Archie Manning on Raising Two Super Bowl Champs

I didn’t want to be one of these pushy daddies. I’m as proud as the next guy, but I’ve always been a little skeptical of the daddies who walk around talking about what great athletes their kids are. This is probably because I played athletics. I had played here in New Orleans for the Saints, and I retired here. At the time we were the only game in town. I was worried about that, too; I didn’t want [my sons] to be singled out. We went to school board meetings, we went to Little League games, and we did everything to be normal.

Cooper was the first one. He wasn’t, you know, a blue-chip, four-star recruit at wide receiver. He was more marginal. He probably wound up with about seven or eight offers. He wanted to play college football but unfortunately had some spinal cord trouble and had to give it up. Cooper and Peyton—they played a lot of ball. If they ever asked me to play catch with them, I went. But they kind of had to ask. I wasn’t trying to raise professional quarterbacks. Eli came along five years later. Having those first two, two years apart, you can imagine all of the Little League games and basketball games.