On Monday, at the start of his son’s first week as a (fill-in) college starter, Cooper Manning could hold his phone without it buzzing nonstop. Yeah, this was a surprise, because little has been normal since Arch Manning started throwing footballs. But Cooper, taking a morning walk around Austin, was mostly uninterrupted.
Mostly.
“The ‘Today’ show?” he said to one person who had called to say Arch’s highlights were on national television (and not just “SportsCenter”). “Oh, God.”
“I’m like, let’s maybe pump the brakes a little bit,” Cooper said, now talking to The Washington Post. “We’re trying to lay low still.”
That’s been the Manning Way with Arch, who is 19 and has thrown 23 college passes yet is maybe the most famous college player in the country. But on Saturday, with Heisman Trophy candidate Quinn Ewers sidelined by an abdominal strain, Arch will make his first start for No. 1 Texas against unranked Louisiana Monroe, and that may just put a bit more steam in the hype train.
When Arch stepped in after Ewers was injured last weekend, he torched Texas San Antonio with a 19-yard score on his first pass, then a 67-yard score with his legs, then a 51-yard score through the air. His season stats, split between two relief appearances: 18 attempts, 14 completions, five passing touchdowns, two rushing touchdowns. UTSA isn’t Georgia or Oklahoma or even close as far as tests go. Neither, for that matter, is Louisiana Monroe. But for years, Arch has been a bit of a mystery. A top-ranked recruit, sure, but far more known for his star quarterback relatives — uncles Peyton and Eli, grandpa Archie — than his actual skills.
That’s changing, suddenly and all at once. Arch has (kind of, sort of, at least for the time being) arrived.
“As nice as people are being right now, there will be days that are the exact opposite,” said Cooper, who is Peyton and Eli’s older brother. “I know that’s coming, when they say he’s overrated or only at Texas because of his last name. I’ve been there too many times watching Peyton and Eli week to week, going from great to goat, great to goat, great to goat. That will just be part of the deal, but I’m glad Arch is getting this early live experience.”
The making of Arch Manning has been a slow-build process, especially after he chose to stay at Texas for his redshirt freshman season despite Ewers also opting to return for his junior year. Ewers could have leaped to the NFL draft and left Manning with the starting job. When he didn’t, Manning could have transferred to another school. Instead, Manning doubled down on Texas and Coach Steve Sarkisian and remained one of the most well-known backups in history.
To this point, in keeping with that slow build, Manning hasn’t capitalized on his famous name with a bunch of name, image and likeness (NIL) deals. He has a lucrative trading card partnership with Panini America. When 99 percent of players were offered $600 and a copy of the game to appear in “EA Sports College Football 25,” Manning held out until EA upped the offer, which ultimately included a commercial co-starring Eli. Other than that, though, he is not in commercials or many social media ads. His earning potential is massive and untapped.
“The true marketing value is in the $10 million a year range,” said Blake Lawrence, the founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, which helps athletes facilitate deals. “It’s just the amplifier of being a Manning.”
Lawrence, a former linebacker at Nebraska, breaks it down like this: Texas is annually one of the country’s highest-grossing athletic departments, if not the highest. Football is obviously the highest-grossing sport at Texas. And in the NIL era, quarterbacks are the highest earners on most rosters, often by a sizable margin.
Ewers, then, is a marketing dream. Lawrence calls him the current face of the sport, pointing to endorsement deals with Dr Pepper, Hulu and Athletic Brewing Co., among many other companies, plus the money he makes from Texas’s donor-funded NIL collective, plus the immense talent that made him a fit for the Longhorns in the first place.
“And then you slap a Manning on the back of that jersey,” Lawrence said, also noting the big payday Arch could score if schools start sharing revenue with athletes in the near future. “There’s not a more …”
Lawrence trailed off and jumped to another thought. But he didn’t have to finish the sentence to make his point.
“It does not surprise me that Arch and the Manning family have taken a wait-until-you-prove-it-on-the-field approach to securing brand partnerships,” Lawrence continued. “And up until last Saturday, it doesn’t surprise me that brands have also waited to go all in on Arch Manning, because not many people have ever seen the product. Like, what am I investing in? The name is great, but affiliating with a backup, even with a big name, isn’t a good sports marketing strategy unless that is the quirky tactic that you want to play.”
When Arch was in fifth grade, Nelson Stewart, the varsity coach at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, wondered whether he should move the little prodigy up from flag football to the sixth-grade squad. But from the beginning, same as now, the plan was to make Arch feel as regular as possible, like just another kid. Stewart knows that worked because Arch still asks to train at Newman in the offseason. Stewart loves to look out his window and see his former quarterback running and throwing in the sticky heat.
The only thing that makes him nervous? When Arch plays pickup hoops in the gym, especially when he rises up and dunks.
Way back again, when it was time to pick jersey numbers at Newman, the coaches thought Arch might rush for Peyton’s No. 18, Eli’s No. 10 or Archie’s No. 8. Yet he plucked 16 from the pile, not thinking twice, and that was that. Three Mannings have been top picks in the NFL draft — Archie at No. 2 in 1971, Peyton at No. 1 in 1998 and Eli at No. 1 in 2004. And this week, in an attempt to generate buzz off Arch’s upcoming start, a sports betting company emailed at least one reporter with this subject line: “Arch Manning draft … every team’s chance in 2026.”
“I watch those games on Sunday; that looks hard,” Cooper said. “This college thing is still fun. It’s Saturday night, it’s cheerleaders, it’s Bevo, it’s the band, it’s 100,000, your parents are there, rah rah rah. Don’t be in such a hurry to look ahead. Let’s just enjoy the ride.”
