Archie Manning Reflects on Being a Super Bowl Dad—Again

Even with all the controversy surrounding his middle son Peyton and where he will end up next season, Archie Manning couldn’t be happier. 

The former New Orleans Saints quarterback has a son in the Super Bowl yet again, and this time probably can even stay with relatives in Indianapolis as he heads to Lucas Oil Stadium Sunday.  It is probably not an ending the elder Manning would have thought possible as he was trying to keep the much-maligned expansion Saints afloat during their tumultuous early days.

So it’s time for Archie to be a bit reflective on parenting and raising three boys in The Big Easy. He sat down with Keenan Mayo for a piece in this week’s new issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Some of Archie’s thoughts from the piece:

On being a parent:

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“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…We went to school board meetings, we went to Little League games, and we did everything to be normal.

“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.”

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On Eli:

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“We kind of dragged him around. I always told Olivia [my wife]: ‘This child is not going to want to play sports.’ But he just followed the same path as Peyton. The same sports, the same position.

"Then a lot of folks started coming around, recruiting Eli, too. I didn’t really know how good they were until it was confirmed by the colleges.”

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