AUSTIN, Texas — The parking attendants at the University of Texas may be the only group indifferent to the growing mythology of Arch Manning.
Nearly 52,000 students attend the state’s flagship university, which has a perimeter of four miles around its main campus downtown. There are fewer than 17,000 parking spots to serve them. They’re monitored relentlessly.
Manning makes the mile or two drive from his North Campus residence almost daily. Athletes do have parking options, but Manning is occasionally haphazard about where his car ends up. Class, practice and service organization meetings add up. As do the fines.
Whenever Arch’s mom, Ellen, gets in his car – right now she believes he’s driving an Escalade, but his vehicle of choice changes quite a bit – she sees orange violations in the console between the two front seats.
So, just how many parking tickets has Archibald Charles Manning received?
“I’ve paid 10,” his dad, Cooper, estimates. There were a few boots on the car, too.
Arch can square up with his parents, who get the parking fines in the mail, on Venmo with Red Bull, Raising Cane’s and Vuori money — his summer jobs, to speak, now that he’s officially ascended to the throne of QB1 for the Texas Longhorns and finally opened up the NIL floodgates.
“People are probably tired of seeing my face everywhere,” Arch says. That ubiquity isn’t limited to ad campaigns. Even something as routine as losing a student ID turned into a viral moment in Arch’s first week on campus in the fall of 2023, back when he was third on the depth chart.
Few will feel bad for him. Almost every football-loving, red-blooded American male would line up to trade places with Manning, a privileged scion of the first family of football.
But here’s the tradeoff: privacy comes in short supply, and real slices of college normalcy are rare. Arch Manning was one of the most talked-about players in the country before he even took a snap. Now that he’s the starter for No. 1 Texas, anonymity isn’t on the table — not even in the places that should feel most familiar.
Arch began attending the Manning Academy, an annual quarterback camp put on by his family, around the time he could walk. He started as a waterboy. He’s since climbed the ladder to college counselor.
Dozens of college quarterbacks flowed into Thibodaux, Louisiana, this summer for the event. They work as coaches for teenage QBs during the day and train under the eye of Peyton, Eli and Archie at night.
At one point during this year’s event, Arch made an evening Walmart food run with LSU starting quarterback Garrett Nussmeier.
Nussmeier is a potential No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. He’s arguably the most popular athlete in Louisiana, but guess who got stopped for a picture as they searched for a snack?
“I just wish they asked me to take the picture,” Nussmeier says with a laugh. “That would have been ever better.”
Even the familiar can turn into the fishbowl when you’re Arch Manning.
Arch Manning keeps it simple. He’ll walk up, shake a hand and introduce himself.
That humility is what stands out to Ryan Spier, a rising senior who helps lead the Texas Cowboys — the campus group best known for firing “Smokey the Cannon” after Longhorn touchdowns.
“In the back of your head, you’re like, ‘Dude, everyone knows who you are,'” Spier said.
To Spier, Arch’s level of fame on campus is comparable only to Bevo. Rarely does Manning enter a room without the eyes of Texas following him.
Cooper and Ellen always told Arch, his older sister May and younger brother Heid their last name carries weight. The benefits are obvious. The drawbacks can be catastrophic. Ellen hammered into them that if they got in a wreck and there was a beer in the car, even if they weren’t driving, it’d be “MANNING” splashed across the headlines.
She wanted them to see potential paths outside football. Other options. Arch played baseball, swam, did gymnastics and played instruments. Ellen said May and Heid have developed into “worldly” adults, with varying interests from art to music and movies.
Arch? All he ever wanted to do was join the family business.
“Arch really just cares about football,” Ellen said. “I guess it’ll serve him well. Hopefully.”
Given his genetics and mentors, Arch found immediate football success. He started for Isidore Newman High School in New Orleans, the same school his uncles attended, as a ninth grader.
By the time he graduated, 247Sports pegged Arch as the No. 1 overall player in the country.
Arch may love football. The fame, not so much.
His family described Arch as a shy kid with glasses growing up. “Still is,” Cooper said.
That desire runs in opposition to the reality of a high-profile college athlete. Ellen played devil’s advocate during the college decision process. She wanted Arch to have a normal college experience. It’s why she suggested he consider Virginia for college and even convinced him to visit. She went to school at UVA and May was there as an undergrad. They knew he could walk around Charlottesville inconspicuously.
But the draw of high-level football never made that a realistic possibility: “Arch said, ‘I want to play national championship football,'” Cooper remembers.
He chose Texas in June of 2022 — and the spotlight that comes with it.
