Eli Manning handled the draft his way

By By Stan Torgerson / sports columnist
April 26, 2004
When the first two cards are dealt in a game of five card stud poker, the player who gets an ace in the hole has a distinct advantage.
As the NFL draft started last Saturday, Eli Manning was like the player with the ace in the hole. He had the advantage. He didn't need the money. That was his ace in the hole.
Most of these young players are motivated by the financial sugar plums dancing through their heads. Buy a house for their mother. Get fancy jewelry to drape all over themselves. Purchase the car of their dreams regardless of cost. Reward their friends with a few bucks here and there. After all, I don't have to worry about spending the big bucks of my signing bonus, certainly not when there is so much more on the way. That's why so many of them wind up broke. They think there will always be more on the way, but of course, there won't be.
Who drafts them is of little consequence as long as they are shown the money. How many times during the draft did you hear some young player make reference to the NFL as "a business?"
And in one day they are transformed from being a college kid without the price of a pizza in their jeans into being a successful businessman like the players who have gone before them. At least, so they think.
But that wasn't true with Eli Manning. Eli's family didn't need money, nor did Eli himself. Archie has been very successful since his playing days ended, and Peyton recently received a $36 million signing bonus from Indianapolis.
If Eli needed a million or so walk-around money, Peyton could, and I'm sure would, lend it to him until his younger brother got on his feet and signed a gazillion dollar deal with someone, even if he had to lay out a year. That was the difference. His only motivation was to play football at somewhere of his choice and the New York Giants were his choice.
I took his threat, although that really is not the right word, perhaps resolve would be better, seriously. If San Diego hadn't yielded, I'm convinced he would have indeed let the 2004 season go by. And all this who-shot-John that followed about how he now would only get fourth pick money instead of first choice dollars as if this was a big and painful sacrifice only showed how pitifully little much of the national media really knew about the Manning family.
When you get in the bracket he'll be in, how much difference is there really between $12 million and $11 million after taxes? He'll be able to pay the rent either way.
But the thing that really got under my collar as the TV commentators looked for ways to make this a bigger deal than it really was and to convince the audience of their great knowledge and wisdom is when they started criticizing the Mannings for "challenging the system."
Time and again I heard one of them express disapproval of Eli's stand that he would not play at San Diego. It was wrong they said. The others weren't doing it. Go with the masses.
Time and again I heard one of them express the thought that somehow this tarnished the Manning family name. It was as if the rules of the NFL were engraved on stone tablets that had been handed down from a mountain and deserved an almost religious fervor to protect and respect. What a crock.
Once a player signs a contract he loses control over his own destiny. He plays where he is told, the way he is told and if the team which holds his contract wants to ship him elsewhere they can do it without regard for the player's preference. "Pick up your family and move. You've been traded."
The players who said the NFL football is a business are right. It is a business and every player is an employee. Except those who are not yet under contract.
The only control Eli Manning had over his future was before he signed that contract. He chose to exercise that control and I applaud him. He owed San Diego nothing. He owed New York nothing. He owed nobody the NFL, the commissioner who somehow got involved, the other draft prospects, not even Archie and Olivia, his parents. The only person he was required to please was himself. And so he did.