The Manning family legacy is so deeply intertwined with the red and blue of Oxford that it’s often forgotten that the greatest quarterback in Ole Miss history almost wore burnt orange. In a candid reflection on his recruitment, Eli Manning revealed just how close he came to spurning his father’s alma mater for the Texas Longhorns.
Why Eli Manning Almost Chose Texas Over Ole Miss
Manning appeared on the latest episode of “Bussin’ With The Boys” and talked about how both his parents, Archie and Olivia, went to Ole Miss. “Both my parents went to Ole Miss. You know, my brother Cooper went to Ole Miss,” Manning said.
Recalling his recruitment, Manning said, “I was wide open in the recruiting process. I was probably going to Texas. Mack Brown was the head coach and they were kind of rocking and rolling there.”
In the late ’90s, Austin was the epicenter of college football cool. Mack Brown was revitalizing the program, and the chance to succeed Heisman winner Ricky Williams was a tantalizing prospect. Manning admitted that the momentum in Austin was nearly impossible to ignore.
“Ricky Williams was going to be leaving. He was in his senior year and [I] was going to go to Texas,” Manning added.
However, the Longhorns were derailed by a chaotic coaching carousel in the SEC that changed the course of football history. The pivot happened when Tommy Tuberville infamously left Ole Miss to take the Auburn job. To fill the void, Ole Miss hired David Cutcliffe, the offensive mastermind who had just finished developing Eli’s older brother, Peyton, at Tennessee.
“The Ole Miss staff, Tommy Tuberville and their whole staff left Ole Miss, went to Auburn, and that’s when David Cutcliffe came in, who was Peyton’s offensive coordinator at Tennessee. And so new coach, Cut, I had went to football camps at Tennessee, liked him, liked his offense,” Manning recounted.
“So he kind of brought me back in and it’s like, you know, was on a on a mission to sign me and that’s kind of what got me to change from Texas and go back to Ole Miss.”
The decision paid off in record-breaking fashion. While Brown eventually found his championship-caliber quarterback in Vince Young, Manning became a legend in Oxford, amassing 10,119 passing yards and 81 touchdowns, setting 47 school records, and leading the Rebels to a 2004 Cotton Bowl victory.
MORE: ‘They Did Not Protect Him’: National Analyst Calls Out Texas’ Failure To Protect Arch Manning
It is impossible to hear Eli’s “what if” without looking at the current state of the Manning dynasty. Twenty-five years after Eli chose Oxford over Austin, his nephew, Arch Manning, finally fulfilled the family’s Texas destiny.