Walking around campus as Arch Manning is an experience in patience. Picture and autograph requests are a daily reality. It’s mostly fine. A quick photo and a smile. Occasionally, the requests can get weirder. He has taken a photo with pet dogs. An avid disavower of cats, he’s not likely to humor feline paparazzi.
But the real struggle for Arch is the moments where nobody says anything to him at all.
So often phones are pointed at him from across the street or when people think he’s not looking. They want a photo to text their group chat or a video to post on Instagram. Arch just wants to walk without having to worry that his every action is being recorded.
At the popular South Congress seafood restaurant Perla’s on the day before the Fourth of July, Arch was the first of his party to arrive for a late lunch. Nobody approached him. But iPhones were trained at his back, snapping away as he sat by himself at a large table, waiting on relief.
“You get self-conscious, no matter who you are,” Ellen said. “Should I smile and wave? Should I act like I don’t see them?”
You’d think of all people Arch’s uncle, Peyton, would understand. He’s an NFL Hall of Famer and, back in 1997, had Arch-level hype as a senior at Tennessee. But as he can’t really relate to Arch’s 2025 experience.
“There were no cellphones in the 90s,” Peyton Manning said. “It was a good era.”
The unrelenting and intrusive attention began in high school.
A pair of autograph hounds once posted up in front of Isidore Newman and popped out of the car when they saw Arch and Heid walk by. They had a trunkful of items they wanted Arch to sign. Heid had to call security. Vacationing in Charleston last year, Arch said another student ID of his was stolen.
Incognito nights on the world-famous Sixth Street were probably never in the cards for Manning, but there was a time when Arch could join Heid at the Fiji fraternity house — a white-painted mansion on the edge of campus — for parties in relative anonymity. But that’s changed over the last year.
Texas Cowboys President Alex Gottsegen, a rising senior and a Fiji member like Heid, remembers once last year when a group of girls snuck in the back gate, swarmed Arch, took a few pictures and then departed en masse.
“I don’t want to put words in his mouth,” Gottsegen said. “But I don’t think he liked that. As he’s gotten increasingly famous, I think you’ve seen his attendance decrease at the Fiji house.”
Colt McCoy first crossed paths with a five- or six-year-old Arch at the Manning Passing Academy. Fifteen or so years later, McCoy helped recruit Arch to Texas and remains a sounding board for the Longhorns’ new QB1.
“There are only a few people who sort of know the realities of what he’s stepping into,” McCoy said.
McCoy remembers having to drive to campus as an upperclassman to avoid the crowds he’d create just by strolling to class. He remembers, in a pre-NIL era, not being able to afford the parking tickets. UT police even booted McCoy’s car the night he proposed to his wife. He also remembers the single-mindedness of a national championship quest.
That’s why he recommended Arch join the Texas Cowboys.
“I made some lifelong friendships because of it,” McCoy said. “I was fired up he chose that.”
With their white shirts, orange bandanas and black cowboy hats, the Texas Cowboys are one of the more recognizable social groups on Texas’ campus. Their former members include two Texas governors, but more famously Earl Campbell and Scottie Scheffler. Gottsegen said the group is a service organization first and accepts 25 applicants a semester. Arch joined at the same time as Gottsegen and several other athletes, including Tommy Morrison, the No. 6 amateur golfer in the world.
Athletic schedules make it difficult for those like Manning or Morrison to participate in everything the Cowboys do, but both do their best to make the group’s weekly Wednesday meeting, which is often followed by a group trip to a bar.
Arch will go to group dinners with the other Cowboys. He’ll play four-on-four basketball on an 8-foot rim at the Fiji house. “Maybe not when he is the starting quarterback,” Gottsegen adds quickly. He golfs at Hancock Golf Course, a nine-hole venue within a mile of campus, and Butler Pitch and Putt, a downtown institution where groups can tee off eight at a time and beers flow freely. Arch hits it far but doesn’t usually know where it’s going, per those who’ve played with him.
“Talking to Arch, I know he wanted the same: We both see (the Cowboys) as a way to get away from football or for me golf and just go be a college kid,” Morrison said.
Arch dives into the philanthropic elements of Cowboys, too.
He helped raise money after devastating summer flooding in Hunt, Texas. Manning also raised $10,000 for the charter UT Elementary School this year by auctioning off a round of golf with him and Morrison.
“I don’t think (they) were paying $10,000 to play with me,” Morrison said.
There are more than half-a-million Texas alumni and millions more fans. It’s arguably the biggest brand in college athletics. And almost all of those Longhorns know Arch.
