David Cutcliffe, a self-proclaimed football romantic and universally accepted quarterback whisperer, recounted to David Bazzel and the Little Rock Touchdown Club on Tuesday the stories of recruiting Peyton and Eli Manning to Tennessee and Ole Miss, respectively.
Making his second appearance at the club and first since 2005, the former head coach at Ole Miss and Duke, offensive coordinator at Tennessee and Broyles Award winner coached a total of eight college quarterbacks who went on to NFL careers.
A Birmingham native who didn’t play college football but was influenced at an early age by the likes of Bear Bryant and Johnny Majors, Cutcliffe spent 19 years over two stints at Tennessee including eight as OC and 10 as QB coach. He was the head coach at Ole Miss for seven years and led the Duke program out of obscurity over his 14 years in Durham. In 2003, he guided Ole Miss to a 10-win season, its first in more than 30 years, and did the same in 2013 for what had been a moribund Duke football program.
He took a year off after being let go by Duke in 2021 and last year accepted a position as special assistant to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey.
Cutcliffe shared recruiting stories for both Mannings, each of whom claimed multiple Super Bowl wins and MVP titles. Peyton was intent on blazing his own trail and not following in the footsteps of his father, Archie, at Ole Miss. Archie Manning was an All-American QB at Ole Miss during his college playing career from 1969 to 1970, and he was a two-time Pro Bowler during a long career with the New Orleans Saints.
“Peyton and I hit it off from day one,” Cutcliffe said. “But it was a hard sell on [mom] Olivia. She was homecoming queen at Ole Miss.”
Once Olivia Manning realized Peyton and David were “soulmates,” he added, she asked him to do her a favor and make sure Peyton’s jersey stayed clean, a not-so-veiled plea to take care of her son. Her request accelerated his emphasis on the quarterback getting the ball out in 2.8 seconds or less, Cutcliffe said.
“Any more than that and bad things will happen,” he said. “You’ve got to build your passing game not in yards but in timing.”
Cutcliffe said Archie let Peyton make his own choice and called him “the best quarterback dad that I’ve ever been involved with or ever will be. But he trusted the next one with me.”
Eli’s recruitment by Cutcliffe was a result of serendipitous timing. The younger Manning had been upfront about not wanting to follow his older brother to Tennessee, and Cutcliffe figured Eli was headed to Virginia or Texas. By then, Cutcliffe had already developed several future NFL quarterbacks including Peyton at Tennessee, and helped lead the Volunteers to a national title season in 1998. In December of that year, though, he got a call from Ole Miss.
As the new Rebel coach, his recruitment of Eli became much easier. “It was the fastest recruiting job I’ve ever done,” he said. Cutcliffe admitted the facilities at Ole Miss when he arrived were “embarrassing,” and said that he personally funded expansions of the locker rooms.
Asked about the impact of NIL, Cutcliffe said he warned NCAA officials that NIL and the transfer portal would turn college sports at the highest level into the wild West and “open up opportunities for players to be bought like never before.”
He said the NCAA needs to create uniform regulations for everyone and adjust the recruiting calendar to slow the escalation of NIL deals that break the spirit of the rule.
“When does winning at all costs stop? When can we get back to teaching values to young people. I know I’m a romantic. Slowing it down is better than doing nothing,” he said.
Cutcliffe was on the sideline for two games that live in Razorback lore — the 1998 Razorback game in Knoxville that dashed SEC and national title hopes for Arkansas and propelled Tennessee to both championships, and the 2001 seven-overtime thriller in Oxford won by the Hogs over Eli-led Ole Miss.
Of then-freshman QB Matt Jones, who came off the bench to lead the Hogs to the win, Cutcliffe said he had no idea who he was.
“Lucky I’m not a guy who carries a firearm, or I might have shot him on that night,” he quipped in reference to Jones. “Matt Jones, wherever you are . . . wow.”
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