Manning joins a long list of Ole Miss greats

By By Stan Torgerson
December 29, 2003
Friday in the Cotton Bowl, we will see the final college performance of the young man who is certainly one of the five most popular football players ever to play for the Ole Miss Rebels.
Eli Manning may very well be second on the loved and admired list, after only to his father, Archie. No one will ever take Archie's place, not now, not in the future.
Rummaging through some old tapes the other day, I ran into a copy of "The Ballad of Archie Who." I would have played it in a moment, but it was on a 45 rpm and I no longer have one. I just held it in my hand, looked at it and the clock turned back almost 35 years.
For you young ones who don't grasp the significance of "The Ballad of Archie Who" it dates back to 1969 when the Rebels were to play the Tennessee Volunteers.
Earlier in the season when some reporter asked linebacker Steve Kiner of Tennessee, an All-American in 1968 and destined to repeat the honor in 1969, about the Rebels he said something to effect that Ole Miss didn't have the horses to compete against UT, that all Ole Miss had was a bunch of mules. Somewhere in the conversion the question came up about Archie Manning and his skills. The response was, "Archie who?"
Someone wrote a song called "The Ballad of Archie Who." It was recorded and became a major hit on Mississippi radio stations. You heard it constantly.
To add fuel to the fire, the week of the game Ole Miss coach John Vaught had leaflets disparaging the Ole Mis team printed, hired an airplane and dropped them all over the campus. To this day coach Vaught denies he was at the bottom of that prank. but I never believed him then and I don't believe him now.
In addition, in those days the athletes had their own dorm, Miller Hall. Tennessee was undefeated and had a virtual lock on an invitation to the Orange Bowl. One morning, the Ole Miss football players walked out of Miller Hall on their way to class and there in the middle of the sidewalk was a pile of mule dung with an orange sitting on top of it.
The song, the leaflets and the sidewalk display were too much. No Rebel team before and no Rebel team afterward was ever as motivated for an individual game. The season had been up and down at that point. The Rebs were only 5-3 and had lost to Kentucky, Alabama and Houston while winning over Memphis, Georgia, Southern Miss, LSU and Chatanooga.
The afternoon of Nov. 15, 1969, in Jackson, they kicked Tennessee's butt about as hard as any Rebel team had ever done in the school's long history. The final score was 38-0, and Steve Kiner has never been allowed to live down his remarks, not even to this day.
I thought about that while contemplating Eli's graduation. Five years ago, Langston Rogers, the Ole Miss sports information director, and I had had a conversation on campus. Rogers has been around football in this state for a long, long time. He held the same job at Delta State before he was hired by Ole Miss back in the 1980s and has more than enough years for retirement.
On that day I asked him if he was going to hang it up. He said he'd been thinking about it but because of Eli Manning he had changed his mind.
And so he did. Langston quietly used his many contacts and the respect he has earned in his profession to spread the word about Eli in the first year of two of young Manning's career. Since that time, of course, Eli has built his own image just by the quality of his play.
There have been, as we said, many great athletes who have played for the Rebels and are still loved by their fans. Jake Gibbs would be in the top five group. I think so would Gentle Ben Williams. So would Bruiser Kinard, Charlie Conerly, John "Kayo" Dottley, Barney Pool, Charlie Flowers, Wesley Walls did I say five? I'm way over that now, and I haven't even scratched the surface.
With apologies to all the others, let me reduce my list to three. There's Archie Manning. There's Jake Gibbs. There's Eli Manning.
Feel free to add your own choices. But don't try to change mine.