for the
majors, and I stayed on the course for Ole Miss.”
Manning says that in those days, probably ninety percent of all young men in
Mississippi dreamed of going to Ole Miss to play football for the legendary
coach Johnny Vaught. “Ole Miss was fielding a lot of great teams in those
days,” Manning says. “I had followed Ole Miss, and Mississippi State,
football all during high school, so it was a huge thrill for me to play
quarterback at Oxford. My heroes had been the guys who has played the
position there at Ole Miss, and, suddenly, here I was among them.”
 Still, Manning admits that it was a transition for a self-described
“country boy” from Drew to go off to a major university and play for the
likes of Coach Vaught. “You know, I was a little green, had never been to
too many places in my life,” Manning reminisces, “but I immediately made a
number of close friends, friends I still have today. As a freshman on the
football team, you bond really closely with your teammates. That first year
was tough, though,” Manning continues. “We played freshman ball, which was
what was done in those days, had a real tough coach, and it was daily
gut-check for me and my teammates. The varsity fellows were tough on us too
what with all the hazing we had to go through.” Overall though, on
reflection, Manning says those days remain the best of his life. And more
great times were just ahead. Times that would thrust Archie Manning, from
Drew, Mississippi, into the national spotlight.
 “I was fortunate to be able to start at quarterback as a sophomore,”
Manning says. “Coach Vaught, who had coached at Ole Miss for
twenty-something years at that time, had never started a sophomore, but he
went with me. Fortunately,” Manning says, with his trademark modesty, “I had
a lot of talent around me, and played on some great teams those four years I
was there. Of course, I also worked hard at being the best athlete I could
be. I put on weight through weight training, and actually became faster. We
never won a championship while I was at Ole Miss, but we came close, and
played in several incredible games, games folks still remember vividly. It
was so much fun. Football was huge on campus, there was a great deal of
interest in the team, and it was terrific.”
Even though the late Sixties were very turbulent times for the nation,
Manning says he was either too focused, or too naive, to recall pay much
attention to the world around him. “I really didn’t realize what was going
on at times,” he candidly admits. “Reflecting back now, I think I came along
when Mississippi was really getting beat up pretty badly on the national
scene, and, all of a sudden, people here starting gravitating toward our
team’s success; it seemed to give Mississippians a sort of outlet,” Manning
muses. Michael Rubenstein, executive director of the Mississippi Sports
Foundation, Inc. agrees with Manning’s assessment.
 “Archie’s enduring popularity is, I think, rooted in the fact that he was a
college football hero at a time when the state was much maligned by the rest
of the country,” Rubenstein notes. “With Archie, the state could point, with
justifiable pride, at a sensational football player leading a highly
successful, nationally-ranked Ole Miss team, who was really a super guy. It
was almost too good to be true.” Rubenstein claims that, over the
intervening 30 years or so, Manning’s statue has grown as more and more
people have gotten to know him. “He’s become a type of national resource for
Mississippi,” Rubenstein says.
 “I did seem to be like an ambassador for Mississippi back in those days,”
Manning says. “I was fortunate that my parents had given me a strong moral
foundation, and that Coach Vaught was an outstanding mentor, so those
outside factors never really influenced me much. I’m pleased to say that,
back in those days, I think many Mississippians took pride in my success.”
 As for the most exciting games he played in, Manning quickly names two, one
a victory, the other, a hard fought loss. “I think if you were to ask most
people that question, the general consensus would be our loss to Alabama in
1969,” Manning says. “Even though we did indeed lose, 33 to 32, it was the
first collegiate game every broadcast on television at night, and I ended up
setting some Ole Miss and SEC records in the game. We amassed over 700
some-odd offensive yards, and still lost,” Manning laughs. “The other most
memorable game for me was also in 1969, when we beat Tennessee by a score of
38 to 0 in Jackson at Memorial Stadium.”
 Due more than likely to Manning’s breaking his arm in the seventh game of
the 1970 season, Archie lost out to future NFL standout Jim Plunkett for the
Heisman Trophy in 1971. The game in which he sustained the injury was
memorable not only for the bad timing of the break (in which he had to have
a plate and four screws put in), but also for the fact that the future Mrs.
Archie Manning was looking on as the homecoming queen.
“Yeah, it was homecoming, and the former Olivia Williams from Philadelphia
was the queen,” Manning recalls. “We had met at a fraternity-sorority mixer,
starting dating, and got married in January of 1971, right before we
graduated.” The Mannings have three sons, Cooper, Peyton, and Eli.