But the University of Texas is also just one college in a sprawling metropolitan area of more than two million people. Texas’ capital city is home to tech giants, billionaires and the small music venues that gave Austin the nickname of the “Live Music Capitol of the World.”
Everyone might know Arch within the borders of campus. But a big reason Arch chose Texas is the escape routes Austin provides.
“That’s the good thing about Austin,” Arch said. “I’m not like Ty Simpson at Alabama or Gunner Stockton at Georgia. I can go to parts of Austin where nobody really cares about me.”
He’s smart enough not to out his favorite spot, but he can slip into a barbecue joint like Terry Black’s BBQ or walk South Congress with his family without much attention. A recent dinner at Uptown Sports Club in East Austin with his dad drew little notice.
“Being able to get away in Austin is invaluable,” Ellen said.
It helps that Heid is in town, too. Arch’s younger brother by a year and his starting center at Isidore Newman, Heid is the big public personality Arch is not. He’s a comedic buffer for fans when he and Arch walk around Austin together. It’s almost like Heid provides the contact high of a fraternity experience for Arch, even if most of the time Arch talks his brother down to grabbing a bite or watching a move.
Football is demanding. Fame is exhausting. Normalcy? Arch does his best, which is something people notice.
“I don’t think he ever, unfortunately, and I think he knows this too, gets to walk in a room where he’s not treated as completely equally as everyone else,” Gottsegen said. “But what separates him from some other college athletes is he consistently shows up with a humble attitude. If you didn’t know football, you’d truly believe he was a really nice guy who’d fit into any group.
“He maximizes his ability to be treated normally.”
It’s a muggy, shirt-stick-to-your-chest June day at the Manning Academy and a dozen or so reporters are crowded around Arch and peppering him with questions. He may have been the only person in the gaggle not sweating.
Cooper is standing a few feet away watching and is asked about Arch’s ability to handle the media attention: “It blows me away,” Cooper says.
Arch learned from among the best.
Cooper, Peyton and Eli have never suffered from being camera-shy. But it’s Archie, sitting some 25 feet away, who always handled every interaction with such ease.
Public family outings with Archie were constantly interrupted as Arch grew up in New Orleans. Everyone always wanted a minute of Archie’s time, to share their remembrance of his storied career. Archie never turned anyone down. He always gave a small nugget about the bowl game the fan asked about or the Saints game they attended.
“Arch tries to emulate that,” Ellen said. “But it’s harder when it’s come at you in this age of social media. It’s a constant struggle.”
Archie’s dad once told him a quote made famous by the actor Will Rogers, “Never miss a good chance to shut up.” That’s advice Arch, who texts with his grandfather daily, internalizes when approaching the press.
🏈 Arch Manning Bio Blast
Archie said he’s proud of how Arch navigates his ever-expanding fame, especially how he handled sitting on the bench for two seasons.
“I thought that was handled perfectly,” Archie said. “Some people kind of blasted Arch a little saying, ‘Well, he couldn’t beat out Quinn Ewers.’ That kind of makes me mad. Not because of what they said about Arch. But what it says about Quinn. I don’t look at Quinn Ewers as a seventh-round draft choice. I look at him as a damn good college quarterback. Really good. I thought it was perfect for Arch to be the third guy his freshman year and then be the second guy.”
A few hours later during an afternoon practice session, Arch and Peyton are working stations next to each other. Groups of young quarterbacks pass through and Peyton is capturing the attention of the audience scattered around the field. At one point Peyton tells a disappointed young passer who threw a wobbly ball: “If I could tell you how many wobbly completions I’ve thrown in my life, it’s a record. It doesn’t matter what it looks like.”
Arch is far less vocal. He’s dressed in a white T-shirt and stylish sunglasses that scream Joe Burrow, who he’s been compared to. Even with Peyton and Eli fronting the camp, the dominant color scheme among the observers around the field is burnt orange. Comments one Nicholls State student who’s standing by watching, “I haven’t seen any LSU stuff, but Texas is everywhere.”
That’s part of the reason those like North Carolina QB Gio Lopez cracked the event felt like the “Arch Manning Academy.”
It doesn’t seem to affect Arch.
He’s teaching screen pass technique. He’s mostly quiet during the proceedings, offering a tip here or tip there. At one point he debates with a Texas-based group about the best pizza in Austin.
Then a young quarterback freezes a bit before a pass. He noticed several cameras that had entered the area, all of which were fixated on Arch and Peyton.
That’s when Arch told the camper in a calm voice: “Don’t let the cameras —” he stopped, glancing at them himself.
The point got across. The young passer executed the play perfectly.
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