The dog days of summer are here
June 20, 2018
Longtime football coach retires from South Lafourche
June 20, 2018
Football knowledge will be flowing from past to present to future this week on every available inch of free grass at Nicholls State University.
The Manning Passing Academy returns to Nicholls — an annual summer tradition for the local four-year university.
The camp begins Thursday and continues to Sunday. More than 1,000 quarterbacks, running backs and receivers will ascend to Nicholls as the Manning Family gets keys to the kingdom — literally taking over the Colonels’ dorms, facilities and campus for the four-day event.
Archie Manning said the camp sometimes gets mistaken for a Blue Chip, five-star prospect event. It is not. He said the camp’s purpose remains the same every year: to take the average high school football player and polish his skills before the start of the next season.
The event is enjoying its 22nd ride in 2018. It has been at Nicholls State University for more than a decade — a place the Manning family happily calls home.
“We’re not an elite camp. We never have been,” Archie Manning said last year. “We’re not a place that’s only for the top guys in the country. That’s not our mission. We want to work with these kids, teach them fundamentals and get them to return to their school programs as better players. We take pride in doing that. That’s our No. 1 goal each year.”
But while the Manning Family says it doesn’t aspire to be an elite camp, make no mistake about it — the camp does also touch the skillets of some of the top collegiate players in the country.
To coach 1,000-plus campers each year is a chore, so the Manning family assembles a dream team of counselors comprised of some of the best collegiate quarterbacks in the country.
The job of the counselors is to be teachers for the week — an extended voice for the Manning family, which consists of Saints legend Archie, but also features Super Bowl winning sons Peyton and Eli.
Counselors said they enjoy the job and take pride in working with the kids.
But make no mistake — when Archie, Peyton or Eli offers advice, the college counselors turn their full attention to the First Family of Football and soak it all in, taking back the knowledge to their collegiate teams in the next season.
“How can you not listen to the things they have to say?” Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck said when he was a counselor at the camp while attending Stanford. “They are unbelievable. The things they’ve accomplished in this game speak for themselves. I think as players and competitors, we’re always looking for an edge and it would be foolish for us to not take the things they say and try and implement them into our games — even if we’re here to be the so-called experts, we all know that they’re the real experts here.”
Former Penn State quarterback and current NFL passer Christian Hackenberg agreed.
When he was a counselor at the camp in 2015, he said that he often found himself shifting from counselor to pupil when working at the game — soaking in the teachings from the quarterbacks.
“That’s the Manning brothers,” Hackenberg said. “They are two of the best quarterbacks of all-time. Of course we listen. Of course we pay attention to what they’re doing. They’re the models of consistency that every aspiring quarterback seems to be.”
“It’s hands-on,” Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott said when he was a counselor at the event. “Peyton and Eli get involved and they’re just good people. They’re helpful. … It’s like they’re in their element here with all these quarterbacks doing work.”
Archie Manning would agree. He said that he and his sons love to give back to the game that’s given them so much over the years — one of the biggest reasons why they decided to start the camp so many years ago.
Peyton said it was a cool experience the first time he played in the NFL against a quarterback who was a camper, then counselor at the event.
A look at the projected starting quarterbacks on NFL rosters for 2018 will show a long list of former Manning Passing Academy counselors, including Prescott, Luck, A.J. McCarron, Jameis Winston, Matt Stafford and several others.
“It’s great to see the camaraderie amongst the guys,” Peyton Manning said. “Friendships get made, connections are formed and I know that a lot of these guys keep up with each other throughout the year and that’s fun to see.”
WOMEN’S AND GIRL’S CLINIC TO PIGGY BACK PASSING ACADEMY
This year’s Manning Passing Academy is historic in that it’s the first which will feature a Women’s and Girl’s Football Clinic on the tail-end of the event.
That clinic will begin Monday, June 25 and carry into Tuesday.
It will feature speeches and remarks from several prominent female figures in the game of football, including Tiffany Horton, with the Kansas City Chiefs and also other female minds in the game.
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