A big, easy choice for father Archie

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-05 10:27

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.: The town he calls home and the team he took a beating for over the course of a decade finally made it to the SuperBowl. The quarterback on the other side is his middle son. Archie Manning will not mince words. He can find room in his heart for only one of them.

"It's easy," Manning Snr replied this week when asked to choose between the New Orleans Saints and son Peyton's Indianapolis Colts. "Very easy, anyway, when you've got a boy in the game."

But not quite as easy as he makes it sound.

Manning was the glamor boy quarterback at Ole Miss who married the homecoming queen, then moved to New Orleans and learned firsthand how the other half lives. He got clobbered nearly every day of his professional life, first to last, 10 full seasons in all without a winning one.

He was there when fans began showing up at the Superdome with paper bags over their heads, too loyal to abandon their beloved 'Aints', yet wanting to remain anonymous lest the neighbors who stayed home questioned their sanity.

"The worst year was 1980 and that was the year we thought we'd do pretty good," Manning said. "Things just fell apart.

"We had lost the first 11 or 12 games and (oldest son) Cooper and Peyton were going to the games. They were 4 and 6 at the time, old enough to go, and they were enjoying it. Olivia is pregnant with Eli and I'm having one of those games.

"So 'round about the fourth quarter," Archie said, "Cooper turned to Olivia and asked could he and Peyton boo also."

All the losing, bumps and bruises don't hurt quite as much now. Manning put down roots in New Orleans' historic Uptown neighborhood and raised his three boys there.

Today, they're the SuperBowl's first family. Peyton was MVP when the Colts won in 2007 and Eli did the same with the Giants the next year. That means for the third time in four years, one or the other has brought Archie to a place he didn't dare dream about during his own playing days. And he will admit that maybe "there's some justice in that", given how bad the Saints were for nearly all 43 years of the franchise's existence.