Forced to Give Up His Football Dream, Arch Manning’s Father Admits Tough Conversation With Son Over $6.5M Reality.
When Steve Sarkisian FaceTimed Arch Manning for the first time, it was supposed to be an icebreaker, a ‘get to know each other session’ of sorts. Instead, what derailed the whole conversation was a loud pinging noise coming from the Isidore Newman School senior’s end. “Are you at an arcade?” the HC had asked, to which the teenager skeptically responded, “Coach, it’s kind of embarrassing.
I’m babysitting. I’m at an arcade, but they’ve got enough coins to keep them busy for the next 30 minutes.” And that’s all Sarkisian needed to know about the player he was about to recruit. Coming from football royalty, Manning was envisioned as more of a Shedeur Sanders-esque cocky young man. The 17-year-old was exactly the opposite.
His life included school, football games, practice sessions, babysitting two days a week, and no social media or video games. Despite being the heir to the Manning quarterback legacy, Arch’s father Cooper Manning made sure to “keep it all in check and let him be a normal kid”.
And that also included protecting the youngster from the weight of expectations.
Ahead of launching a college football career, the young quarterback was notoriously private about his recruiting journey. While his unofficial campus visits became a big affair, outside of that was a static silence that unnerved most journalists.
It got to a point where the father—whose own football career was cut short in 1992 after a spinal stenosis (a narrowing of the spinal canal) diagnosis—refused Arch’s participation in telephonic interviews, and declined all scholarship offers to contain the media frenzy.
Even till date, the family abides by the very rules. And more. The most bizarre aspect of it? Their NIL stance. Apart from an exclusive partnership with Panini America in 2023, and a cameo in the EA Sports College Football 25 video game, Arch’s portfolio had largely remained devoid until he became a starter.
Why? Hear it from Cooper Manning himself.
On the May 22 episode of the Under the Number podcast, when the host pointed out how the 21-year-old (who now boasts $6.5 million in NIL value thanks to his starter role) is “not signing brand deals everywhere he looks.
He’s not on every billboard in Texas,” the retired footballer revealed, “We never talked money ever before he figured out where he wanted to go to college. We never discussed it with the coaches….’Make a decision on where you want to go to school, where you’re going to be happy, where you think you fit in, make friends…and are going to be happy if the whole football thing doesn’t work out’…So he made those decisions on his own.
We tried to help him and guide him and show him, ‘Go to these places,’ because you don’t really have taste when you’re 16 and 17 and 18. So I was glad he made the decision on the merits of, ‘Where can I go be happy [and] get a good education’.”
