Arch Manning Has No Social Media, Doesn't Do Interviews, And Is Not Accepting Recruiting Offers
Really cool article about Arch Manning in SI today — yes, one of THOSE Mannings.
Three fascinating tidbits:
1. He's not on social media. No Twitter. No Facebook. No Tik Tok. No whatever platform Gaz is going to email us about later saying all the teenagers are flocking to it right now. Nothing.
2. He doesn't do interviews.
Arch is not on social media, and he’s never done an interview. Except for a few benign comments, the usually accessible Mannings declined to speak about Arch for this story or to make him available. (SI)
And 3: he is not listening to any recruiting offers or talking scholarships.
Arch has the rich stats, the regal last name and the right build—he’s already 6' 2", 170 pounds—to be one of the most coveted prospects in the 2023 recruiting class. Yet he has zero scholarship offers.
The reason? His family has declined them.
…In an era of attention-seeking recruits and spotlight-craving parents, the Manning camp has gone dark. Coaches interested in extending a scholarship have been politely told not to bother. “We just say, ‘There’s no offer to give because there’s no offer to receive,’” says Stewart, 42, in his 14th year as Newman’s coach and a teammate of Cooper’s and Peyton’s in the 1990s.
Not even Coach O — Coach O!! — could Kool-Aid-Man his way through the Arch Manning brick wall:
Similarly, college coaches continue to try to find ways around the Mannings’ recruiting embargo. Take last summer, when Arch and his high school team won a seven-on-seven tournament on LSU’s campus. Tigers coach Ed Orgeron and his offensive staff spent much of the event schmoozing the Manning family. “It was unlike anything I’ve witnessed at a seven-on-seven tournament,” says Shea Dixon, a 247Sports recruiting reporter covering LSU and Louisiana. “I haven’t seen LSU coaches put that attention on a senior, let alone a kid who just finished eighth grade.”
The Tigers planned to offer Arch a scholarship, Dixon says, before they learned the likely reply: There is no offer to give because there is no offer to receive.
A cynic could look at this and say, this move is SO UN-attention-seeking that it's actually extremely attention-seeking. I mean his last name is Manning — take away the actual talent and everything he's put on tape, he's going to be recruited just on that name alone. Not accepting recruiting offers right now is just putting a lid on a pot of boiling water.
“When it’s all said and done, he’s going to be the most highly recruited player out of the state of Louisiana,” says Mike Detillier, a longtime NFL draft analyst based in New Orleans. “It’s going to be a tsunami of recruiting like we’ve never seen.”
It's tough to label this "refreshing" because it feels (it is) more like a carefully-orchestrated Manning family plot to work the system. But is that a bad thing? Because at the end of the day, it's a 15 year old kid who gets to focus on football and not worry about haters and trolls chirping him 24/7 and reporters bugging him trying to rip soundbites out of him.
And this 15 year old kid focusing on nothing but football is gonna be dangerous for opposing defenses:
Advertisement
I'm excited for him for the day he creates @THEArchManning and discovers the beauty of having open DMs as a star quarterback. Oh man. Buddy. You are in for a treat!
"All Eyes on Arch Manning to Extend Family's QB Dynasty" — Sports Illustrated