 Manning’s career at Ole Miss includes so many accolades that space will not
allow them all. He was named, among many other things, an All-American
Quarterback, an AP/UPI All-American on two occasions, was the only Ole Miss
player to have his number retired, and was voted Mississippi’s All-Time
Greatest Athlete in 1992. Most recently, Manning was named Mississippi’s
Most Popular Athlete of the Century. He was inducted into the National
Football Foundation Hall of Fame and is a member of other Halls of Fame
including those in Louisiana and Mississippi. The list goes on and on.
Manning was picked second in the NFL draft by the New Orleans Saints in the
1971 draft. His excitement was there, even though the Saints were by no
means an elite pro team. “No, I was not going to a great team,” Manning
says, “but I was elated to be so close to home. The team was only in their
fifth year of existence, and we went through a whole of lot of coaching and
personnel changes while I was there. When I was drafted, I was supposed to
be the savior, you know, that sort of thing. But I had to go through a
learning experience, like making the transition from a running, collegiate
style quarterback to an NFL dropback passer type.”
While the Saints never enjoyed a winning season with Manning as quarterback,
he and Olivia bought a house in New Orleans in 1974, and began to call the
city home and starting their family. Cooper was born in 1974, Peyton in
1976, and Eli in 1981. In 1978, Manning was named NFL Most Valuable Player,
and he participated in two NFL Pro Bowls, a post-season showcase of the
league’s most elite players. But, he was plagued with injuries much of his
career, and never had a winning season in the big league. After playing one
season with the Houston Oilers, Manning finished his career with the
Minnesota Vikings, finally retiring in 1985 after being diagnosed with
Graves Disease, a thyroid problem, which severely limited his playing
opportunities. After 15 years as a pro, Archie Manning became, for the first
time in his life, a non-athletic civilian. What was next?
“When I retired, I initially took about six months off just to be with my
family, and enjoy a Fall without worrying about football,” Manning says. “I
was able to go to some Ole Miss games, spend time with the boys, and just
relax.” Eventually, however, Manning took a position in New Orleans with the
brokerage firm Morgan Keegan, where he worked for some four years. During
this time, he also began doing radio broadcasts for the Saints which created
additional exposure for him. Soon, companies started calling on Manning to
do PR work for them, deliver speeches, and so forth, and he was on the road
again. “Basically, now I just work for myself doing marketing and PR work
for various businesses and companies and I thoroughly enjoy it.”
Manning has also gained a reputation for being one of the South’s most
active philanthropists, hosting three Archie Manning Cystic Fibrosis benefit
golf tournaments in Louisiana and Mississippi, and still giving football
clinics to youngsters all throughout the region. “Archie’s one of the nicest
guys you’ll ever meet,” Michael Rubenstein says. “I’ve never, ever seen him
impatient. He always poses for the last photograph, signs the last
autograph, and is always so gracious. In many ways,” Rubenstein continues,
“Archie represents the best of Mississippi with his humility, his athletic
success, and his genial manner.” “I’ve been blessed to have had the
opportunity to give back when I can and help others,” Manning says. “It’s
been great to be able to do so.”
  Manning’s latest project was the recently released, and very well-received,
book entitled A FATHER, HIS SONS, AND A FOOTBALL LEGACY (HarperCollins, NY,
NY, 357 pgs. $24), which he wrote with his son, Indianapolis Colts standout
quarterback Peyton Manning, and Sports Illustrated writer John Underwood.
The book is an extremely up-front and candid account about pro sports, the
lives of the Mannings, and many new revelations about both.
 “People had approached me before about writing a book,” Manning says, “and
I had chosen not to. However, a couple of unauthorized bios of Peyton came
out, which he felt were biased and inaccurate, so, really, he talked me into
doing the book, with him and with John Underwood, a great sports writer, who
did Bear Bryant’s and Ted Williams’ books, among others. Sales and reviews
have been good, and we’re very pleased with the results.”
While Peyton certainly draws the headlines, Manning says he and Olivia are
equally proud of all of their sons. “I have great relationships with my
boys,” he tells us. “Each relationship is different, but they’re all good.
Cooper is an institutional broker here in New Orleans, Peyton’s going great
guns with the Colts, and Eli is at Ole Miss. I’m terribly proud of all of my
sons, as is Olivia.”
And speaking of his wife, Manning says Olivia is also very much involved
with several local philanthropic organizations which keeps here very busy.
“She’s also quite a good shopper,” he laughs.
Manning says he still visits Drew often to see his mother, most recently
just a few weeks ago, and, eventually, he and Olivia may move back to the
state. For now, though, the former Rebels and Saints standout is enjoying
his sons’ successes, and his involvement in the business world and the
community.
 Indeed a rare and unique man, Archie Manning continues to shine as an
example of an extraordinarily gifted and warm human being who has done so
many great things for his native state. He is the type of individual who
comes along only so often and the Delta, and the state, should be extremely
proud to call him one of our own.